Source notes for Cygnet

Diary kept by Boyle Travers Finniss during the voyage of the Cygnet

This diary contains entries from 16 March 1836 (four days before the Cygnet departed from London) to 11 September 1836. The diary entries include remarks on the weather, the progress of the ship, events  and personalities on board. Finniss was sailing as an assistant surveyor; also on board the Cygnet was George Strickland Kingston, who after some competition with Finniss had been appointed to the higher post of deputy surveyor general.

The version of this journal used on this website is from the typescript by Miss N.G. Bruce held in the collection of the State Library of South Australia (PRG 527/2 volume 1). The original journal is in the Borrow Collection, Special Collections, Flinders University Library.

The front page of the typescript states: ‘Where words, owing to the wearing of the manuscript, are indecipherable, three or more full points have been inserted in the typescript. Where it has been necessary to supply a word to make sense, the interpolated word has been enclosed in brackets’. These conventions have been reproduced on this site.