British Naval Office and Diarist. Boatswain's Mate on the HMS Bounty. As a young Midshipman he had been wounded in action against the American Continental Navy. He took no part in the mutiny on April 28, 1789, but was prevented from joining Commander William Bligh in being put off the ship; this led Bligh to believe he had sided with the mutineers. Back in Tahiti Morrison supervised the construction of a sloop, the Resolution, in the hope that he could sail with his fellow loyalists to the busy South Seas port of Batavia. The craft was amazingly well-built and only the lack of durable material for the sails thwarted his plan. Morrison was among the loyalists who reported for duty aboard the HMS Pandora in March 1791, and like them he was shocked to find himself placed under arrest. He was the only Bounty prisoner to protest over his treatment and was threatened with death by the Pandora's ferocious Captain, Edward Edwards. It was not until the 1792 Bounty court-martial that he learned that Bligh had charged him with mutiny. The judges found Morrison guilty and he was waiting to be hanged when his fortunes unexpectedly improved. While he was on the Bounty, Morrison kept a daily journal that flatly contradicted Bligh's whitewashed portrayal of himself and the events leading to the mutiny. Hoping to clear his name, posthumously at least, Morrison gathered this information into a book, adding his accounts of the Pandora voyage and sinking, Captain Edwards' brutality, and the inhuman treatment of the Bounty prisoners. The book was set to be published in February 1793, three months after Morrison's scheduled execution. In the meantime, a manuscript copy was circulated among the Admiralty, where it created quite a stir; its revelations, if made public, would have caused a scandal and stained the reputation of the Royal Navy for years. Many historians now believe that Morrison was granted a King's pardon, in October 1792, on the condition that his writings would not appear while anyone associated with the Bounty or the Pandora was still living---a classic "cover-up". The book was duly withdrawn, and Morrison returned to the Navy. He died at 46 when his ship, the HMS Blenheim, went down in a storm off the coast of Madagascar. Before his death Morrison gave the manuscript of his book to Bounty officer Peter Heywood; it was finally published in 1870 by Heywood's stepdaughter, Lady Diana Belcher, who incorporated Morrison's text into her volume "The Mutineers of the Bounty". It is the best firsthand account of that ill-fated ship, far more objective than Bligh's self-serving version, and a treasure trove for historians of the period.