The Cruise of the Janet Nichol Among the South Sea Islands: A Diary

In April 1890 the steamer Janet Nicoll set off from Sydney for a three-month trading voyage through the central and western Pacific. Aboard were seven white men, a crew of forty islanders, and one woman: a short-haired, barefoot, cigarette-smoking American, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, wife of the famous novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. The Cruise of the 'Janet Nichol' is Fanny's account of her journey with her husband and grown son through what are today the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.