Oval magnifying glass, folding into horn or tortoiseshell covers, which belonged to Vice-Admiral William Bligh (1754-1817). The widow of Lieutenant-Commander G. F. Glennie presented it in 1939 with an accompanying letter by him which reads as follows: ‘This glass (probably belonging to his quadrant box) was with Lt. Wm. Bligh when he made his memorable boat voyage after the Mutiny on the Bounty in 1789, and this is the identical glass with the aid of which he was enabled to light a fire when they landed on the Great Barrier Reef.’

Bligh’s eldest daughter Harriet married Henry Aston Barker and their daughter, Elizabeth Catherine, married William Glennie. George Frederick Glennie was their youngest son and died on 25 April 1939, aged 84. See also REL0024, which is a small pocket reading glass of Bligh's with a similar story and which by its size and type looks more like a working one rather than this larger example (of which REL0028 is a similar one that appears to have belonged to George 'Beau' Brummell - the Georgian dandy).

Glennie was certainly wrong in suggesting a glass of this size and decorative sort would have been provided with a 'quadrant' in order to read its scales. Smaller ones, similar to the other, certainly sometimes were; not with quadrants but with the more sophisticated sextants and reflecting circles developed from the 1760s, which had more finely cut scales. Bligh in the 'Bounty' had two Ramsden sextants of that sort. He lost both in the mutiny and on several occasions after it referred to the 'small' reading glass he used to read their scales and with which he first lit a fire at Restoration Island on the Barrier Reef in June 1789.

Work begun in August 2017 suggested that, while there is no reason to doubt this glass is an item that belonged to Bligh, REL0024 - which has a similar tradition and different sound family provenance - was more likely to have been the one he had in the launch: having both is not impossible but unlikely, since it would presume him having both in his pockets when given his clothes by the mutineers. It is inherently more probable that, while he also owned this one, family tradition about it became mistaken or embroidered over time. As a type it is a general reading glass, easily carried in the pocket as an elegant personal accessory but not a 'small' magnifier of the sort generally used or supplied with instruments.