Captain the Honourable William Wellesley, Royal Navy (1806-1...

Hammer

£1,500

Captain the Honourable William Wellesley, Royal Navy (1806-1875), the Duke of Wellington's nephew, later of Charlton House, Radstock, Somerset, his journal, dated 16th August, 1824 to 16th January, 1833, covering his naval service during the Greek War of Independence (1821-29) against the Ottoman Empire, service in South America, the Caribbean and an account of the slave trade, the book given to him by his aunt, Lady Anne Culling Smith (née Wellesley, previously FitzRoy; 1768-1844), on-&-off entries dated August 16th 1824 - ?January 16th 1833, inscribed recto and verso, [92]; [34]ff, the remaining quarter of the textblock blank, both portions of manuscript prefixed: To be burnt in case of my death, the front also prefixed with a crossed precis of his naval career, - presumably crossed as the memoir was an afterthought to the ensuing narrative - including reference to the Bombardment of Algiers (1816), the West Indies, and Bonaparte's exile all prefacing his joining HMS Medina (1813) at Portsmouth, 18th June 1824, as a midshipman on the 'Medina' going to the Mediterranean - his appointment by Admiral Sir George Cockburn at the Duke of Wellington's request (see Wellington's Despatches Correspondence, et al (1867), volume II,  page 221, no. 360), Spain, Portugal, etc., then Greece, the manuscript covering his subsequent lieutenancy (1825) on HMS Weasel (1823) and HMS Cambrian (1797), Nafplion - then in the hands of the Greeks, the Turkish fleet appearing from the Dardanelles in 1826, Constantinople (Istanbul), unfortunately this part comes to an end on 9th September, 1827, with mention of the Egyptian fleet, prior to the Battle of Navarino, 20th October, 1827, in which Wellesley is accounted as having had a trifling share; before starting again in Florence, 14th May, 1829, then Captain Wellesley, visiting the typical Grand Tour sites, before going on to other Italian localities, with observations of historic figures and local life, transcripts of vernacular verse, tables of conversion, Austrian money, commerce, then Paris from 26th August, 1829, and elsewhere in France, his account of Toulon, the major port of the French Mediterranean fleet, is prefixed by a 2pp 'spy's' list of the French ships on the Mediterranean, July 1828, that could have been an act of espionage, further tables of data about further French ships and their deployment in international waters, a diagrams of moorings, a fortification, a lock, two cross-sections of a boat, notes on ship-building in Brest and a two-page plan, further expected topographical observations, then 12pp account of Columbia, dated La Guajira, March 24th 1832, during his captaincies of HMS Sapphire (1827) or HMS Winchester (1822), including elsewhere in South America, i.e. Puerto Cobello, Caracas, etc., in Venezuela, The Grand Cayman and just over 1pp account of the domestic slave trade, Jamaica and the West India trade, the Bahamas, population data on Jamaica, Bermuda, Barbados, Grenada, St Kitts, & Trinidad, etc; then oddly back to Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, 30th September, 1833, mining and the movement of coal; loosely-inserted 4pp letterpress advertisement for Cary's Camera Lucida; the final leaf for this side of the MS, dated Quebec, ?January 16 1833, being 2pp statistics of Canada, its population, their religion and denominations; the back, prefaced by biblical chronology and notes, opening at October *th, 1826, with raw self-examination and criticism, 'Few people can be in a more wretched state of mind than I am at present, I always feel I shall never do any good in the Navy [...]', writing onto several pages about his dissatisfaction, life and discipline onboard ship and within the naval service as a whole, then commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans, abstracts of the Book of Genesis, contemporary Regency diced calf, rolled in blind with a foliate border, gilt triple-fillet, front and back joints split to varying degrees, but block holding, bumped &/or rubbed edges, surface scuffs, marbled endpapers, 4to

Captain Wellesley's uncertainty and poor state of mind would lead, in the 1840s, to his conversion from the Church of England and his joining the evangelical Plymouth Brethren; not mentioned herewith - along with no reference to his conducting navigational surveys of the waters around Australia.