antiquarian bookseller - Peter Harrington

Peter Harrington Antiquarian Bookseller
323.RAWSTORNE, Captain
James.
A Descriptive Plan with Explanatory
Key to the View of the Sailing of
the British Portion of the Allied
Expedition from Baljik to the
Crimea, on the Morning of the
7th of September, 1854 … With
the Names of the Ships of War
and Transports composing the
Expedition, and the Officers in
Command of them; also a List of
the Naval Officers attached to the
Transport Service; to which is added
a List of the Regiments and Officers
of Her Majesty’s Army of the
Expedition, shewing the Particular
Troop Ship or Transport on board
which each Regiment and Officer
was embarked. The Whole carefully
arranged from Official Returns and
other Documents.
London, James Wakeham, Printer, 1859 [38400] £1250
Large 8vo (235 × 180 mm). Folding hand-coloured
lithographic frontispiece, opening 700 mm, hand-coloured
lithographically printed laurel wreath enclosing the letter-
press on the title page. Frontispiece with some splits and
tears, no loss, slightly cropped at the foot costing most of he
lithographer’s name, now backed with linen, a little crumpled
on one of the folds, ex-RUSI library with their blind stamp to
the title page only, light browning, some finger-soiling of the
title page, fore-edge of the text-block somewhat chipped,
about very good in modern black buckram-backed marbled
boards.
Scarce, not in BL, no copy on COPAC or OCLC, none at the
Caird Library, NMM. Bound in after the title page is a typed
Catalogue 57: Travel Section 7: Mapping, Navigation and Naval History
research note which explains that only two copies of this
pamphlet had been located in 1947, that at RUSI and
another at the Royal Library, Windsor. Also explains that
David Bonner Smith of the Admiralty Library had suggested
that the pamphlet was a promotional device for the
lithographic print, “The Sailing of the British Portion…”,
published by Hullmandel & Walton,1st May 1859 [NMM
Prints PAI7924] , with which conclusion we would concur.
Rawstorne entered the navy in 1805, served on the
channel, home and Mediterranean stations during the
Napoleonic war and was with the Superb under Sir Charles
Paget on the coast of North America for the war of 1812,
“where in command of a tender, he succeeded in capturing
several vessels laden with military stores” (O’Byrne). He
subsequently served with the coast guard and in the
channel squadron, and is described on the title page as
“Late in Command of the First Division of the Transports
of the Expedition.”
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