Non-fiction

Last Voyage – Ann Davison – First edition 1951

First edition of Ann Davison’s autobiographical account which ends in the most dramatic shipwreck and the loss of her husband.

An incredible individual, after all of this, she became the first woman to single-handedly sail across the Atlantic.

Published by Peter Davis, London, 1951. Octavo, 248 pages, two photographs of Ann and Frank … it was not that sort of adventure. Very good condition.

The Last Voyage begins with her earlier life as an aviator in the 1930’s delivering mail around the UK. She married Frank Davison a fellow aviator when they both worked at the Hooten airfield near Liverpool. They has a long held ambition for sailing and bought a run-down 70 foot ketch “Reliance”. Doing it up sent them broke and before the work was finished they sailed to avoid their creditors. They encountered incredible storms in the Channel and the Irish Sea … they foundered on the Portland Bill. Taking to their cork life raft they battled to survive and Frank died out of pure exhaustion ..

Now scarce and one of the most personal accounts we have read.

$35.00

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The Cruise of the Dream Ship – Ralph Stock (1950 Edition in Complete Dust Jacket)

First published 1921, this is the 1950 edition same publisher, Heinemann, London.

Octavo, 265 pages, numerous from period photographs. Super dust jacket for seventy years old, a few spots to top edge and a little aged in the ends, internally very clean and bright, rates as a very good copy.

The Dream Ship was originally designed as a lifeboat for the North Sea fishing fleet. Forty-seven feet with a fifteen foot beam and eight foot draught … to start there was no money to buy here … but these obstacles are often overcome. Purchased, converted and fitted out we are off to the Pacific … first down to Vigo, the Canaries and over to the West Indies and Barbados. Through the Panama and to the Galapagos and then the Marquesas and the Paumoto Islands, Tahiti (its pleasures and problems). Moorea, Palmertson (almost a Hurricane), Savage, Friendly and on to Thursday Island … Finally some advice to “Dreamers of Dream Ships”

Sailing fantasy fulfilled on the Dream Ship

$35.00

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Moana – The Vastness of the Sea – Bernard Gorsky – First English edition 1956

A very nice copy of the first English edition published in 1956.

Translated from the original French by Alec Brown an published by Elek Books, London. Interestingly, still published a year before the French equivalent.

Octavo, 239 pages with endpaper maps and numerous illustrations taken from photographs of the voyage, many underwater. Very goo condition, tres clean inside.

Bernard Gorsky was inspired on reading a sailing adventure. He assembled a crew of three and bought a forty-foot cutter. They set sail from Dinard and the book follows their travels to Tangiers, the Canaries and across the Atlantic to the West Indies with some beautiful sailing and diving. Through the Panama with time in the Galapagos among the turtles and further west to the Atolls of Tuamotu and Tahiti.

The writing is special and has been compared, rather curiously, with Melville and Conrad .. well it is a delight

Moana – a superior sailing and diving adventure

$30.00

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A Voyage Around the World (1785-1788) – Captain George Dixon

One of the harder to find facsimile published Israel, Amsterdam; this one in 1968.

Full original title … “A Voyage Round the World; but more particularly to the North-West Coast of America; performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, in The King George and Queen Charlotte, Captains Portlock and Dixon. Dedicated, by permission, to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. By Captain George Dixon.

Originally published by Geo. Goulding, Haydn’s Head, No ^, James Street, Covent Garden, 1789.

This form thick quarto, xxix (Introduction and Content, 360 pages, plus additional appendices 47 pages. Enormous folding chart of the Pacific as frontispiece. A further 21 plates of charts, maps and natural history exhibits, many folding. Very good condition. Heavy (1.3kgs), will require an overseas postage supplement.

Dixon has served under Cook on the Third Voyage on the Resolution. During that voyage he became aware of the commercial opportunities on the American North-West Coast. Dixon promoted a venture to exploit the fur trade in that region. He became partner in the King George’s Sound Company and an expedition was mounted with Dixon Captain of the Queen Charlotte and Portlock Captain of the larger King George. In the summers of 1786 and 1787 they explored the coastline of British Colombia and Alaska, spending the winter in Hawaiian Islands … they were the first to visit Moloka. Back in the North-West a good cargo of furs was collected, and the party sailed to China where they were traded … returning to England. During their exploits they were the first to understand that Haida Gwaii were islands and not part of the mainland; they explored Queen Charlotte Sound, Yakutat Bay, Sita Bay and the Dixon Entrance … they named the are where they took many fur cloaks .. Cloak Bay.

Dixon one of the less promoted Cook prodigies … with a commercial venture that went around the world and filled in the North-West Pacific.

$120.00

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Civil War Maps – A Graphic Index to the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

The very first Occasional Paper issued by The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, published 1987.

Quarto, softcover, 68 pages with 55 full page maps following a useful introduction, by David Bosse, and followed by a list of the scales of the maps published. Original maps by the American Map Company Inc. A very good if not fine copy.

The principal atlas is a monumental piece of work with 1,006 maps and plans, 966 relating to military operations. It is on the whole presented in chronological order an, it is known that readers have found it difficult to research. This Graphic Index was compiled to alleviate these difficulties .. it took six year to complete in itself.

Seems a hard to find item maybe because of its curiosity or that it was the first of a series of high quality cartographic papers.

The Maps of the American Civil War Explained – Graphically

$50.00

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Le Morte DArthur – The History of King Arthur and His Nobel Knights of the Round Table – Sir Thomas Malory – Illustrated with 36 coloured plates by William Russell Flint. Two Volumes Bound for Bumpas, London.

Originally published in 1485 and first issued by the Medici Society in 1912. This is an early reprint of that issue, in two volumes, 1920 and, finely bound in full leather under the name of the legendary London bookseller Bumpas.

Two Volumes, crown quarto, 439 and 531 pages after preliminaries in each case. Magnificent plates, 36 in total, by Russell Flint.

The binding, full polished morocco, with raise bands and gilt lettering, and gilt fillet with inner wide dentils (a lovely touch), all page edges richly gilt. Silk ribbon markers. Some rubbing, very clean internally.

Russell Flint’s interpretation of Malory’s work is masterful and depicts seminal moments and characters.

Imprinted following the text of Caxton, modernised by Alfred Pollard, instructed by the Medici Society, London. Russell Flint (1880-1969) was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement and, the stylised neoclassical art of the Renaissance. He attended the Edinburgh, Royal Institute of Art. He admired Arthur Rackham … and you can that in these example. His figures are finely modelled with further influences of Burne-Jones

Le Morte DArthur – Illustrated and bound in style … a very good set

$390.00

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Last Voyage – Ann Davison – First edition 1951

The Cruise of the Dream Ship – Ralph Stock (1950 Edition in Complete Dust Jacket)

Moana – The Vastness of the Sea – Bernard Gorsky – First English edition 1956

A Voyage Around the World (1785-1788) – Captain George Dixon

Civil War Maps – A Graphic Index to the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

Le Morte DArthur – The History of King Arthur and His Nobel Knights of the Round Table – Sir Thomas Malory – Illustrated with 36 coloured plates by William Russell Flint. Two Volumes Bound for Bumpas, London.

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