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BYRON, John.
Original manuscript order book.
1 May 1746-1 December, 1755.

Folio, 172 pp., ink manuscript in various hands; original vellum binding (probably Admiralty issue); title in ink on front cover ("Order Book 30th April 1746"); the vellum covers a bit soiled and darkening, inner hinge loose, internally in fine condition.

A very rare example of its type, and a remarkable manuscript for its association with one of the mid-century heroes, the circumnavigator for whom James Cook named Byron Bay.

Captain John Byron sailed with Anson as a midshipman aboard the Wager; his own printed narrative of the loss of the Wager gives one of the more important accounts of the Anson expedition. His journal of the voyage survives, and was edited by R.E. Gallagher as Byron's Journal (Hakluyt Society, 1964).

The present manuscript is the actual order book maintained by Captain John Byron in which are transcribed all the orders, signals, and other official communications received by him and sent by him in the course of his command of HMSs Vulture, Centurion, Syren, Falkland, St. Albans, Vanguard, and Augusta, 1746-1755. These commands followed immediately upon his return to England after nearly five years of privation following the Anson voyage and preceded his circumnavigation in the Dolphin of 1764-1766.

Byron went on to have an illustrious career as a Pacific explorer in his own right, commanding the Dolphin in a famous and difficult voyage dogged by appalling weather. After promotion to vice-admiral, he was later appointed governor of Newfoundland. Charnock noted of him that he had 'the universal and justly acquired reputation of a brave and excellent officer, but, of a man extremely unfortunate…'. He was certainly one of a quite strange line of men: known himself as "Foul Weather Jack" and sometimes as "The Jonah of the Wager", his eldest son was popularly known as "Mad Jack Byron"; Mad Jack, in his second marriage, fathered the poet Byron, famously both mad and bad. The poet felt quite a connection with his grandfather (arguing for example that the Patagonian giants, a myth for which his grandfather was mostly responsible, were authentic, and using many of the details of the wreck of the Wager in both Childe Harold and Don Juan). Captain John Byron's second son, George Anson Byron, had a distinguished career at sea, as did his son in turn, Captain and subsequently Lord Byron after the poet's death, who commanded the voyage of the Blonde.

Order books such as this are of great rarity on the market and the present example, having belonged to one of the great figures in the history of British navigation, must be considered particularly desirable. This wonderful manuscript was formerly in the collection of David Parsons, before which it had been in continuous private ownership in Victoria, Australia, for at least seventy years.

10 April - Vice-Admiral Byron is buried at Twickenham.

Australian: $32,000 (Approx. US $28,848, Euro €22,198) Quote ref.