Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018

Our March themed list encompasses over 200 years of seagoing: from Hoste's classic of naval strategy sumptuously bound for Christian VII of Denmark; through to works on naval architecture, the principles of rigging (including Admiral Carnegie's copy of David Steel's Elements and practice of seamanship), nautical astronomy, the chronometer and nautical medicine; including an early French notice of Captain Cook's findings on diet and scurvy, a finely bound set of Freind's History of Physick (Freind maintained scurvy was unknown to the classical Greeks and Arabians, and was effectively a modern scourge) and a first edition of Rouppe's work on Dutch voyage medicine. Please click here to see the full list. 

We have also featured a very finely painted depiction of a traditional Greenlandic Inuit hunter after harp seals in his distinctive hunting kayak. The unsigned watercolour is of considerable quality and style, and depicts an Inuit pursuit with a level of detail whose accuracy modern historical sources now confirm. Please click here for our full description.