WITH A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE US NAVY
Sketches of Foreign Travel and Life at Sea; including a cruise on board a man-of-war, as also a visit to Spain, Portugal.... and a treatise on the navy of the United States.
Boston: 1842.
Price: $1,750.00
About the item
First edition. Frontispiece. xviii, [ii], 404, viii, 437, [blank]pp. 8vo. WITH A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE US NAVY. Original black blindstamped cloth, spine gilt, corners slightly rubbed. A fine copy. Sabin, 72420; not in Borba.
Item #300155
Rockwell's time with the navy came by accident rather than by design: "passage to the Mediterranean ... had been granted him by the Secretary of the Navy, and as there was no Chaplain on board, he yielded to inducements offered him to discharge the duties of the office during most of the succeeding cruise of two years and a half" (preface).
Departing Boston for Europe, the newly employed chaplain recounts visits to Gibraltar, Minorca, Barcelona, Naples and Rome, before returning to the Atlantic via stops along the Spanish coast. The second volume of the text completes the tour of the Mediterranean and includes more exotic destinations such as Liberia and Brazil.
Wide-eyed upon embarking, Rockwell finishes this work with a treatise on the state of the navy, encouraging wider reading for the men, debating the efficacy of flogging and providing a wide-ranging overview of the men's vices.
