Manuscript logbook of 5 voyages aboard the ships Emerald, Creole, Massachusetts, and Mashuna.
1824-1841.
Price: $2,500.00
About the item
14 hand-colored signal flags drawn on front paste-down. 136 pages. Ink, in preprinted ledger book pages with decorative borders. With 2 manuscript leaves loosely inserted, one listing preview crew of the Emerald, and another noting sales and rigging in need of repair. Folio (323 x 202 mm). Half calf and marbled boards. Some old staining, a few leaves loose, binding scuffed, hinges cracked, a few chips to page edges.
Item #313304
A logbook recording five round-trip commercial voyages undertaken by Captain Henry Cole on four different vessels. The first is aboard the Packet Emerald, identified as No. 273 on the striking hand-coloured Holy Head signal chart drawn in manuscript on the front pastedown, signed "William Cole, Charlestown Massachusetts June 26, 1824", perhaps by the Captain's brother. The voyage departed Boston on June 26, 1824 and arrived twenty days later at Prince's Dock, Liverpool. An entry on July 9 records that Captain Cole "spoke with an English brig 17 days from Ireland bound for Quebec" and on July 14th he is noted as having "spoke with the ship Meteor from Liverpool bound for New York." (A log of the return trip follows, August 26 to September 24, 1824.)
The second voyage is aboard the Ship Creole, a round trip from Boston to New Orleans, from November 4, 1824 to January 21, 1825. The third voyage is an eventful round trip on the same route, also aboard the Creole, which began in February 1825. This includes an encounter with the Brig Elizabeth en route to Havana which had her foremast, bowsprit, and main topmast carried away "the evening previous in a heavy squall." On the return trip, near the Tortugas Bank the Creole strikes a coral reef and loses its rudder, and four fishing boats come to offload 61 bales of cotton. When they finally hobble back into Boston Harbor on May 2, 1825 they have been 81 days out, and the last entry for the voyage is punctuated with, "'So ends this Unlukcy Voyage'". The Key West businessman and Customs House head William Pinckney was aboard, and signs his name at the end. The fourth voyage is another round trip from Boston to New Orleans, May 26, 1825 to July 31, on the Ship Massachusetts. A final voyage is bound in reverse, documenting the voyage of the Schooner Mashuna, Captain Critchfield, but kept by Henry Cole.
Bound at the front of the log is an incomplete copy of the scarce pamphlet "Information Useful for Navigators," compiled by Samuel Lambert (Salem: T.C. Cushing, 1820. 10 [of 12 or 14] pp. Shoemaker 1900).
