There are times when handling an artefact feels like holding a moment of history in your hand. The volume detailed below is just one such item, a window upon a world long gone by.
This rather special volume takes us back to the 1790s and is a copy of the 1793 edition of Le Petit Neptune Francais: or French Coasting Pilot for the coast of Flanders Channel, Bay of Biscay and Mediterranean, ….. The book being a description of the bays, roads, rocks, sands, land-marks, depths of water, bearings, and distances from place to place; and the setting and flowing of the tides, on the coast of France and beyond. It is an an adaptation of Le petit flambeau de la mer by Georges Boissaye Du Bocag.
However, this is no ordinary copy. It was once owned by the Master of H.M.S. Theseus, one William Price, used by him on board Theseus which was to be the flagship of Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, carried and used on the rolling quarterdeck.
Its provenance is assured, on the recto leaf there appears the neatly calligraphed name “William Price”. A document at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) indicates “Captain William Price, was Master, His Majesty’s Ship Theseus”. The volume in question was an essential and invaluable guide for such a man, having many engraved charts and coastal profiles. But what really makes this copy unique as well as the provenance to HMS Theseus are the original drawings of the coasts and plans actually prepared by Price himself whilst on the quarterdeck of Theseus in 1795 and so entitled.
So, there we have it, this very sea atlas was for a period used on board H.M.S. Theseus, a 74 gun Royal Navy ship launched on September 1786. It was in the autumn of 1795 that Theseus was patrolling the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Quiberon when this volume was taken to the quarterdeck to record the scene and at this period of 1795 the 7 manuscript profiles were prepared. They are all sections of the coast around Quiberon. One is headed “Bearings by compas (sic) from the Theseus quarterdeck in the anchoring ground October 1795” another is headed “Appearance of Isle de Yeu from anchoring ground in H.M. Theseus December 5th 1795”. Theseus is named on a third drawing and also in the engraved chart of Quiberon Bay at page 70. In addition, on the reverse of one of the plates there is a detailed drawing of the rudder mechanism. Price made these drawings of the three coastal profiles in ink and sepia wash some include the tiny drawings of warships as he must have seen them and one of Theseus in the Bay.
The volume is bound in contemporary half leather with marbled paper covered boards, these are worn with some of the marbled paper missing from the front board, some damp marking and all of the signs of use as might be expected with its presence on the quarterdeck of a warship! It is a remarkable survival and is now protected in a quarter leather, felt lined, matched Solander box.
Theseus was later to play an important role in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in July 1797 serving as the flagship for Horatio Nelson. So Nelson the hero of Trafalgar and many other naval skirmishes trod the very same quarterdeck as this volume was used upon and was no doubt kept in the Master’s quarters.
Turning to the publisher of the volume, William Faden. It seems that he had been apprenticed to the Fleet Street engraver James Wigley, but by 1773 had an agreement with the family of Thomas Jefferys d.1771 (Geographer to George III) taking on some of his maps and rising to some prominence in the field. He was chosen by the Ordnance Survey to print their first map of Kent in 1801. He was to be an important and prolific publisher of maps and charts.
So here we have an object that takes us back in time, a real time capsule to the days of sail and the real life action captured in the novels of C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian. What sights it must have witnessed we can only image.