Fine Books and Manuscripts Online
Fine Books and Manuscripts Online
Lot Closed
June 21, 06:09 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
COLNETT, JAMES
A Voyage to the South Atlantic and round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean.... London: by W. Bennett, 1798
4to (290 x 235 mm). Portrait, plate of sperm whale, 8 maps or charts including 6 folding; light spotting, offsetting to charts. Contemporary calf, rebacked; edge wear.
First edition of one of the most important voyages in the history of whaling. Colnett had served as a midshipman on the Resolution on Captain Cook's second voyage. The voyage described here was a joint naval and commercial undertaking, primarily for the benefit of whaling interests, headed by the company of Samuel Enderby, which sought out new bases now that the Spanish ports were effectively out of bounds (as a result of the infamous Nootka Sound Incident, during which Colnett had been arrested by the Spanish in 1789) and that the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena were so distant from the new grounds in the Pacific. The main importance of this voyage, aboard the Rattler, "lies in the fact that it pointed to the first sustained attempt to exploit the commercial possibilities of the Pacific in the 20 years after Cook's death" (D. Mackay, In the Wake of Cook, 1985, p.51).
REFERENCES
Sabin 14546; Hill (2004) 338; Borba de Moraes p.193; Howes C2140; Wagner (Northwest), p.207; Graff 812; Streeter VI 3494
PROVENANCE
Thomas Lumisden Strange (bookplate); American Antiquarian Society (stamp)