AN HISTORICALLY INTERESTING CADET LOG FOR H.M. SHIPS TRAFALG...

Estimate

£500 - £800

AN HISTORICALLY INTERESTING CADET LOG FOR H.M. SHIPS TRAFALGAR AND EDGAR INCLUDING AN EYEWITNESS REPORT OF THE LOSS OF H.M.S. VICTORIA, 1891-94

kept by B.A. Pratt-Barlow between 17th August 1891 and January 15th 1894 in a clear hand over 144 leaves initially aboard H.M.S. Tamar in the Humber before transfer to Trafalgar and with numerous charts, technical diagrams, drawings, watercolours and photographs pasted or tipped in including a distant one of H.M.S. Victoria possibly just after her refloating preceded by an extensive account of her refloating, and later a watercolour of her stern slipping beneath the sea entitled The last of H.M.S. Victoria, June 22nd, 1893 with a report of the sinking and how the fleet behaved in the immediate aftermath, shipboard routine, sextant sightings and weather reports, signed off at intervals by the Captain, bound within blue cloth boards with gilt titles to spine -- 13 x 8½in. (33 x 21.5cm.)

B.A. Pratt-Barlow (1874-1914) was promoted Commander in 1908 and, in 1914, was placed in command of H.M.S. Hawke (which had rammed and badly damaged R.M.S. Olympic in 1911), perishing with her when it was sunk by U-9 (which had recently sunk Hogue, Aboukir & Cressy in the same morning) on 14th October the same year. H.M.S. Victoria was infamously sunk when the bullish Admiral George Tryon insisted on a complex division manoeuvre at the wrong distance and was rammed by H.M.S. Camperdown drowning Tryon and 357 men. Her wreck was only discovered -- rammed vertically into the seabed 460ft below -- in 2004, one of just two such wrecks known.