ADMIRAL JOHN BYNG'S PERSONAL MEDITERRANEAN JOURNAL, MARCH-OC...

Hammer

£8,000

ADMIRAL JOHN BYNG'S PERSONAL MEDITERRANEAN JOURNAL, MARCH-OCTOBER 1748

comprising 120 pages (60 sheets) of folded foolscap laid paper bearing a Govt watermark, kept between 1st March and 13th October 1748 in a small neat hand, ruled margins with crew names where mentioned and occasional appended marginalia notes, stitched within contemporary card wrapper inscribed Journal of Jna Byng 1747-48 with trimmed portrait engraving applied to front inscribed in a later hand Portrait of Hawke not ByngI (old staining and wear) -- 7¾ x 6in. (20 x 15cm.); together with a transcript of The TRIAL of the Honourable Admiral JOHN BYNG at a Court Martial, Dublin 1757, full calf binding; a contemporary unbound copy of Byng's defense viz: A LETTER to a Member of Parliament... Relative to the CASE of ADMIRAL BYNG, London 1756; a framed 6½ x 4in. engraved frontispiece portrait of Byng with a companion example of Admiral Hervey; Pope, D: At 12 Mr Byng was Shot, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962; Tunstall, B: Admiral Byng, Philip Allan & Co. Ltd, 1928; and a typed transcript of the journal

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Bloomsbury Auctions, 6th December, 2007, lot 266 where entered as 'The Property of a Lady'.

This interesting journal, written during the final negotiations of the failed Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and some six years before his fate was infamously sealed by his Actions off Minorca, is nearly complete save a few spare pages at the back. It includes daily weather reports, the conduct of the War, orders given and received, the political situation in the Mediterranean etc., and would have been used as the basis for his official log book. It includes a long first-hand account of a Franco-Spanish attack on Savona which he helped repulse: [15 March] The information secured from deserters, were that the enemy were about 5 or 6000 men under the command of a Major General, Nephew to the Duke de Richelieu, that their intentions were to first burn ye Galleys and Vessels and there in ye Mole, to take and plunder the town, make themselves masters of the artillery which they knew had arrived in Savona but ye day before... Two months later Byng records the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle. Some historians portray Byng as a Commander who lacked the experience of War to assert himself when under pressure and which led to his Court Martial and Execution in 1758, however, this journal challenges that perception and Byng appears to command logically and forcibly when given the right men and equipment to do so.

His infamous fate was to be Court Marshalled and shot - by his own signal - kneeling upon the quarterdeck of his flagship Monarch, an event that still provokes discussion and contempt for an Administration which made him a scapegoat for their own political ends. Famously Voltaire included the incident in his best-selling satirical novel Candide where in chapter 23 he wrote about Britain's loss of Minorca:

‘And why kill this Admiral?’
‘Because he didn’t kill enough people,’ Candide was told. ‘He gave battle to a French Admiral, and it has been found that he wasn’t close enough.’
‘But,’ said Candide, ‘the French Admiral was just as far away from the English Admiral as he was from him!’
‘Unquestionably,’ came the reply. ‘But in this country, it is considered a good thing to kill an Admiral from time to time, pour encourager les autres!'