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Piracy in the South Seas

KEPPEL, Henry.
A visit to the Indian Archipelago, in H.M. ship Maender with portions of the private journal of Sir James Brooke, K.C.R.

With a large folding engraved chart of the Indian Archipelago showing the track of H.S. ship Maender by J. & C. Walker, 8 coloured lithographed plates by Oswald W. Brierley.

London, Richard Bentley, 1853. 2 vols. 8vo. Contemporary purple cloth. With a large folding engraved chart of the Indian Archipelago showing the track of H.S. ship Maender by J. & C. Walker, 8 coloured lithographed plates by Oswald W. Brierley. XV, 301; VIII, 286 pp.

First edition by Sir Henry Keppel (1809-1904) who was a British admiral and son of the 4th earl of Albemarle and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Lord de Clifford. Keppel was born on the 14th of June 1809, and entered the navy from the old naval academy of Portsmouth in 1822. His family connections secured him rapid promotion, at a time when the rise of less fortunate officers was very slow. He became lieutenant in 1829 and commander in 1833. His first command was at the coast of Spain, which was then in the midst of the convulsions of the Carlist war. Captain Keppel had already made himsell known as a good seaman. In 1837 he was promoted captain, and appointed in 1841 to the head to China and to defeat the Malaysian pirates, a service which he repeated in 1847, when in command of H.M.S. " Maeander." The story of his two commands was told by himself in two publications, The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. for the Suppression of Piracy (1846), and the present work in which he describes the journey to Labuan together with an account of the piracy in the South China Sea, including an interesting description of Manilla. The substance of these books was afterwards incorporated into his autobiography, which was published in 1899 under the title A Sailor's Life under four Sovereigns. Keppel died at the age of 95 on the 17th of January 1904.
The illustrator Oswald Brierly (1817-1894) was a leading marine painter, and he had also studied naval architecture. He sailed on numerous expeditions including the Rattlesnake voyage surveying the Barrier Reef, with Benjamin Boyd on the 'Wanderer', and on the 'Galatea' with the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867. Brierly joined Henry Keppel on H.M.S. Mæander after his voyage on the Rattlesnake and visited New Zealand, Tahiti and South America, returning to England in July 1851. With an original interesting signed letter from James Brooke to Lady Keppel, 14th Aug. 1865, pasted in.

Good copy with the bookplates of Charles R.J. Glover and James Angas Johnson.- (Colour of spines sl. faded).

Hill p. 162; Cordier, Indosinica 1467.

Related Subjects: Australia & New Zealand Cartography China Discovery & Exploration Exploration Piracy

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