NAVAL – the Hon. John BYRON (1723-1786). Manuscript order book as commander and (from 30 December

NAVAL – the Hon. John BYRON (1723-1786). Manuscript order book as commander and (from 30 December 1746) captain of the sloop Vulture, 1 May – 16 September 1746, and subsequently of the Centurion, 27 November – 21 December 1746, of the Syren, 26 January – 6 October 1747, the Falkland, 3 November 1747 – 22 July 1748, the St Albans patrolling the coast of Guinea, 21 February 1748 – 30 August 1752, the Augusta at Plymouth, 16 January – 3 October 1753 and the Vanguard, 17 January 1754 – 27 January 1756, 88 leaves, folio (320 x 200mm), original vellum boards (the binding soiled and somewhat worn, sprung, the first leaf rather soiled and worn).

Known as ‘Foul-weather Jack’, the Hon. John Byron (1723-1786) had in 1746 only recently returned from the extraordinary adventures which had ensued on the shipwreck of HMS Wager, under George Anson, off Chile in 1741: Byron, then a midshipman, had with great difficulty led one team of survivors to safety at Valparaiso, a voyage which he later recounted in The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (1768) -- see lot 73. Byron was the grandfather of the poet, and also of the explorer George Anson Byron. .

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