Charles Miller Ltd
Lot 53
A COLLECTION OF ARTEFACTS PERTAINING TO WILLIAM COLLINGWOOD`S INDIAN SURVEYING EXPEDITION, 1846, comprising a passage journal kept aboard the Oriental from London to Bombay between 6th January and 30th May 1846, written over sixty-nine pages in a neat and clear hand with occasional coloured ink sketches, varied content including weather observations, poetry, and day-to-day commentary - March 31st 1846 Tuesday: A large shoal of porpoises playing about the bows the mate went out on the dolphin striker to harpoon one but was unsuccessful.. bound in red morocco with inscribed cover -- 7¼ x 4¾in. (18.5 x 12cm.); together with a presentation leather-cased 1½in. three-draw leather-covered surveying telescope and compass compendium signed and inscribed A. Ross, London / From Comr. Selby, Surveyor in Mesopotamia to Lieut. W. Collingwood, Asst. Surveyor, in kind remembrance of Services together in Babylonia & Irak Arabia, contained in leather carry case with lid enclosing a lacquered-brass compass, closed length -- 11½in. (29cm.); three 7 x 9in. (18 x 23cm.) watercolour and ink ship profiles by Collingwood of the Tigris; Coromandel and Georgiana each inscribed, signed and dated between 1856-8 and attached to ?album leaves; a printed service record for Collingwood (`H.M. late I.N.); and a map printed by J & C Walker, London of a Trigonmetrical Survey of a part of Mesopotamia by Selby and Collingwood , (7), Please see back cover image, Provenance: The family and thence by decent, Commander W.B. Selby, late Royal Indian Navy, began his distinguished surveying career in 1837 when, as a midshipman, he embarked on the expedition first to lay navigation buoys in the mouths of the Indus River and thence to chart some coastal areas in the `Horn of Africa`. By 1846 he was back working off the mouths of the Indus, having made his reputation in Mesopotamia (in 1840-41), and thereafter achieved considerable acclaim for his numerous other surveys, including those during the military expedition to Persia in 1856, before returning home (to England) at the end of 1862. He was succeeded as Surveyor of Mesopotamia by his protege, Lieutenant William Collingwood (a distant cousin of the Admiral), who had already done much valuable work in the region, including the large-scale, though surreptitious, mapping of Baghdad in 1855 and described by him as follows:-, "The survey of the city of Baghdad was completed entirely by myself and under very unpleasant restrictions....... The Turkish Government were not to know anything about it....... and I was left to survey the town as best I could, and under such difficulties that at times I had to note bearings and paces all over my white shirt, where best I could get the pencil at the time.....", During this same expedition, Collingwood also surveyed the Shatt-ul-Arab, the city of Bussorah (also by stealth) and much of the country between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and was undoubtedly one of the most gifted and productive R.I.N. surveyors of his day.
