A Voyage Round the World, and visits to Various Foreign Countries, in the United States Frigate Columbia; attended by her consort The Sloop of War John Adams, and Commanded by Commodore George C. Read.; Also including an account of the bombarding and firing of the town of Muckie, on the Malay Coast, and the visit of the ships to China during the Opium difficulties at Canton, and confinement of the foreigners in that city

New-Haven: H. M. Mansfield, 1847. Fifth Edition. Hardcover. Fair. The book is heavily foxed. The spine has been replaced. The portion of the original covers are worn, soiled, and heavily rubbed. Two volumes bound in one. Illustrations. First volume ends at page 317. Second volume title page states Fifth Edition but bears no date. Pagination ends with number 331 on the front side and 650 on the verso. A poem begins on page 331 and continues on the next page so it does not appear any text is missing. There are two pages of reviews/comments at the end of the second volume, separately paginated. Color illustration of the [then] present Emperor of China, facing unnumbered fifth page. A black and white illustration on Macao is at the beginning of the second volume. The author is stated as Chaplain to the Squadron. Fitch Waterman Taylor (August 4, 1803 - July 24, 1865) was an American minister, chaplain, and author. He went to New York City at the age of fifteen, with a mercantile life in view, but a change in his religious views led him to enter on a course of study in preparation for the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He graduated from Yale College in 1828. His first charge was in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. In 1841 he received the appointment of Chaplain in the U. S. Navy, which he held twenty-four years, being-at the time of his death the Senior Chaplain in the service. In the course of his sea service he made a voyage around the world on the USS Columbia, an account of which he published under the title of The Flag Ship. He also published other works, and at his death left behind him several volumes in manuscript. George Campbell Read (January 9, 1788 - August 22, 1862) was a United States Naval Officer who served on Old Ironsides during the War of 1812 and commanded vessels in actions off the Barbary Coast and India. Read eventually rose to the rank of rear admiral. From 1838 to 1839 Read took part in retaliatory actions against the pirates and raiders who preyed on American shipping in India. he commanded the Second Sumatran Expedition which was undertaken in response to the massacre of the merchant ship Eclipse. The first USS Columbia of the United States Navy was a three-masted, wooden-hulled sailing frigate of the US Navy, rated for 50 guns. She was built at Washington Navy Yard. Her keel was laid in 1825, but as was typical of much Navy construction during this period, she was not launched until much later, on 9 March 1836. On her first cruise, from May 1838 - June 1840 with Lieutenant George A. Magruder in command, Columbia rounded the Cape of Good Hope to become flagship of Commodore George C. Read in the East India Squadron. She returned to the United States by way of Cape Horn, becoming one of the first U.S. naval ships to circumnavigate the globe. She participated in the 1838 Second Sumatran Expedition which was a punitive expedition by the United States Navy against inhabitants of the island of Sumatra. After Malay warriors or pirates had massacred the crew of the American merchant ship Eclipse, an expedition of two American warships landed a force that defeated the Malays in two short engagements. The second Sumatran expedition achieved what the first expedition had not. Except for a cruise as flagship of the Home Squadron from January 1853 - March 1855, she remained at Norfolk until the outbreak of the American Civil War. Columbia was scuttled and burned by Union forces to avoid her capture by Confederates upon the surrender of Norfolk Navy Yard on 21 April 1861. Following the close of the war she was raised and sold at Norfolk on 10 October 1867. The first John Adams was originally built in 1799 as a frigate for the United States Navy, converted to a corvette in 1809, and later converted back to a frigate in 1830. Named for President John Adams, she fought in the Quasi-War, the First and Second Barbary Wars, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. At the end of her career, she participated in the Union blockade of South Carolina's ports. She then participated in the raid on Combahee Ferry that Harriet Tubman, the former slave and Union operative, organized with Union colonel Montgomery. John Adams led three steam-powered gunboats up the Harbor River to Port Royal. The squadron relied on local black mariners to guide it past mines and fortifications. The squadron freed 750+ slaves and unsettled the Confederacy. Tubman was the first woman in U.S. history to plan and execute an armed expedition.