Search Results: Nautical from Downtown Brown Books, ABAA

Arcata, CA: Ericson Bro's, 1896. Photograph. Good. Image of three ships, the Defender (launched late August 1896; see Wallace Martin, Sail and Steam, page 264) completed or nearly so, with two other ships under construction. 9.5 by 7.5 inches on a 14 by 11 inch mount. Ornate printed title using left-leaning script font. Plain back. Image faded, short crack in bottom of mount.

London: HarperCollins, 1994. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. The seventeenth installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series. First edition (first printing, with a numberline ending in 1). A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. Pages slightly tanned. Signed by O'Brian on the title page.

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Good. London's popular account of an ill-fated two-year voyage to the South Pacific in a poorly-built 43-foot sailboat. BAL 11929. 340 pages, plus a color frontispiece. Illustrated with more than 100 half-tone photographs. First edition (first printing, with no later printings indicated). A very good copy with some shelf wear and a bit of spine lean. Front hinge cracking at the bottom inch. With the wolf's head Jack London bookplate from Dawson's Books mounted to the front pastedown and below that, a clipped signature from a Jack London letter. With a previous owner's name on the front free endpaper. This copy includes a price-clipped, mostly-complete dust jacket, held together with Japanese tissue at all the folds. The rear panel has two open tears. Nevertheless, scarce in any jacket and nicely augmented with a signature and a bookplate.

London: Collins, 1984. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/Near fine. The tenth Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin novel, set during the War of 1812. O'Brian's series of meticulously detailed nautical novels set during the early 19th century set a high bar for historical fiction. This novel provides the plot to the film Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe. The middle novels of the 21-book series are some of the scarcest first editions in the series. This book is particularly tough as the publisher changed the price (or misprinted it) on the dust jacket and issued most copies with a clipped jacket and a price sticker. First edition (first printing). A near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket with only the slightest fading to the spine. This jacket is not price-clipped, but it has the price sticker, making it an uncommon intermediate state. It is entirely likely that many of the copies currently offered for sale with the original £8.95 unclipped price and no sticker have simply had the… Read More

New York: Henry Spear, 1849. First Edition. Hardcover. Good. Two textbooks on sailing by American midshipmen, printed and bound together, as issued. The topics covered by Murphy are spars and rigging, nautical manoeuvers (called "evolutions"), and stowage. Jeffers' work on navigation is separately paginated with a title page that reads in full: Navigation: A Concise Practical Treatise on Navigation: Containing Short and Improved Methods for the Determination of Latitude and Longitude, the Reduction in the Elements in the Nautical Almanac, the Treatment and Rating of Chronometers, etc. The book offers a wealth of information on mid-19th century ships, but very few illustrations. xvi, 92, [2], 46, [2],54, x, 62, 90, [6 blank] pages. First edition (first printing). A good copy, with old dampstains throughout. Illustrated title reattached with binder's tape. Corners worn, else very good in the publisher's original cloth binding decorated in gilt.

San Francisco: Watkins' Pacific Coast, 1867. Ephemera. Very good. A stereograph view of the Oregon Steam Navigation pier at The Dalles, a lumber and passenger port about 80 miles east of Portland. Watkins copyrighted this view in 1867. This stereo card is seen on orange (this) and yellow mounts. The yellow mount examples include the date adopted here. The orange cards may have been made at a slightly later date, but prior to the mid-1870s, when Watkins lost possession of his negatives in a financial dispute. Minor wear to the corners; image with medium contrast and minor staining.

London: Collins, 1972. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/Near fine. The second Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin novel, set in part on land. Aubrey loses his fortune and the two friends hide out in France, only to find themselves behind enemy line swhen war breaks out. O'Brian's series of meticulously detailed nautical novels set during the early 19th century set a high bar for historical fiction. First edition (first printing). A near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket.

[Fairhaven, CA]: [Rolph's Shipyard], 1918. Ephemera. Very good. A pair of photographs of wooden-hulled ships, probably barkentines, under construction at Rolph's Shipyard in Fairhaven, on the Samoa penninsula across Humboldt Bay from Eureka, California. The shipyard at Fairhaven was founded by Hans-Ditlev Bendixsen, a Danish shipbuilder, in 1869. He built about a hundred large vessels there until 1910, when he sold the business. It changed hands several times until it was acquired by San Francisco Mayor (and later California Governor James Rolph) in 1918. Rolph operated the yard for just three years, until it closed for good in 1921. While best-known for its timber industry, Humboldt Bay, on California's far north coast, was lined with ship yards in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographs of shipbuilding on the bay are not common. These are gelatin silver prints on 5-by-7-inch photographic paper (images slighly smaller).. The original mounts measure 8 by 10 inches. The images are medium… Read More

Seattle, WA: (the author), 1902. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. A scarce navigation textbook written by a Seattle ship captain. Smith pursued a variety of business ventures in the early 20th century, including running a navigation school for which he wrote this book. It went through several editions with slightly different content. The first two editions are not dated (but the second is identified as the second edition), but the examples in the text are dated 1900 and 1902, giving a probable date range for the publication. This first edition, is particularly interesting for its two dozen ads for Seattle maritime businesses. The ads were dropped from subsequent editions. Approximately 154 pages (with a rather confusing pagination: 119 numbered pages, 27 pages of ads not included in the pagination, but included throughout the text, an inserted plate, plus unnumbered preliminaries and an index). Ads on endpapers as well. First edition (first printing). Very good in blue cloth stamped in black… Read More