Lot n° 108
Estimation :
50 - 75
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 40EUR
Marine.- DOUGLAS (général Howard). A Treatise on Naval Gunne - Lot 108
Marine.- DOUGLAS (général Howard). A Treatise on Naval Gunnery. Third Edition, revised and enlarged. London, John Murray, 1851, 8°, XXXV-638 p., frontispice et 2 planches h. t., nombr. figures dans le texte, plein veau brun, dos lisse (reliure restaurée et remontée, lég. rouss. aux 1res p.). This enlarged edition of the most important nineteenth-century work on naval gunnery was published to encourage the founding, in 1830, of HMS Excellent, a gunnery training ship which used the Treatise on naval gunnery as its main textbook until the late 1840s. Following the end of the Peninsular War, Douglas, shocked by the low standard of gunnery and gun drill aboard some British warships and inspired by the brilliant training regime of Captain Broke and the capture of the USS Chesapeake in 1813, decided naval officers must have at least a basic idea of gunnery and so he submitted his suggestions to the Admiralty. The latter recognised the merit of Douglas's ideas and published them in this book, which became the authoritive treatise on the subject. But « Douglas's book was more than a mere artillery training manual ; it encompassed key elements of national strategy, notably the development of new weapons and tactics for the bombardment of foreign naval bases... In the Crimean War his ideas were applied at Sveaborg in August 1855 with devastating results » (Oxford DNB). The Treatise went through five editions between 1820 and 1861. After the death of his father, Douglas's guardians obtained him a nomination to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich despite his original ambition to go into the navy. Although he was greatly disappointed he obtained his lieutenant's commission in 1794 and by 1851 he had reached the rank of general. He fought in Sir John Moore's retreat and the Walcheren expedition, and in 1811 he was sent to northern Spain by Lord Liverpool to report on the state of the Spanish armies in Galicia and Asturias, and on Spanish military resources, including the guerri
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