naval

Issued in a small number of typescripts for private circulation. An extraordinary short history and summary of several interesting cases that occurred in the New York Branch of the Office of Naval Intelligence, compiled by Hollis H. Hunnewell, Voluntary Aide with other staff members for Lieutenant-Commander Spencer Eddy, Officer-in-Charge. It covers an important era of development, when the ONI (the oldest member of the US intelligence network) was tasked with espionage in monitoring foreign threats, both in naval affairs and domestically, detecting hostile acts among non-American communities, and acting as censor for cable communications. Though the author states in the inserted letter ‘I must lay stress on the fact that these pages are strictly confidential in nature, and for your own personal use’, the books seems, in retrospect, to be a rather reckless exposition of the Office’s actvities.
It is both serious and comical, with the the first half of its text setting out the history and aims of the ONS, its personnel and departmental structure, and the second half presenting a series of humorous anecdotes. The Office’s departments comprised: the executive and the espionage departments together with departments for: cables, plant protection, commercial, banking, Latin-American, I.W.W (for surveillance of the unions or ‘Industrial Workers of the World’), Russian and Czecho-Slovak, legal and file. A paragraph each describes their remit and a photographic copy of a flow-chart diagram explains the procedure of communication between agents and officers. A list of officers (including Eddy and Hunnewell) is provided, comprising voluntary aides, agents, enlisted men, enlisted men detailed to the Postal Censorship Office, enlisted women, civilians, telephone officers. The text then becomes an account of humorous mistakes and misunderstandings, presumably for the amusement of former members of the office. These are accompanied by well-known illustrator Maginel Wright Enright’s lighthearted vignettes (presumably commissioned for this account) which would be charming except for one obviously racist caricature accompanying an equally racist anecdote. There are two stories of botched espionage attempts using dictographs: one in which the apparatus was hidden in what was thought to be a disused fireplace in the home of a suspect (with predictable consequences) and another in which agents pick up only sounds of an amorous encounter between and agent and a suspect.
Worldcat locates two copies one at Georgetown University, the other in the US Naval War College Library. The latter is digitised, and contains one additional photograph (a group photo of officers) not present in our copy (probably never bound in). Though the texts are essentially identical, minor typographic variances confirm that copies were individually typed rather than duplicated. Our copy (unlike the NWCL copy) is specially bound in the style of Cobden Sanderson at the Rose Bindery, Boston (which was owned by the author, Hunnewell).

A rare pictorial guide to naval ensigns. This 1807 issue in book form is made up from all 18 portions of an engraved chart first issued by Heather in 1800, with an added letterpress label. The flags include all the known naval ensigns, including those of privateers and pirates. 125 naval ensigns begin with the principal British flags and continue with those of all the major European countries and their principal ports, then China, Persia, the United States and the major trading companies, such as the Dutch and British East India Companies. There are two pirate flags, entitled ‘Rovers’, and ‘Algerine Rover’ [Barbary Pirates]: the ‘Rover’, coloured red, is marked with a winged hourglass, a raised arm holding a cutlass and a skull and cross bones; the ‘Algerine Rover’ is also coloured red but marked with a skull.

The 1800 chart bore an engraved dedication at the head ‘To the Right Honourable the Master Wardens, elder Brethren of the Trinity House’ not used in the book, though the Trinity House arms are added as a cover label.� Rare, especially in book form. Worldcat lists the National Maritime Museum and UCLA copies only.

A commemorative volume (‘Not for Publication’) issued to accompany the Nepalese Prime Minister’s visit to HMS Dreadnought on exercise in the English Channel. The superb photographs depict: the Dreadnought, a submarine (4 plates), a torpedo boat destroyer (2 plates). The Nepalese deputation witnessed a demonstration of firing and of the deflection of torpedoes with safety nets. Launched in 1906, Dreadnought was a revolutionary battleship which stimulated the Anglo-German arms race and gave its name to an entire class of heavily armoured craft. It was widely publicised as part of British naval propaganda and shown-off to numerous foreign visitors. The Nepalese Prime Minister was the Maharaja Sri Teen Chandra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana (1863–1929), one of three nephews who had ordered the assassination of their uncle Maharaja Ranodip Singh Kunwar in the Nepali coup of 1885. Worldcat lists the Texas A&M copy only, and there is another in the Imperial War Museum.

First German edition of Charnock’s biography of Nelson. First published in English in 1806, the work is notable for Charnock's use of Nelson's original letters and first-hand accounts of his life. The engraved plates appear to have been specifically prepared for this rare German edition, of which there appear to be no institutional copies in the UK or US. No copies located in British Libraries (and none outside continental Europe).