The Naval Achievements of Great Britain from the Year 1793-1817.

One of the finest visual records of the campaigns of the Royal Navy and Nelson containing 55 hand-coloured aquatints showing the the Battle of the Nile, Battle of Trafalgar, and other naval actions of the Napoleonic Wars ending with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.

The superiority of the British Navy and the succession of stunning victories between 1797 and 1805 conjured a romance around the age of sail, and the figure of Nelson, that not even Wellington and the allied continental forces could match. The hand-coloured aquatints are atmospheric without being excessively violent. The night-time scenes, including the explosion of l'Orient which was then the largest man-made explosion in the world, are particularly arresting.

'As a record of naval events spanning a period of over twenty years Jenkins' Naval Achievements has no precedent. At no time prior to 1817 had a publisher attempted such a complete volume of documentary naval prints. It is the quality of the accuracy which makes Jenkins so valuable above all, and it is the pictures rather than the text to which the value can be attributed' (Roger Quarm, the National Maritime Museum).

First edition, early issue; large 4to (38 x 30 cm); engraved title with vignette, dedication leaf, viii pp. introduction, [ii] pp. list of plates, [148] pp. letterpress (watermarked 1812), 55 fine hand-coloured aquatint plates (watermarked 1825), uncoloured outline etching of the Bombardment of Algiers and Battle of Trafalgar, very faint remains of contemporary ownership inscription to title, occasional light offsetting, plates are generally clean and strong in colour; nineteenth-century contemporary half red calf, cloth boards, rebacked with original spine laid down, spine lettered in gilt in six elaborately gilt compartments, all edges uncut, a little wear to extremities, a very good copy.

Abbey (Life), 337; Tooley 282.