Kings MS 40

'A UOYAGE into the Mediterranean seas, containing (by way of journall) the viewes and descriptions of ... lands, cities, towns, and arsenalls, their seuerall planes and fortifications, with diuers perspectives of particular bvildings . . . together with the description of 24 sorts of uessells of common vse in those seas.... Finished in the yeare 1685 by E[dmund] Dummer'. Dummer, who became Surveyor of the Navy in 1692, was sent Out by the Admiralty as 'Midshipman Extraordinary' on H.M.S. Woolwich, Capt. William Holding commander, and sailing from Deal, 3 Aug. 1682, with the Moorish Ambassador on board, 'now goeing back into Africk after a stay in England of about six moneths', reached Tangier 31 Aug. Here the Ambassador was landed, and Capt. Holding died, Lieut. Rigby taking charge of the vessel. The route taken through the Mediterranean was south of Sardinia and Sicily, as far east as Zante and Cephalonia, back through the Straits of Messina to Naples and Leghorn, where Dummer landed (I7 Nov'), the Woolwich returning thence to England (f. 39). In his account of Leghorn the author mentions (f. 43) the delivery of 'a peice of Mr. [Grinling] Gibbons his carving'to Sir Thomas Dereham [Bart.], H. M. Envoy at Florence, as a present to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. From Nov. 1682 to July 1683 Dummer visited Pisa Venice, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Toulon, and Marseilles, and sailed homewards (f. 63) from Leghorn in H.M.S. Swallow (Capt. Carveth), touching at the Balearic Islands, Malaga, Alicante, Gibraltar, and Cadiz. Here he received orders from Capt. Ashby, in the Mary Rose, to return to Tangier in order, as the author ends his narrative ( f. 71), 'to attend my Lord Dartmouth [George Legge], where by his Lordships order I was call'd on shore and employ'd untill his Lordships finall retreat from that destroy'd garrison, which was on the 6 of February 168³/₄, and arrived in England the 30^th of March following'. The latter part of the MS. (ff. 73- 103) contains designs of such ships as the writer saw in the various seaports, and he has given them, as he states, 'two distinct appearances, the one shewing their sayleing and figure to the eye upon the water, the other a bodily appearance made by the position and concurrences of diverse papers proportionably cut and raysed [on] an edge or vpwright by a thread'. Paper; ff. 103. 20 ¹/₄ in. x 14³/₄ in. XVII cent. The plans and drawings in Indian-ink and water-colours, of which there are over a hundred throughout the volume, are well executed. Decorative title-page. Bound in crimson leather, tooled, the arms of George III added later.