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Manuscript naval letter book, 78pp, excluding blanks, numerous illustrations and diagrams, original roan backed marbled board, lacks spine but holding firm, folio, 1861-3 Malcolm was the eldest son of Sir Charles Malcolm (1782-1851), naval officer. He followed in his father's footsteps, serving in the Royal Navy for his entire career and becoming Rear Admiral in 1882. His long naval career took him to North and South America, the West Indies, the Baltic, Egypt, and the East Coast of Africa. After he retired from active service in 1873, he entered the Turkish services as Pasha and was employed at Constantinople as Director General of the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Judge of the Slave Courts book. The work begins with pages of equations using longitude and latitude with accompanying diagrams. Then Malcolm provides some notes for his letters,; This list to be appended to letter to Captain Maguire in my letter book. , Subjects of letter to Commander in Chief on April 1863 . The latter includes remarks on Sickness , Remarks on the American criusers and (Enclosing a list of vessels supposed to have been engaged in running the Blockade) , and Enclosing detailed sailing returns and quarterly returns for quarter ending 31st March 1863 . Most of the subsequent letters are written from Bermuda or Nassau, Bahamas. They give a good impression of life as a Vice Admiral, concerning command handovers, illness, dockyard work, provision distribution and punishment when appropriate. A letter written on the 9th of April 1863 discusses a case of disciplinary action being given; it reads in part: I have to state that he was 56 days in the sick list and the surgeon considered him to be feigning the whole time… [he now] act[s] the part of an insane man - coming almost daily on quarter deck to say the surgeon was poisening him… The man goes on to be imprisoned in Nassau, while maintaining his conviction of being poisened. Malcolm handles his crew, writing as Commander Malcolm, of the HMS Barracouta , to request another assistant engineer to replace the current one, reading in part I fear as, he is suffering from Consumption, that we shall have very little of his services and that he will be invalidid… HMS Barracouta is allowed an engineer and three asst Engineers - she only has two assistants and one of them is now in Sick List and from the nature of his complaint, his appearances in the sick list will, in all probability, be often and each succeeding one of longer duration than that previous to it . Many of the letters are about the wreck of the HMS Conqueror, a 101-gun ship of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1855, but spent only six year in service before being wrecked on Rum Cay in the Bahamas in 1861. Malcolm was concerned with the retrieval of the stores that were lost with the ship. In the first letter to Commander Graham, on 13 March 1863, he writes: I have received orders… directing me, to transfer, the duties of senior officer at Nassau, to furnish you with all useful information regarding, affairs generally and the state of the Conquerors wreck, and then to proceed to Bermuda Regarding the Coqueror s wreck the only documents I have for my guidance are the agreement between Captain Sotheby and the various papers passed over to you… An interesting letter book of a Vice Admiral working in the West Indies.
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