35 35.
A MIDSHIPMAN’S LOG FROM H.M. SHIPS MARLBOROUGH & VETERAN
completed in official-issue volume by A.B. Ford and commenced aboard Marlborough at Malta, 18th February 1922, and from Veteran 7th September 1923 to 30th November 1923, with service completed in and around the Mediterranean, the text written in a fair clear hand and accompanied by numerous maps, diagrams, sketches and some photographs, indices pasted inside front cover bound between hard boards -- 13½ x 8½in. (34 x 21.5cm.)
The battleship Marlborough, a veteran of Jutland, was launched in 1912 and broken up in 1932; the Veteran was a destroyer of 1919 which saw service at Norway in 1940 and was on convoy escort duty when torpedoed and sunk in September 1942.
£400-600 37.
A 14TH/15TH-CENTURY MING DYNASTY CLOISONNÉ VASE HANDLE AND SILK BANNER LOOTED AT THE SACK OF THE OLD SUMMER PALACE, PEKING, 1860
the 7in. handle with brass dragon’s head and terminating in scroll foot; the red silk banner with applied characters reading SI CHUAN / DU ZHONG / TOU QI -- 110 x 78in. (279.5 x 198cm.); together with autograph card inscribed a handle torn from a large vase at the ‘sack’ of the Imperial Summer Palace at Pekin 1860 - curious metal work inlaid with lapis-lazuli / Dr. Clarke A. Ducket, RN.
(3) Provenance: Dr. C.A. Duckett, RN, to family friends and thence by descent.
The Old Summer Palace was a vast complex of gardens and palaces founded in 1707 and which was under constant expansion until the mid-19th Century and is several miles from the Summer Palace, also in Peking (now Beijing). During the Second Opium War of 1860, two British Envoys (Henry Loch and Harry Parkes) accompanied by a Times journalist and a small escort met the Prince on September 29th to negotiate peace under a flag of truce. After a day of talks they were imprisoned and tortured, resulting in about twenty deaths - the bodies almost unrecognisable. To deter the Chinese from using kidnap as a bargaining tool again, Lord Elgin, the British High Commissioner to China, reacted by ordering the destruction of the Old Summer Palace, which was carried out on October 18th by 3,500 British and French troops and took three days to set the whole complex ablaze. Dr. Duckett was aboard one of the ships carrying marines which assisted and where he acquired this lot. Charles Gordon, a contemporary officer in the Royal Engineers, gives a flavour of the episode: We went out, and, after pillaging it, burned the whole place, destroying in a vandal-like manner most valuable property which [could] not be replaced for four millions. We got upward of £48 apiece prize money...I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one’s heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army.
The banner removed/acquired by Duckett was the personal banner for a visiting official from one of the provinces.
37 14 £1000-1500 additional images online at
www.charlesmillerltd.com 36.
A CREW PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM FROM H.M.S. POWERFUL, TAKEN BETWEEN APPROXIMATELY 1905-1911
comprising approximately 150 largely 4 x 5in. black and white views of life and activities aboard and on excursions; the latter part the album composed of family views and souvenir ephemera, the album -- 15 x 11in. (38 x 28cm.)
(a lot)
The identity of the photographer is not certain, but there are two or three suggestive images that could identify him; Powerful is most famously associated with the Siege of Ladysmith, where she served in 1899. The views in this album provide a fascinating close-up look at her just after that action, from rarely-seen angles and vantage points.
£100-150
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