A voyage round the world; but more particularly to the north-west coast of America: performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, in the King George and Queen Charlotte, Captains Portlock and Dixon. Dedicated, by permission, to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart.
THE FIRST COMMERCIAL VOYAGE
TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
THE BAILLIE-HADDINGTON-BENTTINEN COPY
London: George Goulding, 1789. First edition.
Quarto (11” x 8 15/16”, 280mm x 211mm): a4 b-d4, A-Yy4, 2A-F4 [$2 signed; –B-Z2, Pp2]. 220 leaves, pp. i-v (half-title, blank, title, blank, dedication) vi-xxix, [3] (blank, errata, to the binder), 1 2-360; 21 22-47, blank. [=xxxii, 360; 48] With 22 engravings: 15 plates of which 1 is folding, 5 folding maps and 2 folding coastal views.
Bound in contemporary polished calf. On the spine, five raised bands. Author and title gilt to red morocco in the second panel. Blind dashed roll to the edges of the boards. All edges of the text-block sprinkled red.
Rubbed at the extremities, with small patches of wear. Strengthening to the upper hinges and to the head. Preliminaries and end-matter tanned from the turn-in. Mild sporadic foxing. Tear and creasing to the map of the Norfolk Sound. Repaired tears to a handful of plates. Armorial bookplate of “The Hon.ble George Baillie Esq.r one of the Lords of the Treasury” dated 1724 (see below) to the front paste-down. Ink manuscript press-mark (“D . 2 . 3”) to the verso of the front free end-paper. Ownership signature of “G. Baillie” to the title-page.
The King George’s Sound Company (a k a Richard Cadman Etches and Co.) was established in 1785 to oversee British commercial activity (particularly fur trading) with the Pacific Northwest, which was mapped and described by Captain Cook. George Dixon (1748–1795) and Nathaniel Portlock (1748-1817) were on Cook’s third and final voyage, and so before commanding their own ships had practical experience of the Pacific and of the American Northwest. Portlock commanded the King George and Dixon the Queen Charlotte, setting out west in early 1785, round Cape Horn (the southern tip of South America) and then up to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and finally up toward Alaska, before finally sailing back to England via Macao and the Cape of Good Hope in 1787, arriving in early 1788.
Dixon’s Voyage — Portlock published his own account with a nearly identical title in the same year —is therefore the first account of the Pacific Northwest through a practical commercial lens, refining and fleshing out the account of Cook — including, interestingly, a new account of the death of Cook as told by a Hawaiian — for curious speculators back in Britain. The form of the volume is epistolary, and the letters are signed by W.B. or William Beresford. In addition to maps and views, there are several natural history plates (birds, marine life, scenes) as well as some interesting anthropological portraits in the style of Cook.
The 1724 armorial bookplate at the front paste-down is that of George Baillie of Jerviswood (1664–1738), a Scottish politician who was a member of Parliament in Edinburgh (till its dissolution in 1707) and then in Westminster till 1734. He rose at court, being named Commissioner for Trade and Plantations by Queen Anne and then a Lord of the Admiralty by George I. The bookplate dates to his period as a Lord of the Treasury, a position he held 1717–1725. He cannot, of course, have owned the book as he died before its publication; the plate was doubtless applied by George Baillie(-Hamilton; 1721–1797), grandson to the originator of the bookplate via his mother Rachel, who married the eldest son of the Earl of Haddington, Charles, who predeceased his father and so never acceded to the Earldom. He was raised at Mellerstain,[1] the only standing house designed by Robert Adam, with wings by William Adam. Mellerstain remains the seat of the Earls of Haddington (the younger George Baillie’s grandson became the 10th Earl in 1858), who have long been prominent in the politics and military of Scotland and Britain generally. The present volume was lot 71 in the sale of books from that library at Sotheby’s London (12 November 2019).
From the collection of Theodore “Ted” Benttinen (1948-2023), an MIT-educated oceanographer and explorer who went to both poles on research missions. Benttinen amassed a formidable collection of books of exploration, particularly strong in Pacific voyages as well as in polar accounts. The present volume was lot 89 in the Sotheby’s New York 9 December 2024 sale of his library.
ESTC T82170; Hill, Pacific Voyages 117; Howes D 365; Sabin 20364; Streeter sale VI.3484.
[1] The other residence of the Earls of Haddington was, until the 1980’s, Tyninghame House in East Lothian. Arader has handled a volume from that collection, Merian’s Plantes et Insectes de L’Europe purchased by Sophia, Countess of Haddington to the 8th Earl.
Item #JLR0713
Price: $5,300