Description
First American edition of Memoirs of Service Afloat, during the War Between the States by Admiral Raphael Semmes, finely bound, extra illustrated.
Octavo, [two volumes], xvi, [17]-444pp; [10], 445-833pp. Full polished calf, title and illustrations in gilt on the spine, raised bands. Some sunning to spines. Red endpapers, gilt dentelles. Top edge gilt. Small dampstains to endpapers with no impact to text or plates. Finely bound by Lucien Broca and Charles E. Lauriat Co. of Boston, for the Gibbs Family of Canton, Ohio. Housed in a custom slipcase, silk bookmark.
Frontispiece portraits with tissue covers present in both volumes. Six full page chromolithographs, two full page collections of portraits, two full page illustrations. Additionally illustrated with over 30 portraits and plates, two hand-colored. Many illustrations by August Hoen of Baltimore, Maryland. (Howes S286) (Eicher 341)
From the Gibbs Family Collection. An attractive set, originally sold as two parts in one.
From Eicher: “This is a genuine classic. …filled with the spirit of high adventure. …The accounts of battle are worth careful reading, and the ultimate action off Cherbourg is described with great aplomb.”
Admiral Raphael Semmes (1809-1877) was a Maryland-born career officer who served in the United States Navy from 1826 until he resigned on February 15, 1861. He then joined the Confederate States Navy, becoming the Confederacy’s most famous commerce raider commander.
In 1861, he took the raider CSS Sumter, capturing 18 merchant prizes in roughly six months, and from August 1862 to June 1864, he commanded CSS Alabama, capturing 65 U.S. merchantmen and disrupting Union shipping before the Alabama was sunk after its June 19, 1864, battle with USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg. Semmes escaped and eventually returned to the South. Promoted to rear admiral in February 1865, he later helped command the Confederate Navy in the James River during the final months of the war.
