An Account of the Destruction of the Fleets of the Celebrated …
An Account of the Destruction of the Fleets of the Celebrated …
An Account of the Destruction of the Fleets of the Celebrated …

SCOTT, Beresford. An Account of the Destruction of the Fleets of the Celebrated Pirate Chieftains Chui-Apoo and Shap-Ng-Tsai, on the Coast of China, in September and Oc….

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SCOTT, Beresford. An Account of the Destruction of the Fleets of the Celebrated Pirate Chieftains Chui-Apoo and Shap-Ng-Tsai, on the Coast of China, in September and October, 1849. [Gillingham, Kent, B. Scott], to be had at the Proprietor only [1851].

Small 8vo. Publisher's blue cloth; spine lettered in gilt; spine and boards ornamented in blind; top and outer edges uncut; pp. [viii], 255; some rubbing to extremities; a few marks to boards; bookplates to front paste-down and fly-leaf, as well as contemporary gift inscription to fly-leaf; occasional light spotting; a good copy.
First edition, very rare. 'An Account… by Her Majesty's Sloop "Columbine," Commander John C. Dalrymple Hay; Steam Sloop "Fury," Commander J. Willcox; and Hon. E. I. Co.'s Armed Steam Vessel "Phlegethon," G. J. Neblett, Esq., Commander.' (title). Scott details 'several darings acts of piracy committed in the immediate vicinity of the British colony of Hong Kong, during the early part of the year 1849' (p. 1). Part of the backdrop of this anti-piracy campaign was the British opium trade. This rarity is one of the earliest published primary sources on the the British involvement of the affairs of the Realm of the Middle.
Provenance: Engraved armorial bookplate of Charles William Carrington, whose incense burner, 'looted from the Yuanming Yuan ("Old Summer Palace"), Beijing, during the Second Opium War by Charles William Carrington (b. 1828 - d. 1918), Hove, England' is in the Museum of Fine Art Boston.

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