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This class consists of sixteen documents relating to shipbuilding, eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. They include a description of the machine which steered the IPSWICH across the Atlantic after the rudder had been carried away, 1746; the agreement for the building of an East India Company ship, the PRESTON, 1798; a patent for improvement in side propellors for ocean and river vessels, 1865; and papers relating to Admiral Sir Percy Scott's (1853-1924) proposed battleship design, 1911.

This class contains six bound manuscript copies of ships' newspapers. They are generally of a humerous nature and include short stories, verse, riddles and jokes, and ship's news and gossip; nearly all are illustrated. There are two examples from the Royal Navy; 'The Young Idea', the weekly papers of the CHESAPEAKE, 1857 to 1859; and 'The Rocket', 1868 to 1869, newspaper of the MINOTAUR. The 'Sierra Cordova Magpie' is an example of a ship's paper, with colour illustrations, from the square-rigged sailing ship SIERRA CORDOVA, 1901 to 1902. The remaining three volumes are of papers edited by passengers; 'The Nautical Magazine', the EQUESTRIAN, England to Bombay, 1849; the 'Matilda Athenaeum', paper of the MATILDA WATTENBACH, 1859 to 1860, on a voyage to Calcutta; and the 'Loch Garry Magazine', covering a voyage of the LOCH GARRY from Melbourne to Glasgow, 1877.

This class consists of single copies of newspapers and newssheets, including a copy of the 'Challenger Gazette', 1828; two issues of 'The Great Eastern Telegraph', 1866, when the GREAT EASTERN was engaged on laying the Atlantic cable; and a copy of the 'Wei-Hai-Wei Gazette', 1902. It also contains playbills, including one advertising a performance on board the prison ship CROWN in 1807 of a play by a French prisoner of war and another announcing the performance of a comedy, Speed the Plough on the MINDEN, 1817.

This class is made up of contemporary first-hand narrative accounts, contained in sixteen volumes. Narratives of naval actions include a volume of accounts of the Battle of Beachy Head, 1690, for presentation to the King; and an illustrated pocket-book of Lieutenant Lewis Stephen Davis (fl 1777-1799) containing accounts of various actions including the First of June, 1794, Cape St Vincent, 1797, and the Nile, 1798. There are five volumes relating to wrecks and salvage including an account of the loss of the merchant ship LUXEMBURGH , 1727; of the CENTAUR, 1782, by Captain John Nicholson Inglefield (1748-1828) with the verdict of the court martial, 1783. (A version of this was first published in 1782 in London as Captain Inglefield's narrative concerning the loss of His Majesty's ship the Centaur of seventy-four guns.) There is an account of wrecks and disasters on the north Norfolk Coast, 1880 to 1939, by William John Harman (1854-1944), a local fisherman; and also an account of the wreck of and salvage work carried out on the LUTINE which was sunk in 1799, written in 1898 by the salvage engineer Johan J Fletcher (fl.1893-1900). There are two foreign narratives in this section; one, a French manuscript, is 'Campagne Navale de M de Tourville' (1642-1701), which is an account of the movements of the French fleet in the Mediterranean in 1693, with pen and ink drawings and coloured illustrations of flags, probably written by Captain Longeron of the L'ORGUEILLEUX. There are also four annotated printed works, including the author's copy of the 1790 edition of A History of the late siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1783 by Colonel John Drinkwater (later Bethune, 1762-1844) with annotations and additional illustrations, and the galley sheets of The Submarine Peril, published in 1934 by Earl Jellicoe (1859-1935), with manuscript corrections and additions.

The earliest of the twenty-two volumes relating to gunnery is a small volume of c 1705 titled 'A proportion of gunns and gunners stores for a ship of each rate in Her Majesty's naval royal', which shows in a detailed tabulated form the guns and gunners' stores required for ships of twelve different sizes. Other eighteenth-century volumes include 'Artillery Memorandums Relative to the Royal Navy' by Captain Robert Lawson (d 1816), of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, 1782, covering aspects of gunnery including experiments on naval ordnance; and a 'Course of Artillery at the Royal Military Academy', 1791, by Edward Hope, a folio volume with many large watercolour illustrations. Another illustrated volume is a Danish gunnery notebook, 1809 to 1811, kept by J F Lykke. There is a volume containing copies of seven reports of the Committee on Gunnery set up by the Duke of Clarence (1765-1837) while Lord High Admiral in 1828, together with an explanatory letter from Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy (1769-1839) to John Wilson Croker (1780-1857). The majority of the nineteenth-century volumes are gunnery notebooks kept in the gunnery ships EXCELLENT and CAMBRIDGE by officers and ratings under instruction; there are ten of these, written between 1834 and 1866. They are all illustrated and cover all aspects of naval gunnery.