Description
Naval log of AIan G. Hotham, Midshipman, H.M. Ships "Blake" & "Cleopatra", Feb. 3rd 1892 to 1st April 1894. 2 manuscript volumes, 4to, c.194 leaves, with 53 manuscript charts (17 of West Indies, 28 of Canada, 4 of the United States, 4 others), 2 watercolour profiles of H.M.S. Blake, 23 technical drawings of guns & equipment, 1 coastal drawing, 1 watercolour address, half morocco, bindings slightly marked, hinges of one volume a little weak
Footnote
Note: Alan G. Hotham was a member of not one but two families whose naval connections go back generations. His father, Admiral Sir Charles Hotham, of the ancient Hotham family of Scorborough and South Dalton, having married Margaret, oldest daughter of Sir David Milne and Jean Home (later Milne-Home). Admiral Henry Hotham (1777-1833) was captain of the fleet on the American station from 1813-14 . The Hotham archive in the University of Hull numbers some 25,000 Hotham family papers.
The Milne Home family of Berwickshire in Scotland inhabited three ancient houses, the most recent of which, Milne Graden House on the River Tweed, was built by Alan Hotham's great, great grandfather, Admiral Sir David Milne, with the proceeds from three French warships captured at the Battle of Algiers, in the Napoleonic Wars. It was at Milne Graden House that the Journal was found.
Having finished his training as a midshipman, of which creating the Journal log was an integral part, Alan Hotham rose to be a rear-Admiral. Highlights of his career were commanding HMS Comus at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, being Commander-in-Chief of the New Zealand Squadron from 1921-23 and being Director of Naval Intelligence from 1924-29.
H.M.S. Blake was the lead ship of her class of protected cruiser that served in the Royal Navy from 1889-1892. She was launched on 23 November 1889 at Chatham Dockyard, but not completed until 2 February 1892 (when this log begins). She served as the flagship of the North America and West Indies Squadron from 1892-1895. (The North America and West Indies station was a formation or command of the Royal Navy stationed in North American waters from 1745 until 1956, initially formed in 1745 to counter French forces in North America. For the first sixty years the headquaters of the squadron was at Halifax Naval Yard in Nova Scotia. In 1818, its main base was moved to Bermuda, while Halifax continued to be used as the summer base).
H.M.S. Blake represented Britain at the New York International [Naval] Review of April 1893, and the log contains three manuscript charts of the U.S. coast and a manuscript plan of New York, Brooklyn & New Jersey, a manuscript Signal from [U.S.] Admiral Hopkins, and a ms. chart of the naval ships attending. The majority of the logs detail journeys around Newfoundland and between and around Halifax and the West Indies.
H.M.S. Cleopatra was a corvette, built in Glasgow with five other ships of her class. She was commissioned in 1878 and her first cruise was a three year deployment also on the North America and West Indies Station, where she also acted as Commodore's ship during the Newfoundland fishers season. An account of the cruise by the ship's Staff Surgeon, Willliam Tait, now in the position of the Memorial Library of Newfoundland, records (page 132) Alan Hotham joining Cleopatra's gun room as a midshipmam from "elsewhere in the fleet".