THis two-part book, printed in 1691, addresses a number of related subjects pertaining to sailing vessels and naval ordnance. The first part concentrates primarily on naming the parts of a ship, but it contains sections such as "The charge and duty of the Captain of a Ship, and every Office and Officer in a man of War", "Considerations for a Sea-Captain in the choice of his Ship, and in placing his Ordnance: In giving Chase, Boarding, and entring a man of War like himself, or defending a Merchant-man" and "How to manage a Fight at Sea, with the proper terms in a Fight largely expressed, and the ordering a Navy at Sea".
The second part explains the art of Gunnery at sea, and includes, among other things:
the qualifications of a Gunner; implements and instruments necessary for Gunnery;
recipes for gunpowder; instructions for manufacturing cartridges, grenades and
other "fireworks"; and many tables and mathematical formulae relating to Gunnery.
Currently, the book is available only as a PDF file containing scanned images of each page. Unfortunately, this means that the file is rather large (about 7½ megabytes). I hope to eventually have the entire thing transcribed, but it will undoubtedly take a long time.
The file is being offered in two different formats: first, with single pages arranged in their proper order;* second, with the pages printed "two-up" on a landscape letter-size page, arranged so that the book may be printed, arranged into quires and bound, producing a facsimile version of the original book.
- Regular Version - single pages in proper order*
- Printable Version - two-up pages ready for printing and binding
Instructions for arranging and binding the second version may be found here.
* - There is a "fold-out" page at the end of the file, which should come between pages 18 and 19. However, inserting it in-line changed the page size for the rest of the file, so it was moved to the end.