[MANUSCRIPT] "A most excellent breife and easie treatise teaching the manner of building ships of all kinds of gallies by severall proportions," [ca. 1600-1620], 4°, 276pp., numerous diagrams, some full-page, ruled in red (first 6 blanks detached), old calf in Lyonnese style with central gilt arabesque and floral cornerpieces, the field semé with stars (lacking ties, extremites rubbed, upper cover detached), g.e., Scott bookplate. [Scott 798]

Details
[MANUSCRIPT] "A most excellent breife and easie treatise teaching the manner of building ships of all kinds of gallies by severall proportions," [ca. 1600-1620], 4°, 276pp., numerous diagrams, some full-page, ruled in red (first 6 blanks detached), old calf in Lyonnese style with central gilt arabesque and floral cornerpieces, the field semé with stars (lacking ties, extremites rubbed, upper cover detached), g.e., Scott bookplate. [Scott 798]
Provenance
John Towneley, Esqr., late 18th-century armorial bookplate.

Lot Essay

Betty Cooper describes this beautifully-penned manuscript as a "fair copy of working instructions as used by master ship-wrights of the period. The contents deal mainly with mathematical propositions worked out in diagrams. There are also details of 'Proportions for gallies, borde measure, timber measure, guaging of vessels, and a table of synes.'" It precedes the first work on shipbuilding, to be printed in English, by at least several decades, and is very little older than Diego Garcia de Palacio's Instrucion Nauthica (Mexico, 1587) which is the first known work dealing with naval architecture.

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