GROOME, Robert Leonard.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Typescript memoir of his naval career, 1861-1907. A typed and bound presentation memoir, lively, quotable, and gossipy throughout, inscribed by Vice-Admiral Groome CVO (1848-1917) on the first blank: "REM, from Len 1908. Auckie stole it!" Much of the narrative is devoted to his long and eventful service in East Asia, spanning the Shimonoseki Campaign and the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars.Groome begins with his entry into the navy in June 1861 aboard HMS Britannia at Portsmouth. From the outset the account is rich in names and irreverent character sketches: senior officers feuding, captains of dubious merit, and youthful sub-lieutenants whose later respectability contrasts sharply with their early antics. His early service on HMS Tartar mixes routine naval life with smuggled spirits and shore-leave escapades, before the ship is sent to Japan in 1863 for the Shimonoseki Campaign. Groome offers vivid recollections of the bombardment of the straits forts, caustically noting that honours went to senior officers while others received nothing, alongside colourful asides on figures encountered in Yokohama, Shanghai, and the diplomatic milieu.Subsequent service on HMS Caledonia and HMS Rapid took him through the Mediterranean and Constantinople in the mid-1870s, where embassy society and its personalities are sharply observed. Returning to the China Station in 1880 aboard HMS Albatross, Groome delivers withering portraits of incompetent commanders, gambling culture in Yokohama, a

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