FORBES, James Gibson Thomson.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Diary kept while serving as a Royal Navy surgeon, including in the Crimea and China. An unpublished and carefully kept eyewitness record of British imperial warfare at its most expansive, encompassing the Crimean War and the Second Opium War. The diaries include a detailed account of the Battle of Balaklava and the Charge of the Light Brigade, together with an extended chronicle of naval and medical service in China and a striking firsthand description of the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin.James Forbes (1824-1887) qualified as a surgeon in 1848 and entered the Royal Navy the same year. He served aboard HMSs Victory, Rifleman, Simoom, and Raleigh, before lengthy deployment on the China station, retiring in 1875 as Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals and Fleets. Forbes was also an accomplished amateur photographer and is listed in Terry Bennett's History of Photography in China, 1842-1860; several accompanying salt prints are probably rare examples of his work.The first volume covers his early naval career and anti-slavery patrols off Brazil, recording shipboard routines and the medical rescue of enslaved Africans from captured slavers. The second volume follows the Crimean campaign, describing troop movements, outbreaks of disease, and encounters with senior commanders, before culminating in a vivid, contemporaneous account of Balaklava and its wounded. The third volume documents service in China during the Second Opium War, from Canton and Shanghai to Taku and Tianjin, a

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