WOODARD, David; VAUGHAN, William (ed.).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Narrative of Captain David Woodard and Four Seamen, First edition, presented by the editor to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, as detailed in a near-contemporary secretarial inscription on the front free endpaper.A further secretarial note on the title page reads "With corrections to be kept." The corrections, perhaps made by William Vaughan himself, date from before the volume was rebound by the society and make small changes to the wording of the introduction (pp. xiii-xl). Some of these are consistent with changes made for the second edition (1805). The society's stamp is found on the front pastedown and the title page."In January of 1793, Woodard sailed in the American ship Enterprise from Batavia, bound for Manila. Sent off in a boat with five others to purchase provisions from another ship, they found themselves separated from their own ship after a storm... They were forced to land on Celebes, where one of them was murdered by the Malays and the others taken into captivity. They escaped with the help of a Mohammedan priest and gradually made their way to Macassar and then back to Batavia" (Hill).Vaughan was a director of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation and an advocate for the interest of common seamen. He dedicated the work to his maternal uncle, Captain Benjamin Hallowell, one of Nelson's "band of brothers" who served at the Battle of the Nile. Vaughan was involved in trying to establish a society "for promoting the means of preserving ships and lives in m

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