The Memoirs of a Seafaring Life

First published in 1796 as The Seaman's Narrative, this memoir records William Spavens's years as a lower-deck sailor in the 1750s and 1760s, during and after the Seven Years' War. He describes recruitment, prize money, food, discipline, and custom in the Royal Navy, the East India Company, and the merchant service, including time under a captain later dismissed for cruelty. Between voyages he adds a plain introduction to astronomy and geography, sketches of ports in the West Indies and elsewhere, and a glossary of nautical terms. The book is a common seaman's account of mid-eighteenth-century sea life, not an officer's dispatch.

Bound in dark blue buckram with colour illustrated front board. Blue slipcase printed in grey with a wrap-around picture. Mid-blue endpapers.