Description
ADMIRAL WILLIAM MARTIN AUTOGRAPH Letter.
Admiral Sir William Fanshawe Martin, 4th Baronet GCB. British Royal Naval officer. As First Naval Lord was a strong advocate for Britain's first "ironclad" warships. A reformer of naval discipline and an innovator of systems of manoeuvre for steam ships.
AL. 2pp. Hyde Park Gardens. February 1st 1861. To [G.B.] Earp.
"Sir Wm Martin presents his compliments to Mr Earp and begs to acknowledge the receipt of his note of this day, on the subject of the Dundonald Statue Fund. Sir Wm most willingly accedes to the request contained in it, altho' his name can avail but little, among those of such distinguished Personages, as the list contains. He is glad however in this, and will be in any other, way, to evince his esteem for the memory of this great and gallant nobleman, whose loss his Country may well deplore."
8vo. Approx 18 x 11.5 cms. The blank leaf of the bifolium excised to a stub for the purposes of mounting. Fine.
G.B. Earp was the biographer of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald. Thomas Cochrane had died in 1860 and Earp is evidently seeking Admiral Martin's support for the fund that was established to erect a statue to Admiral Cochrane. Martin would have known Cochrane fairly well, as Martin, as a commander, had provided support to convoys during the Peruvian War of Independence, a war in which Thomas Cochrane had, as a mercenary, commanded the Peruvian rebel navy. The statue in question is possibly the huge Cochrane monument that stands in Valparaiso, Chile, where Cochrane is still lauded as a national hero.
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