Salty Rooster

JOURNAL OF A CRUISE MADE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN... IN THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE ESSEX, IN THE YEARS 1812, 1813, AND 1814...

Five weeks on the road since February 1 makes for chaos around the office.

Trying to put things in order while working on the next catalog and preparing for the New York book fair is like digging out of a hole in the sand, sides collapsing as fast as I can shovel.

In my spare time, not that there is any, I’ve been working on our new gallery building across the street, which is coming along nicely.

And, in sorting through the books I bought on my travels, I found one that comes with one of my favorite stories in maritime history.

During the War of 1812, the island of Nantucket was pinched cruelly between Britain and America. Commerce shut down and the islanders found themselves dependent on the British for permission to allow the passage of ships carrying their basic necessities. Adding to their woes, a tender belonging to the British frigate Nymph set herself up in the waters between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Her officers and crew acted more like pirates than sailors, plundering every vessel they could catch.

Matters were equally bad for Nantucket’s sperm whalers in the Pacific. Armed English vessels made a practice of plundering American whalers. Although the “onshore grounds” west of the South American coast were a rich resource, their exploitation was proving costly for Americans. Something had to be done.

The remedy appeared in the person of a salty little rooster named David Porter.

The son of a Revolutionary privateersman, Porter went to sea in 1796 at the age of sixteen, and he received his baptism of fire in an encounter with a British man-of-war. Two years later he entered the navy, and by 1811 had attained command of the frigate Essex.

In 1813, on his own initiative, he undertook to sail the Essex around Cape Horn.

Based on intelligence he received while provisioning at the Chilean port of Valparaiso, he began an epic sweep of the Pacific in which he virtually destroyed British shipping. Over the next year he captured a dozen British vessels valued at $2,500,000 and cleared the way in the Pacific for American whalers.

Reports of his exploits circulated widely in the newspapers of the day, and the ingenious and energetic little captain became one of the great heroes of American naval history. Certainly, he was a hero to the whalemen of Nantucket. In 1815 he published a two volume account of his exploits, Journal of a Cruise... illustrated with handsome aquatint plates, and a map of the island of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas, which he renamed Madison Island and claimed as a territory of the United States. (Neither the name nor the claim stuck.) As well as exciting battle scenes, Porter’s book contained detailed descriptions of life in the Marquesas, exotic customs and rites, and beautiful native women.

It was quite popular in its day, and was published in a second, slightly different, edition in 1822.

In 1823 the British published their own edition version of Porter’s narrative – except that they deleted all the anti-British passages. This version was only 126 pages long.

American edition on the left, British on the right

Porter, David. JOURNAL OF A CRUISE MADE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN... IN THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE ESSEX, IN THE YEARS 1812, 1813, AND 1814... Phila. 1815. b/w plates, fldg. chart. Two vols. in one. vi, (1) 263; 169 pp. One of the heroic episodes of the War of 1812. Porter captured British ships in the Atlantic, then sailed into the Pacific on his own authority and wreaked havoc with British shipping and whalers. In the course of his adventures he visited and describes various Pacific islands and South American ports. He was finally captured off Valparaiso in 1814. This is the first edition of Porter’s narrative. A second edition with additional material was published in 1822, but this first edition is hard to find - described variously by Hill as “suppressed and... a very rare book” and “scarce.” Hill 1371. Forbes 447. Smith II, 1632. Howes P-484 (an “aa” item). For some reason, this 1815 first edition is almost always found in poor condition, missing the map, and/or plates. This copy is complete, but the map is torn and there is a three inch hole at a fold, resulting in some loss to the image of Madison Island. Pages and plates foxed. Bound in original calf with red spine label. Sewing tight. In all, a decent copy of a rare book. $1500

Dandruff Piles

Dartmoor Prison and Rare "Key" (see below)

Books sit squarely on shelves.

They are discrete, replicable units. They have titles, authors, and places and dates of publication. They organize nicely into classes – “fiction” and “non-fiction,” for example. There is agreed-upon language to describe condition, and there are bibliographical references that talk about the history and physical makeup of a book. When books sell, we can use such information to record and track the sale:

Melville, Herman, 1819-91
Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. NY, 1851. 1st American Ed. 12mo, 1st bdg, of drab purple-brown "A" cloth; small tears in joints, a few small stains on backstrip.
Copley copy.
Sotheby's New York, June 17, 2010, lot 390, $17,000
BAL 13664.

It makes for a relatively organized market. Tidy, neat, and orderly. Not to mention rectilinear.

“Paper” on the other hand, is a mess.

I mean sheets of paper or cardboard with words and images printed, written, or drawn on them. “Paper” comes in all sizes, shapes and colors and, though it too can be categorized and put in folders and stacks, the number of categories, folders and stacks can seem bewildering. Worst of all, paper is fragile. It chips and tears. It leaves piles of dandruff.

Much of it, by nature, is unique. Manuscripts, for example – letters or journals written by a particular person for a particular purpose. Paper items can also approach unique status due simply to the ravages of time. Stuff gets thrown away. I read somewhere that the more common an item is now, the more likely it is to be scarce in the future. Who saves McDonald’s wrappers?

All this by way of saying that, to the uninitiated, an event like “Ephemera Thirty Two – The Country’s Premier Annual Paper Fair and Conference” can be confusing, intimidating, even discouraging.

Seventy of the best ephemera dealers in America bring hundreds of thousands of items. A colleague who was exhibiting here for the first time approached me during setup. “There’s nothing here but piles of paper!” he exclaimed in mock horror. And I have to admit I felt the same way for years.

I’ve written before about having “eyes” for certain kinds of material. Part of it is innate, based on one’s own sensibility, but mostly it’s an acquired skill. We tend to develop eyes for the things we see the most, or to which we are first exposed - whether it’s incunabula or comic books. In my case, I was in the midst of developing my eyes for maritime material when I walked into my first paper show, probably Papermania in Hartford, CT, maybe twenty or twenty five years ago.

Absolute incomprehension.

Nothing but piles and piles, and boxes, and baggies, and trunks, and interminable folders full of paper. Autographs, maps, movie posters, letters, diaries, government documents, old newspapers and magazines, photographs, valentines, trade cards – a pandemonium of paper goods. I had no idea what to do about that deluge, so I imitated the canny paper hounds around me, rooting and digging through stacks of paper.















I rooted and dug for a couple of years before those stacks began yielding results.

Now a substantial portion of my sales come from paper rather than books. And I’m not the only one. It’s become something of a joke among booksellers of a certain age that “Books don’t sell.”

This is not to say nobody’s selling books. A quick look at IOBA.org, or ABE or Amazon will make it clear that plenty of people are engaged in selling those discrete, rectilinear units.

But it is possible, as colleague Mary Gilliam suggests, that the inability of some of us to sell books is a result of our maturity as dealers. We’ve been doing our best over three decades to supply our institutional and private customers with the titles and authors their collections lack. By this time, thanks to our efforts, they already have the books they need. What these customers want now are the ephemeral or manuscript items that broaden and supply context to their collecting areas – photographs, maps, letters, or diaries - in other words, “paper.”

An interesting idea, anyway…

Probably because it operates under the distinguished aegis of the Ephemera Society of America,

this ephemera show features merchandise of a somewhat different quality than shows like Papermania, Allentown, or Boxborough. Not that there aren’t great things to be found at all of these venues, it’s just that the material at this year’s “Ephemera Thirty Two” show seemed to be a little more, umm… disciplined. There were fewer boxes of, “I don’t know what it is. Make me an offer.”

The venue is, as it has been forever, the very comfortable Hyatt Regency hotel in Greenwich, Connecticut.



(Terrific rooms and service, expensive food.) For the past few years the promoters have been our old friends at Flamingo Eventz, and this year they did their usual competent job of arranging booths, organizing porters, and getting all the dealers situated and satisfied.

But this show is an exception

in that it comes pre-loaded with a wonderful advantage, enabling the Flamingoz to concentrate on their dealers rather than having to worry about publicity and advertizing. The annual Ephemera Society Conference is held at the Hyatt Regency at the same time as the paper show, so exhibitors are guaranteed a healthy crowd of interested, knowledgeable collectors.

Add in the many dealers who are looking for ephemeral items to feed to their institutional and private customers, and you’re bound to have a good crowd.

How much the crowd spends is another matter. Consensus on this fair ranged from “There was more energy on the floor. I think we’re finally turning it around!” to “I think we’re going to outlive it (the current economic slump), but not by much.”

We’ll know more after the New York Book Fair, April 12-15, so stay tuned.

LITHOGRAPH OF DARTMOOR PRISON. DRAWN BY GLOVER BROUGHTON, 1815. WITH “A KEY TO THE VIEW OF DARTMOOR PRISON... DRAWN BY. GLOVER BROUGHTON.” Bos. 1853. This lithograph is a schematic view of the prison that housed American prisoners in the War of 1812. It measures 17 1/4 x 23 1/2 inches and has been hand colored in red and blue. The buildings are all shown and identified by a key at the bottom of the print. It was copyrighted in 1852 and printed by Tappan and Bradford of Boston. It is accompanied by a broadside printed on coated stock, measuring 10 1/8 x 13 inches. It describes the prison and daily routine in a highly detailed and emotional jumble - “No. 4 Prison was the special residence for colored prisoners. The snow in winter has often covered the walls ten feet in height.” The bottom of the broadside relates the massacre of April 6, 1815. It is undated but the printer, James Coffin, published newspapers in Salem Mass. in the 1840s and 50s, which would correspond with the 1852 publication date of the print. Presumably Broughton had some of these “Keys” printed to accompany the print. The print turns up occasionally, but the broadside is unrecorded. No holdings on OCLC. Print is evenly tanned. The broadside has a water stain at the top of the sheet, not affecting printed area. $3500

Clown College

Snow flurries in the Virginia mountains.


Dinner in Knoxville with Molly and John, proprietors of the excellent Central Street Books. The building that houses their shop used to be a bar at which Cormac McCarthy drank.


The bar is still there, but McCarthy was gone.

South to Chattanooga for lunch the next day, then down to Scottsborough and Huntsville.


Great dinner.

Next morning to Birmingham to buy some ephemera from a friend there, then on down to Montgomery –“Make me an Angel” - John Prine had left the building.

Spent the night at Dothan, AL, because that’s where an Outback Steak House is. Sitting at the bar there I had a strange thought. This Outback could’ve been the one in Concord, NH, or Springfield, Mass. or New London, CT, or any of two dozen other Outbacks I’ve eaten at in the past year. The layouts of all of them are exactly the same.

But here’s the funny thing, one of the aspects of being on the road that I most enjoy. My anonymity, and the absolute predictability of such a place, tends to cancel out the environment, leaving me alone with my own thoughts, undisturbed. Or, in this case with my geezer buddies, chawing away at our ribeye steaks, slurping down red wine, and telling lies.

Krispy Kreme breakfast


and a sugar fueled push east across the Florida panhandle, the air warming as we drive. Then down Route 75, the highway of billboards – personal injury lawyers, pro life organizations, sell your car over the Internet websites, motels, rv parks, restaurants, tourist traps, gun shops. It was good to see that at least one branch of the book trade is still flourishing.


“Friday couples night???”

Next day, Venice, site of the famous Clown College, where we did some serious bookseller research.


Eighty degrees, blue skies, a welcome sense of complete unreality.





Oh yes, the Florida Book Fair.


And its accompanying delights

Not much more to say than what Cynthia and Sunday have so gracefully articulated, except to add promoter emeritus Larry Kellog’s observation that the Florida Book Fair is older than its current promoter, Sarah Smith, whose dad organized the first ones. Is that continuity, or what? In the world of provincial book fairs, only the strong survive, and the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair remains one of the strong ones.

Nobody I spoke to reported record sales,


but the aisles were full most of the weekend, and even I sold two books.

The buying, I’m happy to say, was a cut above average. Though I didn’t land any whales, I found plenty of chowder, and a few that might make me a nice lobster bisque.




Manuscript JOURNAL OF THE SCHOONER ABBY B. IN THE GOVERNMENT SERVICE IN THE DEPT. OF THE SOUTH... CAPT. DAVID J. SHEPARD. JUNE 8, 1864 - JAN 24, 1865. Small 8vo. Unpaginated. Approximately 100 pp. manuscript entries, 12,000 words. The schooner Abby was employed hauling stores - mainly cannon and shells - to various locations along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts in the waning days of the Civil War. Shepard lists vessels sighted, materiel transported, and daily events, including the salvage of a ten inch Columbiad - a cannon - which he draws in the journal. He notes battles and incidents, such as the evacuation of Savannah on Dec. 22 - “Bully for Sherman he is the man for Uncle Sam.” However, from Shepard’s perspective, the most important event in this account is his assuming command of the Abby B. when her former captain becomes too ill to discharge his duties. Shepard happily notes the event and decorates his book accordingly. Also, he was from New Bedford, and brought a whale stamp with him (probably from prior duty aboard a whale ship). Several of the pages are decorated in a whimsical manner with this whale stamp. Bound in full sheep, legible and clean. $1500

Washington Book Fair Report

Someone once told me a picture was worth 1000 words. Let’s see how that works.

Leave home 5:00 am Wednesday.


Try to pay for day at Strand Rare Book Room 10 am



Coffee with agent, NYC, 11 am


Lunch with editor, NYC, 12:30 pm


Depart NYC 2 pm

Get good deal on motel outside of Philly 4 pm


Work on book in room


Dinner



Head South 11 am Thursday


Arrive among my own kind 3 pm



Washington Book Fair setup 9 am Friday


Pack out 5 pm Saturday.



Relax among my own kind 10 pm


Setup was smooth, the buying average (best purchase was the account book of a doctor who furnished medicine chests to ships), sales “met expectations.” Crowds good, security lax (at least one book was reported stolen), and worst of all, there was a shortage of wastebaskets on the book fair floor!

This was always a strong regional fair, and it continues so, though cracks are beginning to show. A few dealers dropping out, and the same crowd in attendance year after year. There were a few younger dealers, like B&B Books and a mostly Internet operation called Sequitur, (their first book fair - headless chicken syndrom much in evidence) but the hoped for young, eager collectors failed to put in an appearance. Organizer Beth Campbell’s good energy continues to be a plus.

Next week: On the Road Again