A Register of Ships, employed in the service of the Hon. the United East India Company From the union of the two companies, in 1707, to the year 1760; specifying the number of voyages, tonnage, commanders, and stations. To which is added, from the latter period to the present time, the managing owners, principal officers, surgeons, and pursers; with the dates of their sailing and arrival: also, an appendix, containing many particulars, interesting to those concerned in the East India commerce.

Bookseller Notes

One of the earliest editions of Charles Hardy's Register of Ships, an extraordinarily rich resource, and of the utmost rarity. There is a copy dated 1798 in Goldsmiths', and one dated 1799 in the India Office (neither of these in ESTC). There were several editions, continued by Hardy's son Horatio, until the mid-1830s. On the evidence of this copy, some of these new 'editions' were cobbled together. Here, the title-page is straight afterwards followed by a sectional title, A List of Commanders... dated 1805, and the nightmarish collation is evidence of further interpolations, covering the years between 1800 and 1805. ESTC records 2 copies of this title of this year, 1 of 180 pages (single copy, at Trinity College, Hartford CT) and the present (Cambridge only, with a complicated collation, not however identical, or even, it has to be said, similar). There is also a copy in the BL, with a collation similar to the Cambridge copy.The bookplate is late-19th-century, allowing for the identification of Edwin Josiah Poyser, the businessman who was the leading shareholder in the buy-out of Madame Tussaud's in 1889.