Feb 04, 2016 - Sale 2404

Sale 2404 - Lot 177

Price Realized: $ 2,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(MARITIME.) [Janeway, James?] God's Wonders in the Great Deep, or, a Token for Mariners. Full-page frontispiece woodcut. [8], 160 pages. 12mo, contemporary paneled calf, moderate wear, rebacked; ink stain to frontispiece and title page with two chips to the frontispiece image (repaired on verso), later inked number on verso of title page, early manuscript notes in text, tightly trimmed with some headlines and catchwords cropped, early manuscript verse tribute to Sir Francis Drake on rear flyleaf. London: Edward Midwinter, 1731
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Additional Details

Stated 4th edition. This work first appeared in 1675 as "Mr. J. J.'s Legacy to his Friends." It was the first anthology of shipwrecks and maritime disasters, written from original research. Many of the 29 narratives in this edition relate to America. For example, the first is the story of a Major Gibbons of Boston who was saved at sea by a French pirate; the second is a group of ministers from Scotland who were wrecked en route to America in 1636; and the third is a Newfoundland fishing disaster from 1636. The frontispiece woodcut depicts "A ship of Dublin bound for Virginia being cast away, and of 26 souls, only 7 miraculously preserved." The final sections are a sermon titled "The Seaman's Preacher" (pages 104-147) and "Prayers to be Used by Seafaring-Men" (148-160).
Other early editions were published under the Token for Mariners title. OCLC lists an incomplete 156-page copy of this 1731 edition at the now-defunct Ambassador University in Texas; it is unrecorded in ESTC. Only three other copies of any edition have ever been traced at auction since 1951. For descriptions of other editions, see European Americana 675/91 and 734/87; Huntress, Shipwrecks and Disasters 22C, 33C, 59C, and 145C; and Sabin 27629, 35752, 35755.