The Story of George Crowninshield’s Yacht Cleopatra’s Barge

First Edition. Sea Yarn of the son of one of Salem’s most successful merchant mariners, brother of the US Secretary of the Navy, who had built an opulently-appointed ocean-going yacht for the sole purpose of rescuing Napoleon from St. Helena, or did he? Certainly, the bizarrely painted Cleopatra’s Barge - rainbow stripes starboard and herring-bone port - was the first American yacht to cross the Atlantic. The slightly jarring three colour printed pictorial endpapers notwithstanding, this is a typically sharp and handsome piece of work from D.B. Updike’s Merrymount Press.

4to. Original red cloth, gilt panelling to the boards, title gilt to upper board and spine, top edge gilt, the others uncut. Photogravure frontispiece and 38 similar plates, plans and facsimiles, 5 of them folding, one of these double-sided. Some marginal foxing and light off-set from the plates, front endpapers with “burn” from binding in of a 2pp. article from the Boston Transcript 1916 concerning Cronwinshield’s voyage, cloth a little sunned at the spine, but overall very good.