[Notes on Artillery]

[Addiscombe, Surrey, 1848. Unpublished. Ink on paper in a fine legible hand, with 30 accomplished manuscript drawings, some folding, some with skilful part coloring, with charts (two folding) and other drawings in text. 352 pp. 1 vols. Small 4to. Recent red half morocco, t.e.g. Unpublished. Ink on paper in a fine legible hand, with 30 accomplished manuscript drawings, some folding, some with skilful part coloring, with charts (two folding) and other drawings in text. 352 pp. 1 vols. Small 4to. Superbly Illustrated Victorian Artillery Textbook. With chapters on artillery, practice with live shells, mortar practice, notes on the foundry, boring, and carriage departments, and extensive chapters on gunpowder and laboratory work. Composition is after October 1848 based on the dates of ricochet and mortar practice in the marshes on some charts.

The name on the title page identifies the scribe as G. M. Pasley, youngest son of military engineer and artillery pioneer Sir Charles William Pasley (1780-1861), long a director of the Royal Engineers college at Chatham, and from 1846 to 1855 associated with Addiscombe College in Surrey.

George Malcom Pasley (b. 1832), aged seven and a half, fired the first submarine charge by electricity in September 1839, for the demolition of the wreck of the Royal George (undertaken by his father); he was a visitor at the East India Company military seminary at Addiscombe in 1845, a gentleman cadet in 1847 and gained a commission with the Royal Artillery in 1849. Pasley served as aide de camp to Maj. Gen. Michel, Chief of Staff of the British Army's Turkish contingent during the Crimean War; by the 1860s, Pasley is recorded as a retired captain on half pay.

Though student manuscripts are often encountered, the present example is altogether different. Remarkable for its comprehensive treatment of the current state of artillery in the mid-Victorian era, it is a finely executed summation with illustrations of superior quality, and with an intriguing connection to one of the leading military engineers of the era.