The Adventures of Christopher Hawkins: Containing Details of His Captivity, a First and Second Time on the High Seas,.

New York: Privately Printedd, 1864. First edition. Conventional lore has it that this was issued in only 75 copies but we can find no verification of this. Introduction and Notes by Charles I. Bushnell. Octavo. 316 pp. plus eight full page tinted plates. Publisher's quarter beige linen over blue boards, printed paper spine label. Corners slightly bumped and spine label a bit darkened but an unopened copy very nicely situated in it's original binding.Christopher Hawkins was a 13-year-old from Providence, Rhode Island, when he abandoned an apprenticeship and joined a privateer ship to fight the British in the War of American Independence. Unluckily for him, he was captured and made to be a cabin boy on a British ship. He escaped but was later captured again. The second time Hawkins was captured, he was thrown into the HMS Jersey, a notorious prison ship anchored in New York Harbor. About 11,000 rebellious colonists died aboard such crammed ships, many from disease or malnutrition. That was more than the roughly 6,800 who were killed in action. In his journal, he recalled stealing an ax from the ship’s cook. During a storm, he chopped his way through a barred porthole, timing the blows with the claps of thunder. Hawkins wrote out his memoirs in 1834, a full half a century after the events described. This edition was published from his actual manuscript after Hawkins death. A reprint of this edition was made in 1968. Interestingly, the manuscript was lost until it was re-discovered in 2018 in the house of a Kansas City woman.