The papers form part of the collection of naval manuscripts transferred from the Royal United Service Institution in 1968. They consist of logs, 1898 to 1904 and 1919. There are order books, 1915 to 1919, and a number of technical notebooks as well as printed material. In addition, there are a number of miscellaneous loose papers and photographs collected by Altham.

Administrative / biographical background
ALTHAM entered the Navy in 1896 and from 1898 served in the Prince George, Crescent, Royal Sovereign, Channel Station, and Hood and Hussar, in the Mediterranean. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1902, qualified as a gunnery specialist and was promoted to commander in 1913. For the first few months of the First World War he commanded the Wildfire in operations off the Belgian coast. He later continued in these operations in the monitor General Craufurd. In 1918, during the North Russian operations, he was acting captain of the Attentive and was promoted to captain at the end of the year. Then, in 1919, he was appointed to the Fox and was senior officer of the Archangel River Expeditionary Force. Altham was retired in 1922 and was appointed naval correspondent to the Morning Post. In 1924 he became editor of the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution and in 1927 also Secretary of the Institution, which posts he filled until his death. He was recalled to the Navy in 1939 and was employed throughout the Second World War as head of the Postal and Telegraph Censorship Section of the Naval Staff.