The collection, purchased by Sir James Caird from Dr Gosse in 1939 and 1940, illustrates the history of piracy from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. It includes a journal of the voyage of Captain Bartholomew Sharp in the Mayflower, 1680 to 1682, kept by his second-in-command, John Cox; it was on this voyage in the Pacific that Sharp captured a Spanish derrotero and the navigational information in it was used in the atlases of William Hack (1656?-1708). Two letters from Sir Thomas Lynch (1603-?1684), Governor of Jamaica, give many details about measures taken to suppress piracy; the first, written to Sir Leoline Jenkins (1623-1683), Secretary of State, in 1683 relates principally to the interruption by privateers of the sugar trade of the West Indies; the second letter was written in 1683 to the Secretary of State for Northern Affairs, Lord Sunderland (1640-1702), and gives an account of the attack, led by Vanhorne (d.1683), on Vera Cruz. There is a journal and narrative account of the burning of La Trompeuse and other pirates in port at St Thomas's Island by Captain Charles Carlisle (d.1684) in the Francis, 1683, and a collection of documents received by Sir Evan Nepean (q.v.) with some draft replies while Nepean was Governor of Bombay. These are mainly concerned with the expedition against piracy in the Persian Gulf between 1817 and 1819. There are also personal papers of Dr Gosse, which all relate to his publications on piracy.

Administrative / biographical background
Dr Philip Gosse (1879-1959) ended his career as Superintendent of the Radium Institute, London in 1930, after which he not only collected documents and books relating to piracy, but wrote many works on the subject. The Museum also possesses his library of works on piracy.