The collection was presented in instalments; between 1962 and 1965 Captain Vaughan presented his father's collection of original documents, mainly relating to the operations of Plymouth and Gibraltar dockyards and to victualling, 1678 to 1832. In 1978 Mrs I. M. Vaughan presented some official and private papers and the reminiscences of her late husband, Captain H.R.H. Vaughan, together with the residue of her father-in-law's papers. The documents relating to Plymouth dockyard mainly consist of individual letters extracted from the yard's official administrative records. They consist of letters to the yard commissioner from the Admiralty, 1695 to 1832; from the Navy Board, 1695 to 1820; from the dockyard officers, 1695 to 1816; from sea officers, 1696 to 1828; from the Commissioners of Victualling, 1716, 1824 to 1831; from the Plymouth Victualling Office, 1697 to 1779; letters from the yard commissioner to the Admiralty, 1697 to 1701, contained in a complete letterbook; to the Navy Board, 1706 to 1708; orders to yard officers, 1809; standing orders 1678 to 1766, contained in one volume; letters to the yard officers from the Navy Board, 1694 to 1758; officers' reports to the Navy Board, 1696 to 1791; accounts of ships' stores, 1713 to 1793; Admiralty letters to and from naval officers, 1696 to 1832. The documents relating to Gibraltar yard include two of the Commissioner's letterbooks containing letters to the Victualling Commissioners and naval officers, 1755 to 1763, and to yard and naval officers, 1803 to 1805. Instructions and specifications relating to victualling are contained in one volume, ca.1820. The papers of H.R.H. Vaughan include a journal of a voyage from Bombay [Mumbai] to Basrah, 1928; some private letters received, 1929 to 1931; copies of official intelligence reports to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies station, concerning affairs in the Persian Gulf, 1929; a copy of the official report of the Flag Officer, Narvik, April to June 1940; and his own handwritten reminiscences 1911 to 1945.

Administrative / biographical background
Herbert Stanley Vaughan (d.1933) was Victualling Store Officer at Hong Kong, Malta and Plymouth between 1899 and 1911, and Superintendent of Victualling at Gibraltar, Malta and Plymouth between 1914 and 1923. An enthuiastic historian, he was an active founding member of the Society for Nautical Research. His son, Captain Herbert Reginald Henry Vaughan (d.1978) served in the Royal Navy between 1911 and 1945. He served aboard H.M.S. TRIAD in the Persian Gulf between 1928 and 1930, and during the Second World War took part, as Secretary to Admiral Lord Cork, in the attack in 1940 on Narvik.