The earliest of the volumes relating to gunnery is a small volume of ca. 1705 titled 'A proportion of gunns and gunners stores for a ship of each rate in Her Majesty's naval royal', which shows in a detailed tabulated form the guns and gunners' stores required for ships of twelve different sizes. Other eighteenth-century volumes include 'Artillery Memorandums Relative to the Royal Navy' by Captain Robert Lawson (d.1816), of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, 1782, covering aspects of gunnery including experiments on naval ordnance; and a 'Course of Artillery at the Royal Military Academy', 1791, by Edward Hope, a folio volume with many large watercolour illustrations. Another illustrated volume is a Danish gunnery notebook, 1809 to 1811, kept by J F Lykke. There is a volume containing copies of seven reports of the Committee on Gunnery set up by the Duke of Clarence (1765-1837) while Lord High Admiral in 1828, together with an explanatory letter from Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy (1769-1839) to John Wilson Croker (1780-1857). The majority of the nineteenth-century volumes are gunnery notebooks kept in the gunnery ships EXCELLENT and CAMBRIDGE by officers and ratings under instruction; there are ten of these, written between 1834 and 1866. They are all illustrated and cover all aspects of naval gunnery.

Administrative / biographical background
Gunnery - volumes