The collection consists of Rupert-Jones's research material, including notebooks, articles and some related correspondences, concerning voyages of exploration and hydrographic subjects. There are also reports on hydrographic surveys carried out for the Admiralty.

There are also workbooks and logs created by the astronomer and mathematician John Crosley (1762-1817). Crosley was appointed astronomer to the sloop HMS PROVIDENCE (1791), commanded by Commander William R. Broughton, in 1793; and to HMS INVESTIGATOR (purchased 1798) for the voyage to Terra Australis under the command of Lieutenant Matthew Flinders, in 1801. Crosley left the latter vessel at the Cape of Good Hope and returned to England owing to ill health. The workbooks contain calculations on longitude and errors of the lunar tables, also a list of the books on board the INVESTIGATOR.

Administrative / biographical background
Rupert-Jones was born at Sandhurst in Surrey in 1874, one of the sons of the geologist and palaeontologist Professor Thomas Rupert Jones and his second wife Charlotte Ashburnham Rupert Jones née Archer. He first went to sea in 1888, as an apprentice on the KINGDOM OF SAXONY (1864), a barque in the wool trade. He was later employed as a junior officer on steamships belonging to the British India Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. and the Pacific Steam Navigation Co. He also trained as a midshipman in the Royal Naval Reserve. He qualified as master in 1900 (certificate number 025958) and his engagements in this role included the cable ship HENRY HOLMES (1903). Between 1908 and 1912 he served as a lieutenant and assistant surveyor under Captain James W.F. Combe on the steam yacht ELLINOR (1891), hired by the Admiralty for survey work around the coasts of Canada and the West Indies. Rupert-Jones was appointed second in command of the British Antarctic and Oceanographical Expedition led by Joseph F. Stackhouse, but this was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During wartime, Rupert-Jones was on active service as a navigating officer and received the Reserve Decoration (RD). In the last eight years of his life he was hydrographical surveyor to the Southampton Harbour Board, working on dredging schemes and other improvements to the approaches to the docks. Rupert-Jones wrote articles and books on tides, hydrography and naval history, and compiled the ‘Rupert-Jones List’ of ships of the Royal Navy. He died at his office in Southampton in 1934.