Notebook containing an autobiography entitled 'Recollections of By Gone Days' by James Richardson, dated 21 June 1843. Richardson first went to sea as an apprentice on the ATTY of Whitby in 1797. During the Napoleonic Wars he was employed on a number of naval transports, including a period as chief mate on the DUCHESS OF RICHMOND. Despite efforts to avoid impressment, he was also a seaman in the Royal Navy, serving on HMS ROYAL GEORGE (1788) during the unsuccessful Dardanelles operation commanded by Vice-Admiral Duckworth and then on HMS UNDAUNTED (1807) off Madeira. Richardson later worked as a collecting clerk at Lime Wharf in Wapping. The autobiography also mentions family events, including deaths that occurred while he was away at sea, and his three marriages in London.

Administrative / biographical background
James Richardson was born in Westminster on 20 September 1784. He attended the Middlesex Society school in Cannon Street Road before going to sea as an apprentice in 1797. Details of the three marriages mentioned in his autobiography BGR/45 can be found in London parish records. He married Catherine Ann Denney at St Michael Paternoster Royal in London on 6 August 1807. He married Mary Padgett at St Giles in the Fields on 7 April 1823. His third marriage was to Mary Greenstreet at St Saviour, Southwark, on 18 November 1827.