Søe-Evolutioner eller En Orlogs-Flodes... Uddragne af P. Paul Hostes Verk: L'art Des armées navales og med endeel Ænmerkninger forbedrede

A wonderful royal copy of this splendid naval work. This is the first edition of this important Danish work on naval manoeuvres, loosely based on the French classic L'Art des Armées Navales by Père Paul l'Hoste, first published in Lyons in 1697. Instructions are given for the fleet to sail out in an orderly formation, deploy for battle in line or column, retreat, cope with foul weather, and so on. The fine and detailed engravings illustrate how the ships of a fleet should shift from one formation to another.

Paul l'Hoste (1652-1700) was a Jesuit who served in the French navy as a chaplain. Despite his higher calling he was a gifted naval strategist who developed a system of tactics based on the single line ahead and the independent action of squadrons, using new ideas such as "doubling" and "breaking the line". His book was 'a standard work on naval tactics, which includes valuable accounts (with many engraved illustrations) of the battles of the Second Dutch War...' (National Maritime Museum Library Catalogue).

An excellent article on Hoste's book by Hugh Cahill appeared in the King's College London "Book of the Month Archive": 'Hoste's book [i.e. the French work] was an immediate success and soon became very well known. It was republished in 1727. Over the course of the eighteenth century several books based on L'Art des Armées Navales were to appear. In 1743 C.F.L. Fontenay, an officer in the Danish Navy, published Søe-Evolutioner eller En Orlogs-Flodes... Although this book relied heavily on L'Art des Armées Navales it is not simply a translation of that work. De Fontenay revised much of the text, omitted many of the mathematical elements of Hoste's original, added much derived from his own experience as a naval officer and had the plates re-engraved...'.