Great Battles of the British Navy.

Red leather binding with gilt edge line on both boards. Gilt emblem on the front board. Brown title plate with raised banding, gilt lettering and decoration on the spine. Loose title page.

A unique and very British Patriotic work

Charles Rathbone Low FRGS (1837–1918) was a British officer of the Indian Navy and writer. Son of Major John Handcock Low of the East India Company and of the 39th Bengal Native Infantry, he was born in Dublin, in 1837. His father was killed in 1849 at Rajmahal. He was born in 1805, the youngest son of William John Low of Lowville, County Galway, and his wife the Hon. Sophie Hamilton, daughter of Richard Hamilton, 4th Viscount Boyne; he married Emily Revell in 1830, and she died in 1847. He married again, in 1848, to Clementina Clara Jane Hockley, daughter of Joseph Hockley. William Low, who served with the 67th Regiment of Foot, was the son of Nathaniel Low(e) of Lowville, who married Jane Handcock. She was the daughter of Robert Handcock, brother of Dean Richard Hancock, and his wife Jane Blackburne. Charles Rathbone Low was taken to India at age a few months, and attended school in Simla. He returned to live in England at age seven, and was orphaned. Low joined the East India Company's Navy in 1853, and took part in the suppression of piracy and slave trading in the Indian and China Seas, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and off the East Coast of Africa. He wrote in his History of the Indian Navy of serving in the HCS Mahi; he was a midshipman on her from 1855, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. When the Navy was closed down in 1863, Low became a professional writer, in England. He was the first Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Royal United Service Institution, 1865–68. He represented the Indian Navy at the Jubilee Service of Empress Victoria, 1887 and other royal events Low published books in a number of genres. He was also a prolific author of magazine articles. He began his writing career with a mixture of juvenile adventure stories and factual articles in Cassell's Magazine, Chamber's Journal, The Leisure Hour, The Quiver and Routledge's Magazine for Boys. Tucker calls him an "indefatigable exhibitor of national kudos", as well as "a patriotic crank of the old school". Low was a Referee for the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was a Fellow. The Land of the Sun (1870) was travel writing, with full subtitle Sketches of Travel, with Memoranda, Historical and Geographical, of Places of Interest in the East. He worked on The India Directory, for the guidance of commanders of steamers and sailing vessels (from 1874) of Alfred Dundas Taylor, another former Indian Navy officer, a replacement for the work on charts of James Horsburgh.