Launched in 1810, the Royal Navy’s Apollo-class frigate Astraea saw service during the Napoleonic Wars and then spent seven years ‘in ordinary’ as a merchant vessel before being converted to a hospital ship in 1823.
It was not her career as a warship, however, that was the appeal of a log offered by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 7, but Mediterranean trading voyages of 1819 and 1821 under the command of Captain William Hodgson.
Information on direction, speed, weather, crew chores and so on is noted in a fine copperplate hand, but it is a series of 35 accomplished watercolours by Hodgson of his own and other ships encountered on what may otherwise have been largely uneventful voyages that on June 7 meant that this fine illustrated log sold for $16,000 (£12,405).
