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Bourdé (de Villehuet, Jacques Pierre). Manuel des Marins, ou Dictionnaire (II: Explication) des Termes de Marine. 2 vols. L’Orient, Le Jeune fils, 1773. 271; 278 pp., 1 l. errata. Contemp. delicate light-brown marbled leather vols. with gilt back and edges, marbled fly leaves, and blue bookmark ribbon. Red edges.

First edition. – Polak, Bibliographie maritime française, 1121. – In the Catalogue of the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum the posthumous 2^nd ed. of 1799 (Polak, Supplement, 9808) only. – Printed by Imprimerie de la Veuve de Jean Nicolas Galles in Vennes. – Paled name on title of vol. I. – Vol. I, p. 270 erroneously paginated as “370”. – Boards and edges of especially vol. II little noticeably rubbed only. This also with box pleats in the wide white margin lower right from the beginning till p. 28, then again from p. 137 and a dog’s ear p. 23 upper right. Otherwise in both volumes repeatedly quite light traces of bending in the upper right corner. With exception of very isolated paper-based tiny pinhead-sized rust spots and a faint small brown spot in the text of I, 137/8

Jacques Pierre Bourdé de Villehuet (Saint-Coulomb près de Saint Malo 1732 – Lorient, Brittany, 1789, father of François Marie B., 1825 commanding officer of the French naval station in Brazil, thus at the time when Johann Moritz Rugendas returned from his first voyage in Brazil) was born into a family of numerous sea officers. Sailing for all his life on ships of the French East India Company he discovered the Salomon Archipelago in 1776. Besides author of several relevant treatises, among them, repeatedly reprinted and frequently on the market and also translated into English, Le Manoeuvrier, ou Essai sur la Théorie et la Pratique des mouvements du navire et des Evolutions navales of 1765. Finally in 1766 the Académie des Sciences honored Bourdé for Mémoire sur l’arrivage des vaisseaux.

Noticing the many errors in maritime dictionaries hitherto due to their authors’ want of personal experience and starting at the consideration that from the exact understanding of a term everything else will arise, Bourdé as practician wants to explain the nautical terms “as far as possible in the ordinary language of the sailors”. For use and benefit yet not only of the seamen and harbor people, but also of the overseas merchants and the politicians according to Themistocles’ maxim, that he who is master of the sea also is master of the earth.

Offer no. 29,040 | EUR 2300. | export price EUR 2185. (c. US$ 2348.) + shipping