NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE IN THE INDIAN SEAS, IN THE NISUS FRIGATE

First Edition: iv + 112 pages, 2 maps - 1 folding, plan of the Landing of the British Army in Mapou Bay, Isle of France, 1 etched plate - The Bay and Village of Simon's Town, Cape of Good Hope, from the Blockhouse, 1813, half red morocco with marbled paper sides, titled gilt along the spine, bookplate on the front paste-down endpaper, some light foxing, a very good copy.

'Prior, Sir James (c. 1790–1869), writer, son of Matthew Prior, was born at Lisburn, co. Antrim, about 1790. He entered the navy as a surgeon, and sailed from Plymouth in the Nisus frigate on 22 June 1810 for the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, the Seychelles Islands, Madras, and Java (at the capture of which by the British in September 1811 he was present). This journey he described in a Voyage in the Indian Seas (1820). His next expedition (1812–13), in the same frigate, was to South Africa, Brazil, and other areas, and was described in a Voyage Along the Eastern Coast of Africa (1819).'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, W. P. Courtney, revised by Elizabeth Baigent (https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22813)

Mendelssohn (Sidney) South African Bibliography, volume 2, page 190, 'There is some account of Simon's Town, Wynneberg (Wynberg), and Cape Town, and of an earthquake which occurred at Bavian's Kloof (a missionary station about eighty miles from Cape Town), at this period. The greater part of the volume deals with Mauritius and other islands on the east coast of South Africa.'

HMS Nisus was a Royal Navy 38-gun fifth rate frigate, launched in 1810 at Plymouth, named for Virgil's character Nisus from The Aeneid. (Wikipedia)