First and only edition, rare: Copac locates only one copy in British and Irish institutional libraries (Cambridge), OCLC adds no further copies worldwide. A familial presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "Mr. W. Baird, from his friend, Lord Cottesloe, April 1874". Thomas Francis Fremantle (1798-1890), first Baron Cottesloe, politician and civil servant, was the father of Sir Edmund Robert Fremantle. This slim volume reprints a series of letters and despatches from the principal participants in the Third Anglo-Ashanti War (1873-74) and was possibly issued by Fremantle's father "for private circulation only" - presumably in very small numbers and perhaps to "forward" his son following his successes in West Africa. Fremantle (1836-1929) was given command of HMS Barracouta, the last paddle sloop built for the Royal Navy, in March of 1873. "In May 1873 the ports in the Gold Coast Protectorate were threatened by an Asante [Ashanti] army, and the Barracouta was sent with a reinforcement of 100 marines for Cape Coast Castle, where Fremantle found himself senior officer of a squadron of seven small vessels. He took part in the operations for the defence of Elmina, in protecting Cape Coast Castle and Sekondi, Dixcove, and Axim, and in various affairs on the coast, including Sir Garnet Wolseley's first operations. He was severely wounded in the advance on Kumasi. In November a severe bout of fever obliged him temporarily to leave the coast to recover at St Helena; and he returned home in May 1874. He was made CB and CMG in that year, and was mentioned in the vote of thanks in parliament" (ODNB). Clowes notes that "Fremantle had done so well that Wolseley paid him the compliment of saying that, but for him, the operations leading to the retreat of the Ashantees could not have been carried out" (The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Death of Queen Victoria, VII p. 259).
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