The Great Ordnance Survey OF 1698 A Facsimile by Richard Endsor and Frank Fox

In the late 1690’s the British Ordnance Office undertook a survey of all the great guns in the Royal Navy and Coastal Defense Batteries. The result was a document of close to 500 large pages showing the size and identifying number of all the great guns onboard ships, in dockyard storage and assigned to particular ships and in coastal emplacements. The document, reproduced here with only minor adjustments, is in a clear hand and is very readable. Richard and Frank provide an invaluable guide in the beginning of this book to instruct the reader to use this primary research tool. They also describe each type of gun listed in the survey and Richard has provided some scale drawings of them.

Naval historians, maritime archeologists and ship researchers will find this an invaluable tool.