One, as issued c.1782 and in contemporary marbled wrappers, made $3500 (£1900), but the other, pictured right, the 34pp work had been decorated with 110 little illustrations of the flag and canon signals described therein. In a 19th century binding of brown morocco, it was a copy that had been presented to Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Gideon Welles, by his Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Thornton Alexander Jenkins, and it sold at $16,000 (£8695).
In a Bonhams sale of June 29, a letter of November 1795 in which a "much injured" Nelson offers to resign his command, rather than suffer imputations upon his honour or that of the
captains serving under him, was sold for £6000 (Richards).
Nelson was at the time on HMS Agamemnon off Genoa and his letter, addressed to Francis Drake, the British minster there, was in response to a report circulating at the time that Nelson - who was struggling to balance blockade duties with a requirement that his squadron also support the operations of the Austrian army in Italy against the French invaders - had connived with the enemy to let coastal vessels land supplies for the French.
