[MARITIME] Wire splicing for yachtsmen

/ by R. Scot Skirving, an old “Conway”. Drawings by J. Hazelton and photographs by E. A. Bradford. Sydney : The Australasian Medical Publishing Company, Limited, 1931. Octavo (215 mm), publisher’s cloth-backed pictorial papered boards with vignette illustration of the 1870s sailing ship HMS Conway to upper board (both boards sunned at edges), pp. 34, with photographic and line-drawn illustrations and diagrams; contents pristine, a near fine copy.

Very scarce Sydney publication dealing with the technical aspects of splicing with wire rope, authored by Scottish-born surgeon Robert Scot Skirving, who had received his early maritime education on the three-masted wooden sailing ship HMS Conway, the famous British nineteenth-century naval training school or “school ship”. Skirving later received a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh and sailed to Australia as ship’s surgeon on the emigrant ship Ellora early in 1883. After briefly practicing as a doctor in Queensland he came to Sydney, where he was appointed medical superintendent at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in November 1883. (Hence, the Australasian Medical Publishing Company imprint of the present publication).

From the ADB:

‘In 1884 he set up practice in College Street and on 6 January 1886 at Willoughby married Lucy Susan Hester (d.1950). He was successively honorary assistant physician (1884-89), honorary physician (1889-1911) and consultant from 1911 at R.P.A.H. As honorary physician at the Hospital for Sick Children (1884-89) he clashed with its lady superintendent, Frances Holden. He was also an able surgeon and was honorary surgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital (1889-1923). He was the lecturer in clinical medicine at the University of Sydney (1889-1911), was president of the New South Wales branch of the British Medical Association (1891-92) and served as chief medical adviser to the Australian Mutual Provident Society (1911-36). During World War II he was persuaded by (Sir) Herbert Schlink to lecture at R.P.A.H….’

Skirving’s papers are held in the SLNSW.

Trove locates only four copies of Wire splicing for yachtsmen in Australian libraries (NLA; SLNSW; SLV; Monash University Library)