Share

Röding, Johann Hinrich. Allgemeines Wörterbuch der Marine in allen europæischen Seesprachen nebst vollstændigen Erklærungen (General Dictionary of the Marine in all European Languages together with Complete Explanations). 3 text vols. & plate vol. in 4 vols. Hamburg, Licentiat Nemnich, & Halle, Johann Jacob Gebauer, (& Leipsic, Adam Friedrich Böhme), (1793/4-98). 4to. With 3 (2 folded twice) tables as well as

Contemp. dark brown h. leather with dark red backplates and green marbled covers (renewed) and brown marbled fly-leaves. Red edges.

Zischka 75; NHSM 1001; Jöcher XI (1897), 227 f. – Name on fly-leaf. – As regularly due to the paper mostly evenly a little browned, only here and there especially in the far parts partly somewhat more or foxed, yet for greater parts practically not at all, too. 15 ll. in vol. I with crease of dog-ears lower right, 14 ll. within the Swedish index (vol. III) with tidemark in the corner upper right. Quite isolated annotations/additions by old hand in brown ink as well as pencil opposite to 4 plates, one ink spot in the white margin of the Danish index (vol. III). Folded plate 107 torn off in the upper left segment attached again by old practically without impairing the subject, the inner edge of plate 85 providently backed acid-freely. Two volumes with restored cover at the top as well as foot (1) heads and without title backplate, the backplates of the other two vols. with defect each. Generally

Starting from mathematics and its at first theoretical application to astronomy and navigation, the interest developed in Röding to get acquainted with their practical transfer in shipbuilding and navigation of the various seafaring nations. Beside the study of the relevant, though generally inadequate literature – among them i. a. Escallier, Bourdé de Villehuet, Duhamel – the direct exchange with practitioners was at the center. For what the Hamburg harbor naturally provided rich possibilities:

“ I have endeavored especially to forget nothing what regards the construction of the various war and merchant ships, their equipment, rigging, and everything that is required for the governing and steering of the same. Also I have talked extensively about naval tactics, naval artillery and generally about everything serving for naval warfare, and also tried to describe the arts related to naval science, as rope making, sail making, block making &c., most distinctly and completely. ”

Further considering the latest improvements in nautical astronomy just as the new methods of calculating the drag in the water, the movement of the ship, and other things more. Intended for about 800 illustrations, the number of 60 plates estimated for these doubled – as so frequently – yet. But “the very look of a figure is sufficient to give everyone a distinct idea of it and the costs of the figures are completely compensated by the saving of text”.

“ The ‘General Dictionary of the Marine’ by Johann Hinrich Röding completed in 1798 is

the  first  exhaustive  reference  book

on  the  concerns  of  seafaring  in  German  language .

His comprehensive evidence on building, on the fitting out and the management of sailing ships is valid still today.

Especially  valuable  are  the  115  engravings ,

which  excel  by  their  exactness  accurate  in  every  detail

and together with the explanations have a high validity … a contemporary-history document of scientific value. For (it) imparts the knowledge of the 18^th century about the matters of navigation and shipbuilding …

Ship-historical works like this dictionary gain increasingly in value in our time … (since i. a.) the great mastery of the overseas sailing of multimasted ships is lost more and more … Remarkable that the work was noticed so deep in the interior ”

(Lothar Eich in the epilog to the reprint of the plates, Leipsic 1987).

So Röding not least received financial support for the printing of the dictionary from Catharine II, though an intended Russian index was not carried out:

“ I would have added Russian, too, yet, as my collection of technical terms in this language has an average degree of completeness only … it seemed to me to be more uniform to supply rather nothing than something imperfect or incomplete. Besides in the Russian language the Dutch naval terms have been generally absorbed … Irrespective of this I will supply at the end of the work the Russian index as complete as it will be possible to me as a supplement. ”

A Spanish-English edition was published 1815.

Röding (Buxtehude 1763 – Hamburg 1815), son of the Hamburg-born archdeacon Lucas Heinrich there and not to be confounded with the writer, poet, and principal at St. Jacobi of the same name, came

“ to Hamburg into a tea store and acquired in this simple trade

excellent  knowledge

in  mathematics , the  art  of  shipbuilding , nautical  science

and in most of the newer languages, became later translator beside his own tea store … ”

(Jöcher).

Vols. I & II with the actual dictionary published in 6 parts. Prefixed in vol. I preface, subscribers’ list as well as indices of General Maritime Literature published between 1484 and 1793 and treatises of the l’Academie Royale des Sciences de Paris 1666-1785, the Royal Society of London, vol. I-LXXXI (1665-1792), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1739-90, from the German translations published in Hamburg and Leipsic 1749-92), the Vaterlandsche Letter-Oeffningen, Amsterdam 1768-85, and the Hollandse Maatschappy der Weetenschapen te Haarlem, 1755-87, resp., the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg 1728-77, supplement of books and manuscripts as well as author’s and subject indices to the aforementioned publications.

Vol. III with Dutch, Danish, Swedish, English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese index as well as appendices to literature, main work, and four of the indices.

The engravings partly with the varying signatures and monograms resp. of Andreas Stöttrup (1754 Hamburg 1811) known particularly as portrait painter, but also by various book illustrations. By this also the engraved title of vol. I. Besides such of one Monthuchon as certainly identical with the engraver de Monthuchon Thieme-Becker record with an “amateurish” view of the pontoon bridge at Coblenz of 1793.

Collation as follows:

Vol. I: 1 l. engraved title, VIII pp., 4 ll., 288, 444 cols., 1 l. title 2^nd prt., cols. 445-616, 1 l. title 3^rd prt., cols. 617-920 (790 mispag. 709), 2 (1 folded) ll. tables, cols. 921-936;

Vol. II: 2 ll. (title/title 4^th prt.), 200 cols., 1 l. title 5^th prt., cols. 201-596, 1 l. title 6^th prt., cols. 597-948 (258 mispag. 248, 667/8 skipped, 673 mispag. 573, 707/8 mispag. 706/7);

Vol. III: 2 ll. title, 168 (Dutch Index; 134 mispag. 341), 104 (Danish Index; 50 interchanged to 05), 104 (Swedish Index), 172 (English Index), 348 (French Index; 348 mispag. 148), 110 (Italian Index), 136 (Spanish Index), 124 (Portuguese Index), 184 (appendices; 98 mispag. 7) cols.;

Vol. IV: 56 cols. 115 plates.
Offer no. 28,947  /  price on application