Papers of William Mogg

Six illustrated volumes. Volume 1 covers the period 1811-21 while Mogg was aboard HMS Partridge, HMS Haughty, HMS Picton and HMS Investigator and serving in the Mediterranean and European waters. Volume 2 describes the voyages of discovery to the Arctic under Captain Parry, 1821-5, with notes from 1859. Volume 3 deals with voyages mainly in South American waters, 1821-33, and includes his voyage on the HMS Beagle, 1827-30, with Charles Darwin. In volume 4 Mogg describes journeys in Wales, France and Italy, c.1840-3; in volume 5, further journeys in Italy, 1843-6; and in volume 6 he describes travels to Italy, Switzerland, Wales and the West of England, 1846-68. Volume 6 contains two photographs of Mogg. The collection also contains some of Mogg's original notes for his journal, which are now labelled 'appendices'. These relate to Monte Carlo, 1843; South America, 1826-34; notes on the Patagonians, 1829-30; account of Pampeiro by Captain Fitzroy, 1829 (the HMS Beagle); Santos, Rio de la Plata, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Maldonado, c.1829; vocabulary of the Patagonians, 1829; Hebrew vocabulary, 1816 (watermark); Rome, 1843; Vesuvius, 1843; and other parts of Italy in the 1840s and 1850s. The collection also includes meteorological material relating to the journeys to the Arctic, 1821-5, and Mogg's annotated copies of R.Fitzroy Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, describing their examination of the southern shores of South America and the Beagle's circumnavigation of the globe (3 vols., London, 1839) and G.F.Lyon The private journal of Captain G.F.Lyon of HMS Hecla during the recent voyage of discovery under Captain Parry (London, 1824).

William Mogg (1796-1875) of Woolston, Southampton, joined the Royal Navy as a volunteer in 1811, serving in the continental blockade of the Napoleonic war and taking part, in 1817, in a number of survey expeditions in the brig HMS Investigator. He served as a clerk during Edward Parry's second and third Arctic expeditions, on HMS Hecla, during 1821-2, and on HMS Fury in 1824-5. Between 1811 and 1868 he kept a private journal which he assembled during the 1860s into six volumes.

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Extracts from volume 2 of William Mogg's journal were printed by J.E.Taverner, 'The Arctic watering of HMS Hecla and Fury in Prince Regent Inlet, 1824-1825 by William Mogg', Polar record 12 (1964) pp. 11-28.