Moore, Captain Hugh

manuscript, with detailed daily entries recording an eventful journey – from encounters with local potentates to robbery by bandits – and extensive notes on local sites and peoples, beginning with his departure with Whaley from Gibraltar on 6 November 1788, travelling to Smyrna then overland to Constantinople, arriving 14 December, including a long account of their meeting with the Vizier, Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha (“Captain Pascia”), a month spent in the Ottoman capital nursing Whaley through fever (“…which, as he afterwards acknowledged, he had brought on by eating a Quantity of Snow…”), including his transcription of a French “Itineraire of Constantinople” but also with his own notes on sights including the “celebrated mosquée of Santa Sofia”, then onward travel through the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean (19 January-23 February 1789), including stops at Foça and Patmos, his record of the latter including notes on the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, a pirate attack on the island, and local dances and festivals, arrival at Acre, overland travel to Nazareth and visit to the Basilica of the Annunciation, arrival in Jerusalem on 28 February, their welcome by the Governor, visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other important sites, trip to Bethlehem on 4 March (“…this very ancient City, whose Name the Birth of our Saviour has immortalized, exhibits at present, a most striking picture of poverty & distress, & is entirely composed of ruinous Huts, inhabited by wretches, who have scarcely Rags sufficient to cover their Nakedness. These are chiefly Greeks, and there are but two Turkish Families in the town. The only Species of Commerce that exists here is a manufacture of Crucifixes, Beads, Models of the Holy Sepulchre, & other relics…”), their encounter with bandits on the return trip to Acre (“…we met a body consisting of about 20 Arabs, fully arm’d; their Muskets were slung on their Backs, & their Girdles were loaded with Pistols, Sabres, & shorter swords of different kinds…”), and concluding with a meeting with the tyrannous Djezzar Pasha on 10 March (“…under his Pelice he wore a silver Hammer, weighing about a pound, with which he has been often known to punish his slaves, for trivial faults, which he did not think deserving of immediate Death. – the Person offending he order’d to turn his Back, & with the Hammer he gave him a Blow between his shoulders, exactly on the spine…”), 337 numbered pages (pp. 330-36 misnumbered 230-36) including c.22 leaves laid down into the volume (including the Itineraire, 19 leaves, and a certificate confirming their presence in Nazareth), and another c.9 slips of paper loosely inserted, preceded by a one-page preface explaining that this narrative was written on the return home, and with a one-page itinerary (concluding with their final arrival in Dublin) at the end, plus blanks, contemporary half calf, worn, hinges split, tears to front free endpaper, one leaf loose and two further leaves nearly detached

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An unpublished record of a famous adventure, and an evocative record of Constantinople and the Holy Land in the late 18th century. This journey was set in train when Moore's travelling companion Thomas "Buck" Whaley, was asked, at a fashionable dinner, where he intended to visit next. According to his memoirs, “I instantly offered to bet any sum that I would go to Jerusalem and return to Dublin within two years from my departure”, and by the time he was ready to leave Ireland in September 1788 a sum of £15,000 (£1.5m in today's money) rested on his success.

Hugh Moore, who joined Whaley in Gibraltar, was from County Down and a Captain in the 5th Dragoon Guards. He was a less colourful figure than Whaley (a compulsive gambler who had dissipated a fortune of £400,000 [c. £25m] by the time he turned thirty), but his record of the journey provides a fascinating counterpart to Whaley's own memoir and is an independent witness, although some passages are common to the two narratives. It is unpublished but has not passed entirely unnoticed by scholars: Sir Edward Sullivan had access to this manuscript (then remaining with Moore's family) and published short extracts in his edition of Buck Whaley's Memoirs (1906).