Letters to Sir Andrew Hamond, 1st Baronet. The correspondents include the Earl of Shelburne (1782); Sir Graham Hamond (1793-1805); 1st Viscount Duncan (1799); 2nd Earl of Chatham (1803); William Pitt (1804-5); and John McArthur (1804). Letters to Sir Graham Hamond, 2nd Baronet. The correspondents include W.P. Smith (1829-46); Sir Michael Seymour, inscription on his monument at Rio de Janeiro (1834); Sir Edward Belcher (1837); Sir Andrew Snape Hamond (1839-47); Graham Snape Hamond (1841); John Toup Nicholas (Captain) (1844-45); Richard Thomas (Admiral) (1844); Sir George F. Seymour (Rear Admiral) (1845); George G. MacDonald (Commander) (1845); Richard Thomas (1845); Arthur Grant (Lieutenant) (1845); John Philippart (Editor, Naval&Military Gazette) (1845); Grosvenor Hood (son-in-law) (1845); George C. Blake (Captain) (1845-46); Sir Frederick Mulcaster (1845); 3rd Viscount Hood (nephew) (1845); 4th Earl of Aberdeen to George Seymour (1845); and Charles Hope (Captain) (1845). Letters to Sir Andrew Hamond, 3rd Baronet. The correspondents include Sir George F. Seymour (1845-46) and Pomare, Queen of Tahiti (1845).

The majority of the collection documents the career of Admiral Sir Graham Hamond, from the labours of Hamond senior, as MP for Ipswich and Comptroller of the Navy, to further his son's Naval career, to his efforts to advance the career of his own son, Andrew Snape Hamond, later Vice-Admiral and 3rd Bt, during the 1840s. The collection includes four autograph letters of William Pitt, relating to Andrew Hamond senior's parliamentary career. Graham Hamond enjoyed an eventful and successful Naval career. He commanded a gunboat during the Nore Mutiny, and fought in the Battles of the Glorious First of June (1794), and Copenhagen (1801), where, as captain of the Blanche, he was singled out by Lord Nelson for special praise. The present collection documents his capture of several prizes, including the taking, while captain of the Lively, of three Spanish frigates, laden with treasure from the New World. It also includes a few letters and papers dating from Hamond's service as commander-in-chief, South American Station, from 1834 to 1838. Among these are case papers relating to a particularly grisly murder, committed in the Falkland Islands in 1833. In the 1840s Andrew Snape Hamond, then in command of the steam ship Salamander, undertook a particularly delicate tour of duty in the waters off Tahiti, at a time when the French authorities were busily reducing native resistance on the islands. His conduct, though entirely correct, aroused some accusations of pro-French bias in the Australian and British press, and Hamond senior was obliged to defend his son, and to work all the harder for Commander Hamond's further promotion. Numerous papers relate to this period, and to the marriage contracted by Andrew Hamond while in Tahiti, to a woman both his parents considered unsuitable. His son, Admiral Sir Graham Eden Hamond (1779-1862), held various commands in the Napoleonic Wars; in 1824 he conveyed Lord Stuart de Rothesay to Brazil in the Wellesley, and he was Commander-in-Chief, South American station, 1834-38. Salamander off Tahiti in the 1840's, when the French authorities were reducing native resistance on the islands.Sir Graham Hamond's son Sir Andrew Hamond commanded the