Loose typescript sheets with transcripts of eleven letters sent by Robert Horace Walpole to his mother, while he was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, between 22 February 1871 and 30 August 1871. There are also transcripts of three related letters to his father Frederick Walpole. The letters were transcribed from originals in the possession of the Dowager Countess of Orford.

Walpole joined the iron screw troopship HMS MEGAERA (1849) at Plymouth on 24 February 1871 for a voyage to Australia via the Cape of Good Hope. The letters discuss a delay while the MEGAERA put into Queenstown, the poor condition of the ship, his sighting-seeing at Madeira and wildlife on Ascension Island, including the sooty terns (or ‘wideawakes’). Due to a major leak, the MEGAERA had to be beached on St Paul’s Island in the Indian Ocean on 16 June 1871. Walpole gives an account of the loss of the ship and how the crew and passengers survived on the island for nearly three months before being rescued.

One of the letters to Frederick Walpole is from Captain Arthur T. Thrupp, late commander of the MEGAERA, dated 1 November 1871. The two others are from Sir Edward J. Reed, late Chief Constructor of the Navy, discussing his survey of the MEGAERA several years ago and the condition of the hull plating, dated 17 and 21 March 1871.

Administrative / biographical background
Robert Horace Walpole was born in 1854 and entered HMS BRITANNIA in 1868. He was promoted to the rank of midshipman in 1871 and sub-lieutenant in 1875. He retired from the Royal Navy in 1877 to become a soldier and subsequently a diplomat. He became 5th Earl of Orford in 1894 and died in 1931.