Memoir written by Commander James Henry Butt, about 1920

Volume entitled 'Memories', written by Commander James Henry Butt, covering his school days and service in the Royal Navy up to his retirement in 1873. First permanently commissioned as lieutenant and second-in-command of the survey vessel HMS 'Sylvia' in September 1866, just before sailing for three years survey work in the Far East, mainly on the coast of Japan.
Related Material
He was a lifelong amateur artist in watercolour and the Museum also has an album of 55 mainly Eastern drawings by him made during that commission and another with 15 drawings of sea creatures compiled on the outward voyage: see PAJ2050 and PAJ2102. Butt retired from the Navy with the rank of Commander in 1873, raised a family in Bristol and is known to have made a later voyage with his wife to China - though for unknown reasons - during which their youngest son was born in Shanghai. He appears largely to have lived on his naval pension with other occasional employments of which little can be discovered, except that he appears to have been a competent organist and continued to paint in watercolour, sell his work, and occasionally exhibit it including with the Royal Cambrian Academy after he eventually moved to north Wales. He died near Colwyn in 1936.

Administrative / biographical background
Butt was born at Gloucester in 1844 and joined the training ship HMS ILLUSTRIOUS at Portsmouth in 1857. As a cadet and midshipman he served on HMS CENTURION (1844) in the Mediterranean and HMS SEVERN (1856) in the East Indies. In 1864 he was appointed to the troopship HMS ADVENTURE (1855), operating between Hong Kong and Japan. Butt then became a lieutenant on the new survey ship HMS SYLVIA (1866), employed around the coasts of Formosa, Japan, and China. After returning from the Far East in December 1870 he married Alice Maude Lovell at Clifton in Bristol. He then served on HMS INDUS (1839), guardship at Devonport, before retiring from the Navy with the reserve rank of commander in 1873. In 1894 he briefly served a summer commission for coaling duties. In retirement Butt was a church organist and watercolour artist. After raising a family in Bristol, he moved to Old Colwyn in Denbighshire and died there in 1936. His record of service can be found under the reference ADM 196/15/338 at The National Archives. His eldest son Alfred Lovell Butt died while serving as an engineer on the depot ship HMS VULCAN (1889) at Salonika in 1895.