Notes and sketches by Thomas Napier Armit, salvage engineer.

Leather bound volume containing drawings made by Armit as a shipwright apprentice and salvage engineer, circa 1866-1894. There are plans of vessels built at Dundee, including a rigging plan of the troopship EASTERN MONARCH (1856) and a body plan of the screw whaler NIMROD (1866). The later part of the volume has sketches of salvage projects, including the refloating of the Anchor Line passenger liner UTOPIA (1874) at Gibraltar in 1892. There are also notes on tonnage, displacement and shipbuilding, copies of testimonials, newspaper cuttings relating to Armit's involvement in amateur theatre and two small photographs of steam vessels. The front cover with the title 'NOTES & SKETCHES BY T.N. ARMIT FROM 1866' has become detached.

Administrative / biographical background
Armit was born at Montrose in Scotland in 1846. He was educated at Montrose Academy and then completed an apprenticeship at the Dundee shipbuilding yard of Alexander Stephen & Sons. In his later career he supervised many salvage operations, including the recovery of the wreckage of the first Tay Bridge, and became a prominent figure in shipping circles. At the time of his death in 1910 he was managing director of the East Coast Salvage Company, Leith.