The Brown Booby caught near the Line / The Sea Pigeon of the Cape of Good Hope

One side of this sheet features a watercolour of a bird with a brown head, white body and grey beak. It is inscribed ‘The Brown Booby caught near the Line / I observe that the Eye[s] of these Birds are on the Back [I] suppose to preserve them when in the act of Diving for Fish’. The other side of the sheet features a graphite sketch of a seabird, inscribed ‘The Sea Pigeon of the Cape of Good Hope’. These drawings are the work of naval officer Aiskew Paffard Hollis (1764–1844). They were probably made between 1796 and 1798, when Hollis was serving at the Cape of Good Hope, initially in the ‘Chichester’ and later in the ‘Tremendous’. For other examples of Hollis’s work, see PAH4885 and ZBB0352–84.