The Bicornes or Cuckold Fish West Indies / The Island of St Helena 3 or 4 Leagues

One side of this sheet features a watercolour of a scrawled cowfish (Acanthostracion quadricornis) by naval officer Aiskew Paffard Hollis (1764–1844). The fish is identified in the inscription as 'the bicornes or cuckold fish', referencing historical names applied to this species (as, for example, in Benjamin Martin, 'Miscellaneous Correspondence, Containing a Variety of Subjects', vol. 2 [London: W. Owen, 1759], p. 544). Scrawled cowfish are usually found in the Western Atlantic. Hollis may have sketched this one when in the Leeward Islands in the ‘Andromeda’ in 1793. On The other side of the sheet is a coastal profile of the island of St Helena, shaded with watercolour. Above is an incomplete graphite sketch of a sailing ship. This profile may have been 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.