[BIOGRAPHY]. REVERE, Joseph Warren. Keel and Saddle: A Retrospect of Forty Years of Military and Naval Service. Boston: James R. Osgood & Company (Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.), 1872. [i-iv] [1, blank], 1-360 pp. 8vo (19.2 x 13 cm), early three-quarter brown morocco over tan cloth, spine extra-gilt-stamped with nautical designs. Lightly rubbed. Title moderately foxed, lightly foxed throughout. With bookplate of nautical scholar John Haskell Kemble. A very good copy.

First edition. Cowan II, p. 530. Graff 3473. Haferkorn, p. 73. Hill I, p. 552; II, 1441. Howell 50:765: “A readable narrative dealing with the author’s experiences in various parts of the world, including his reminiscences of California in 1845 with Commodore Sloat’s squadron and life in Marin County in 1859-60.” Howes (1954) 8548. Tutorow 3671: “A gossipy memoir of naval and other experiences.”

“This work was published when the author was sixty years old and gives a sketch of his colorful and at times controversial life. Revere had been in the American Navy since 1828, and in 1845, he was aboard the Portsmouth in California with Commodore Sloat’s squadron. It was Revere who first raised the American flag at Sonoma. After the war, he was appointed a U.S. agent in California, and he made several highly profitable trading voyages down the Mexican coast, which enabled him to visit and provide a detailed description of San Diego, which he called ‘the queen of the south of California.’ In 1851 Revere became a colonel in the Mexican Army and reorganized its artillery. During the Civil War he served as a Union general” (Hill). The author’s Mexican-American War experiences are in Chapter 18 (pp. 143-150).