MARINE. Gaston de ROQUEMAUREL (1804-1878) naval officer and explorer. Autograph manuscript, Notes sur le vaisseau le Montebello, de 120 c. armé à Toulon en 1834; 9pages in-fol. Technical description of a 120-gun ship. A former student of the École polytechnique, Gaston de Rocquemaurel served in the Levant before taking part in the blockade and expedition of Algiers in 1830. He took a keen interest in maneuvering techniques and artillery. Promoted to lieutenant in January 1834, he wrote these notes on the Montebello, a 120-gun vessel built in Toulon and commissioned in 1813. [Rocquemaurel would later become Dumont d'Urville's first officer on the Astrolabe during the expedition to the South Pole and Oceania (1837-1840)].All the ship's technical specifications are presented here: draught, length, width, thickness, height, mast, iron ballast, ballast position, water hold, plans and platforms, provisions, large hold, taps, sail locker, prison, spare carriages, arch pump, oakum locker, basins, cannonball well, general store, vegetable bunker, cookie bunker, galley, powder bunker, powder passage, steerage, 36, 24 and 18 battery, deck, mature, sails, roles (breakdown of crew by positions, total of 1,071 men), etc.Attached are various autograph notes (approx. 20pp. various formats and some twenty drawings or sketches, defects), 1829-1833 and n.d., on bombs, mortars, bombardes, bomb galiotes, and gun carriages; and reading notes from reports by Las Cases, on the establishment of Holland, the Illyrian provinces and French ports (8p. in-fol., defects). Plus a L.A. (draft), Macao Oct. 25, 1851, his friend Marenge (2p. large in-8, one edge gnawed), on his navigation in China.