An Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in the Five Days' Peregrination of ... Messieurs Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill, and Forrest

An Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in the Five Days' Peregrination of ... Messieurs Tothall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill, and Forrest

London: Printed for R. Livesay, 1782
Ebenezer Forrest
Manuscript: ink on paper

The Five Days’ Peregrination is the mock-heroic account of a journey taken in 1732 by William Hogarth and a group of friends, among them Ebenezer Forrest, the lawyer and writer who wrote the account, and the marine painter Samuel Scott. The party traveled by boat and foot from London to the Isle of Sheppey, taking in the towns and villages along the way. Apart from antiquarian pretensions — the cohort visited churches and made drawings of monuments and records of their inscriptions — and rambunctious humor, the outing had a distinctly maritime character. At Chatham they toured the Royal Dockyard and toured some of the great ships of the line then in dock, calling the storehouses and dockyard “Very Noble.” The party traveling from Sheppey back to Gravesend by boat, Scott and Hogarth became seasick, and the expedition was imperiled when their boat ran aground. Throughout the text of the Peregrination, Scott is described as drawing at every opportunity. At Upnor, “Hogarth made a Drawing of the Castle and Scott of some Shipping Riding near it,” and the resulting illustration depicts Scott sketching the ships at anchor. The Peregrination has been treated largely as an amusing incident, but it also contributes to the substantial evidence of dockyards as sites of spectacle and leisure as well as industry and labor. 

Folio 75 H67 782 Copy 2
Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University