Captain Watson's Travels in America: The Sketchbooks and Diary of Joshua Rowley Watson, 1772-1818

Who was Captain Joshua Rowley Watson, and why should anyone care about him? According to Kathleen A. Foster, a curator at the Indiana University art museum, the 19th-century Watson was not only a gentleman and an officer of the British navy, but also an accomplished watercolorist and keen observer of American life in the early part of the previous century. In Captain Watson's Travels in America, Foster has collected this obscure gentleman's art and journals to provide a complete record of Watson's American experience. After taking a leave of absence from the service in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Watson, accompanied by his wife, traveled for 18 months along the eastern seaboard from Boston to Washington, D.C. His impressions of the countryside and the people he met there are pleasant but not terribly profound.