GUEST: This is my third or fourth great-grandfather, William Perry, who sailed as surgeon's mate with Captain Cook in the Endeavour on his first voyage around the world, from 1768 to 1771. Their mission was to sail to Tahiti and to observe the transit of Venus across the sun. Then they were to sail on and verify the existence of the Australian continent. So you can see here that the Endeavour is in the background.
APPRAISER: He was the surgeon's mate, but what happened?
GUEST: Well, the surgeon, Mr. Monkhouse, died, and William became the, the surgeon.
APPRAISER: He took over towards the end of the voyage. 1770, I think, Monkhouse died, correct?
GUEST: That's right.
APPRAISER: What I find remarkable about this is that your great-great-great- grandfather was part of one of the first long-distance voyages where scurvy was not a problem. Scurvy was a terrible vitamin deficiency that afflicted sailors at sea. Cook apparently was a big believer in feeding people fresh food, and he was involved with this, keeping the crew healthy. The painting itself, I think, is also interesting, because it bears many semblances to the work of an early Chinese artist. Now, we don't know much about this particular artist-- his name was Spoilum-- but he was known as the first Chinese artist in Canton to paint European subjects on canvas. This particular painting is on wood, but this is very much in the style of Spoilum's paintings. Of course, he wasn't in China on the Endeavour expedition, but he sailed on four or five other ships, and I would bet that he, he was in Canton at some point. You assume that to be the Endeavour because he sailed on the Endeavour.
GUEST: Ah.
APPRAISER: But it could be one of his other four or five ships that he was on.
GUEST: True.
APPRAISER: The other thing that we have here are these great pistols by William Bond. And you can see "Bond," with his London address, is stamped on the tops of the barrels of these pistols. Bond is about as good as you can get for a British pistol maker. Very desirable. We assume that these are the pistols that he carried with him.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: You also brought this little powder flask; it contained shot and wadding and that sort of thing. So it's a nice package. Let's start with the painting. In that present condition, it's probably an $8,000 to $10,000 painting. The frame has been repainted. That's hurt it.
GUEST: My mother decided that it would look a lot better if she spray-painted it...
APPRAISER: Right.
GUEST: ...with gold spray paint. (laughs)
APPRAISER: The pistols themselves are worth about $2,500 to $3,500. But since they're associated with this individual, we can, I think, bump the estimate up a little bit, to maybe $5,000. So we're looking at a value of somewhere between $13,000 and $15,000 for an auction estimate for the package here. It's a great story.
GUEST: Thank you, I'm-- I'm very glad to know that.
