John Clerk of Eldin

Clerk made his fortune as a merchant (he is understood to have been a clothier) and manager of a coal mine, and in 1763 he was able to buy himself the property of Eldin, in Lasswade, near Edinburgh.

He made the acquaintance of engineer and sometime naval architect Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, who encouraged Clerk's interest in nautical matters.

As well as relying on Edgar's personal experience and knowledge, Clerk began to research naval tactics through the memoirs of former officers and campaigns, such as the Mediterranean operations during the War of the Austrian Succession by Admiral Thomas Mathews in 1744, and also more recent events, such as the Battle of Ushant, which led to a court case between Admirals Augustus Keppel and Hugh Palliser.

The unexpected British defeat at the Battle of the Chesapeake may have been the event that led to Clerk moving on from studying tactics, to theorising and writing about them.

While technical manuals, notably signalling books and the various Fighting Instructions, had been published before, no study of naval tactics had been written in English.

"[3] Clerk and his friend Robert Adam were wont to go out drawing together, and were joined in the late 1740s, by the younger Paul Sandby, the later, well-known English draughtsman, who was in Scotland under the Board of Ordnance Survey from 1746 to 1751.

Cooper received work from both Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and William Adam, placing him centrally within the Clerk/Adam circle.

He printed up to order though he was to pass this burden to Thomas Philipe "Printseller at his shop, second door of the Bull turnpike, opposite the Tron Church, Edinburgh" who also made up the sets.

His images, handled in a style that owed much to European master printers, capture the castles and ruins of Scotland in a fine picturesque manner.

The table at which he sits is covered with a miscellaneous collection of all sorts — paints and crayons, clay models, books, letters, instruments, specimens of mineralogy of all sorts, vials and chemical liquors for experiments, plans of battles ancient and modern, models of new mechanical engines, maps, sheets of music – in short an emblematical chaos of literature and science.