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1772: Death in London of convict contractor John Stewart - see essay below from Peter Dickson (UK)

This is a short version of the Introduction to a new book (2021) on Merchant Networks. (5-6-2021:) Merchant Networks: North America, Britain, India and Colonial Australasia; 1760-1860., by Dan Byrnes with Ken Cozens. Publisher unknown as at date above

Words = 7840 including footnotes.

superscription - “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main,” wrote the English poet John Donne in the 17th century. Cover = Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by John Trumbull (1820) or The World Turned Upside Down. Back cover = re Gov Phillip and convicts at Sydney. 1788. (By Talmage.)

How and why this book was written

This book finds some British-American merchant networks (as distinct from individual merchants) but it ends with a lament about the loss-to-research – and to maritime history - of 165, or as many as 200 British shipowners (1718-1865). 1 By the way, 1718-1865 is one reading of the length of time that Britain promoted its policy of transporting convicted persons. One can only say that it is a long time for any European country to promote such a little-changed policy!

There were about 200 British names (1718-1865), of merchants involved in transporting convicts abroad, sending them to British colonies, but their names have been mostly forgotten or, they have been overlooked; in North America (the USA) their operations (1718-1775) have been allowed to masquerade as traffic in “indentured labour”, which is not good enough … We can find only about 95-100 (1718-1865) of these 200, although, (we have to admit), most of those operating to North America have been identified and treated somewhat – but the same cannot be said for all the convict contractors operating to Australia …

Queen Victoria reigned 1837-1901, so the ending of convict transportation to Australia can be attributed to her reign. But just why most Australian historians – who live in an Anglicized monarchy still - are so reluctant to ask - who owned the convict ships? - we have to confess, we do not rightly know!

So this book asks not British questions, such as why did Britain settle Australia as a convict colony , or questions relateable to The Great Botany Debate … It instead asks Pacific questions, such as: Could the British Government about 1788 create a new colony in the South Pacific without annoying the Spanish empire? And the answer for most purposes is, no.

Meanwhile, we know that Evan Nepean, the Under-Secretary of the Home Office, probably the man responsible for the destiny of Britain’s convicts at Sydney, was also head of the British secret service of the day. 2 Hence Nepean had much to do – that ought to be re-examined by Australian historians. Some evident facts are that the British plan to settle convicts in Eastern Australia, which is much of the nub of contemporary, understandable Aboriginal resentment of this British “measure” against convicts, had much to do also with British anti-Spanishness, the British secret service, with “secret orders” earlier given to Cook - with much that is secret still. But nor do we pretend to have uncovered everything.

Suffice to say, this is all a different view of the British Government and much else. We do not ask questions – that are asked in Ged Martin’s anthology of articles on The Botany Bay Debate - such as: was the creation of a British convict colony in Eastern Australia an Imperial exercise, or not? 3 We conclude that it was an Imperial exercise, albeit a very unusual one, being concerned with convicts. …

But … Has there possibly been a cover-up regarding the First, Second and Third fleets of convict ships to Australia, to the time of the convict transport Royal Admiral I. (1786-1792) We otherwise treat matters 1760-1860, a period embracing two differently important events; the American Revolution (1776-1783) and the British takeover 1770-1788 of the sovereignty of New Zealand and Australia – called Australasia. To about the time of the US Civil War. (Or, The War of Northern Aggression as it still might be called in the more Southern USA.)

What is history?

There is a hoary old academic question, “what is history?” which we revisit. While New Zealand actor Sam Neill for example has made a thoughtfully Pacific Ocean-oriented documentary on the implications of Captain Cook’s “discoveries”; Cook being a now, largely-obsolete British “icon”.

Yet good as Neill is, (and humourous with it) there are topics he does not mention: including that Lt, as he originally was, not Captain, Cook, for all of his three voyages was merely a sailor-for-royalty obeying orders from his social betters. Cook on his first voyage merely sailed north past Eastern Australia and mentioned some “nice bits”. (The “nice bits” of Australia are in the south eastern corner, on the coasts of where most of the Australian population today congregates.)

And if anything, Cook did not discover Australia and New Zealand as much as he sorted out the Southern Hemisphere and what was in and not in it – and he scotched forever-after the idea of any “Great Southland” which had vainly bedevilled the geographic imagination of the Northern Hemisphere for millennia. Neill does mention Banks’ social superiority to Cook – a baronet is socially superior to a royal Navy cartographer - and that convicts were sent to Australia due to Banks’ 1779 and 1785 recommendations, but he does not mention the American Revolution particularly or that convicts were stopped from being sent to Virginia and Maryland in America. (That is, it might be said that Neill refrains from theorising.)

Neill does regard Cook as a science-minded Englishman who was out to change the history of the Pacific Ocean, but he fails to mention that Cook (and his compatriots and crew) would have gone quite mad if Cook had adopted the viewpoints of the many different indigenous people that he actually met. Cook was an ethnographer. but an ethnographer with a home and the home was in England.

We find that there are many holes in history; and we have tried to fill them. That is why this book laments especially the loss of the names of up to 200 British shipowners engaged 1718-1865 in convict transportation, and pursues this absence across the alleged history of three if not five national histories; of the USA, Great Britain, Australia (and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, British-India). Why it looks at questions of marine insurance. Why for example are US historians working on timeframes after 1783 allowed by the world’s maritime historians to ignore marine insurance as they do?

This book says about 45 new things, and addresses four major areas where traditional historians have produced treatments which might be challenged. The first stage of newness is with our assessment of British Contractors vs American Contractors during the American War of Independence 1776-1783. This stresses the roles of war contractors in general (American vs British) and British Loyalists in particular, and has not been done before as far as we know. We then move on to Britain’s use of shipping contractors 1775-1786, (which also has not been done before as far as we know), with attention given to those who would later to become involved in convict transportation to Australia.

We claim that the British Government acted to institute a cover-up (that Australian historians have gone along with) of Anglo-Australian convict transportation from the First Fleet to the time of the ship Royal Admiral I, (1786-1792) which had the ownership of East India Co. servants and instituted the use of East India Co.-owned shipping for the first time, in 1792; a cover-up instituted as the government, and its Transport Board as well, had got thoroughly sick of the anti-Spanishness and the financial games being played by some of the contractors involved-to-date in the business of transporting convicts - (the later Sir) alderman William Curtis, the slavers Camden, Calvert and King, and the London-based whaler, Samuel Enderby). We continue with the naming of the owners of the convict ships (which is a matter partially suppressed by Australian historians, to the detriment of Pacific Ocean maritime history), till we come during the Australian Gold Rushes period to the British capitalists to whom NSW reformer Caroline Chisholm finally spoke.

This book closes with treatments, as we continue to name some war contractors, of the Crimean War (a British War) and the US Civil War (a US war).

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Trying to understand ...

This book was written in particular ways which readers may or may not enjoy trying to understand. Our co-writing began in early 2007 and ended in 2021. In that time, the Australian Dan Byrnes, mostly with his reading, originally wandered about on the fringes of the British Empire (1760-1860), while Londoner Ken Cozens remained in London and its timeframes, developing more detail on developments in London-only. Many of the articles and books we read were written between the 1950s-1990s, indicating perhaps a generational emphasis pertinent to our own lifetimes and the concerns of our eras. (Noticeable to the historiographer, the years 1939-1945 of the Second World War were a definite interruption to the writing of economic history in many western countries, we will never know what scholars might have produced between 1930-1950 as they had been so badly interrupted.) But many of the authors we read were, like us, reliant on old reports of the behaviour of merchants over the centuries. With so many centuries to consider (with so much risk of becoming engrooved), and as with the South Sea Bubble, which burst in 1720 in England, with so many old reports on the behaviour of merchants, we felt obliged to revisit views on the very origins of Capitalism.

We wondered about debt vs wealth in International Economic History. And Byrnes for example began to wonder if the age-old distrust of “merchants”, which in England did not begin to lift till after the 1720s, once goldsmiths had become legitimate “bankers”, had not existed because trade was vulgar, as used to be thought, but because senior merchants became used to managing very large amounts of money, a task which earlier had been the domain only of royalty and their advisors, aristocrats or senior ecclesiastics (and/or their minions). Merchants’ and bankers’ money-managing thoughts were distrusted (by aristocracy and its minions), but nevertheless became enclosed in a rising social class that never stopped and was allowed even further impetus when European aristocracy reached its use-by date with the end of WWI. It is this rise we have tried to capture for the period 1760-1860.

This book is also a work of economic history which uses social history (including genealogy) to put views on human social life – and merchants and their families - back into Economic History and Economics, from where they should never have been dislodged or removed. As well, more so in Chapters 17-18, we present an entirely new theory from Ken Cozens (it has here been merely written up by Dan Byrnes) on “Pacific” aspects of the careers of the convict shippers to early European Australia (1786-1800) to which Australian historians, and British too, have remained oblivious. In brief, regarding “Sydney 1788” Australian historians have not forgotten the French empire, but they have largely forgotten the Spanish empire, partly because they have forgotten also to delve into the convict contractors. We try to redress the balance. What Ken Cozens has done here is merely to present some new evidence. History meantime will have to judge, which as we know all too well is mostly a slow process.

Not surprisingly, the four areas are linked. They are, more or less in chronological order, that the writing of the history of the American Revolution began too early, before what had happened to the people, to the genealogies, had been properly digested; the result has been, amongst other things, to re-present problems with historical thinking, that what happened with the Loyalists has been misrepresented by triumphalist writers of the American Revolution. It is now thought that about 40 per cent of America’s colonists remained loyal to Britain, (or, the King), and to overlook 40 cent of any population is to commit a grievous historical error.

We find that US historians (and rather mysteriously) have written little about the mechanics of getting rid of thirteen colonial governors, their staff and flunkeys, and it remains entertaining, to say the least, to ask, why not? (There is a difference, after all, we think, between History Proper and the history of nation-building.)

We also find that that historians in Great Britain have allowed themselves the luxury of ignoring discussion of England’s (or Britain’s) two sets of convict contractors operating to North America, that is, to Virginia and Maryland (1718-1775, about 30 of them) and then to Australian colonies (1786-1865, about 165 of them).

Moving along, we find that most Australian historians, and they are mostly landlubbers, although the matter remains mostly unspoken, also and almost as a matter of pride, continue to ignore the 165 sets of shipowners involved in convict transportation to Australia. This Australian historical attitude has persisted since the 1930s if not beforehand, and it is high time, because it interferes badly with new research, it was stopped; more so as it is now clearer that few if any Australian historians have ever had at their disposal the entire story of convict transportation from Great Britain 1718-1865.

It may as well be said here that the difficult or even forgotten genealogies include those of Duncan Campbell (1726-1803) and also William Bligh (which includes aide-de-camp to Gov. Lachlan Macquarie, Henry Colden Antill (1779-1852)); London aldermen William Curtis (Sir Baronet, the baronetcy still survives), London alderman George. M. Macaulay. The Enderby whalers of Blackheath London regarding Wheatley of Boston (Massachusetts, USA) and the African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley. Even an allegedly well-known Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill can be included here – as his mother’s uncle, Thomas Atwater Jerome, had a mother, Emma Vanderbilt, from some mostly unknown Vanderbilts of New York state/city, USA. And so we re-treated the genealogies of the US mariners who visited Sydney from 1792. The identities of the British convict contractors to Australia 1786-1860s, especially Camden, Calvert and King. Quite simply, some important names have been forgotten.

All this is partly how and why this book, which covers mainly the period 1760-1860, a mere century, was written in particular ways which many readers may or may not enjoy trying to understand, but certainly, the reader willing to go-google on various names or topics (and to make notes) will learn and re-learn much. Our co-writing began in 2006/2007 and ended in 2021. In that period, the Australian Byrnes mostly with his reading scampered about on the fringes of the British Empire (1760-1860), while the Londoner, Ken Cozens, remained in London and its timeframes, developing more detail on developments in London only. And we noticed that many people we wanted to mention by 2021 had their own wikipedia pages on the Internet... Until things changed, roles were switched, and Byrnes read on London and the wider, provincial England, on the British Empire as seen from London; while Cozens scampered about in the branches of the British colonies and then moved on deeper into the Spanish empire, before the time of Cook (1770 and later). (See Chapters 17-18.)

Works of exhumation

As well, as part of the Addenda material we provide, we present new information on Lane, Son and Fraser (LSF), the Anglo-American bank (or commission house) we have rediscovered, which had its own kind of influence on pre-Revolutionary America, and the American Revolution, but which finally failed in London in 1793.

We slowly became even more convinced that ship-using merchants (and bankers) were important to notice, dangerous to ignore. We have ended, we feel, with making such linkages apparent for the period 1760-1860; sometimes at tedious length, sometimes, we hope, with breathtaking audacity. The least we can do is leave our readers forewarned, if not better entertained by our dredging-up of long-forgotten names. We might observe in passing that those “Heroic Socialists” who from time to time for the past 150 years or more have gleefully predicted the imminent collapse of “Capitalism”, have almost uniformly ignored the remarkable number of ships continually coursing the world’s seas and oceans – and the ports of all continents except Antarctica - while economic arguments rage on in world capitals. Nor has this been remarked-on by non-Socialists on whom we have read. Here we tend to blame maritime historians, including ourselves, for making the maritime historian presence less-than-felt across the generations.

During research too, we two co-writers, Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens, received surprises from another Australian researcher, Prof. Gary Sturgess, who had a powerful new research project on the first years of convict transportation to Australia from Britain, 1784-1800 and shared his findings with an abandon of generosity that amazed us. New information from Sturgess entailed major re-writing for the drafting of this book.

And this book, which dwells on views of merchant networks across eras that were crucial for modern history, is located in broad regions of the British Empire which may be felt inconvenient by some readers, particularly if English is not their first language. Broadly speaking, the location is the breadth of The British Empire as it changed after the American Revolution. So, the authors need to skip from sub-location to sub-location to make their points.

But genealogies, we find, are not entirely consistent, and therein lies yet another problem this book tries to solve. We submit that anyone who feels that the various Dictionaries of Biography available from any of these zones of the British Empire are adequate, has not examined enough family histories; a great many interesting genealogies, even of the great or the powerful, might contain omissions, over-adulations of individuals, and what only can be called, holes. This book is a warning about where conclusions can lead when and where genealogies have not been pursued as keenly as modern technology makes possible.

Too often, we have found unwanted tensions evident – tensions that should not exist - between History Proper and Genealogy. Other tensions we chose to try to cope with as we wrote, arose due to our creating and managing a website on topics helping to comprise this book, and exchanging e-mail with website readers interested enough to respond to us. Genealogy is an uncertain art at the best of times; almost every family has a skeleton in the closet somewhere (as seen from whose point of view?), and errors abound, though they are at least increasingly exposed as errors as the Internet improves its software and its sophistications. We continue to live however in some fear of the poor genealogical memories of laypeople who might have a poor grasp of History Proper.

Since the American Revolution ...

We have also found that since the American Revolution, American historians have not been assiduous enough in pursuing information on the careers of many Americans, who by 1775, or after 1775, remained on the pro-British path. Not all of them were actual Loyalists, some were merely children of actual Loyalists who could or would be named as Loyalists by 1783.

This might have to do too with cultural assimilation, with cultural cross-fertilisation, more so as in 2015-2021, Australia is a highly-Americanized society; while in contemporary Anglo-American relations, Britain remains a valued ally of the USA. So with our newly-revised sets of information, all about interesting individuals, we hope to plants some seeds, Johnny Appleseed-wise, leading to some places to revised outlooks. With any such issues that are raised here, we find some to be blocked by nationalistic concerns; some American historians have not pursued information far enough (and have tended to overlook and underestimate the early British-European history of the Pacific Ocean). British historians here have mostly remained discreetly quiet, and Australians have not delved deeply enough, certainly not regarding the Spanish Empire, which has also been sidelined by the Americans. All this becomes more a syndrome of problems with history writing, traceable to nationalism in history writing, that we feel bound to mention …

Data on some individuals including some women has been entered as a proof that they once actually existed. Inspecting the careers of individual merchants as we went, we also noticed that aspects of London history remain at issue. As questions of assessing historical tradition, of assessing today´s cultural prisms and the kinds of selectivities historians use as they write, we found problems with the urban and commercial history of the hub of our work, London, the capital city of Britain.

A role for London?

Prior to the American Revolution, London had been the capital of North America, politically and otherwise; and because Australia and New Zealand are still, technically, monarchies, London remains the spiritual capital of Australia and New Zealand. By 1783 this situation had been thoroughly rejected by Americans, whose historians later tended to perceive London, and most of its inhabitants, as a city to be mostly held at arm´s length. Meanwhile, following discoveries in the Pacific by the English explorer James Cook, in the 1780s, London produced the politicians, commentators, merchants and convicts traditionally associated with the history of the British acquisition of Australasia – although a few names were missed.

However, the London seen by American historians is different to the London seen by Australian historians or indeed any historians spread around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. Yet London itself at the time remained the same, populated with the same political and commercial names, whether or not the London which produced convicts bound for Australia had been rejected by Americans or not. To mention this is not necessarily to recall British Imperial History for any particular reasons; it has more to do with unifying information (as “a people-history”) on the careers of merchants who were residents of London. We wondered then, about the extent to which histories of London could be re-unified to reduce the informational discrepancies arising due to the different ways that life in London – he who tires of London has tired of life – has been perceived by American and Australian historians. What, we asked, might this re-unified London look and feel like?

It is rather as the US 1960s folksinger line goes, about “what´s been did and what's been hid”. Our co-writer discussions of what has been hid can become lengthy, and require us to skip from place to place within the changing British Empire. The careers of a variety of notable merchants, we claim, have been somewhat misconstrued via any variety of processes of history-writing. We have tried to redress some balance. And we know, that few people, particularly economics and business types, read depressing poetry such as The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot, who once said that human beings cannot bear too much of reality, because the economics and business types actually do not wish to know – about The Wasteland. Writers and readers, we find, however, often wish to know more about The Wasteland. So, c’est la vie.

Economic History and the war contractor

As locations change, one of our main linkage concepts, and it does not necessarily involve international traders, is more than anything else about the man who contracts particular services to the Empire he lives in, the military contractor.

We have not been particularly interested in military history, per se, but we wondered, in particular, just why do historians tend to so overlook war contractors? Wars can hardly be well-conducted without soldiers and sailors being well-supplied, and financially, governments find that finalizing payments to contractors for their contributions to a war effort can take many years; so the ways in which governments deal with military contractors are stories which criss-cross the narratives of both war and peace. Governments settling with military contractors is hardly a new topic, in actuality, yet it is relatively new to history. British historians since the time of Elizabeth I have been candid about governments (or regimes) recruiting commercial operators (including privateers) to aid war efforts, but even so, few books exist on military-commercial operators, and they are mostly mentioned in passing in treatments of other topics. In this context, a modern trend might be mentioned, because it reveals some consequences of the neglect historians have given to the topic of military contracting – the state of many of today´s websites.

This contractor is a man, the man, who has been given little enough attention in his own right due to a disapproving prejudice that seems to exist in universities in many countries. But particularly, not by British historians, who, candid as they can be, have overlooked the role of many a military contractor in Imperial History, presumably both in the interests of ¨Imperial spin¨ as well as publisher parsimony (which means, reader parsimony).

North American readers, from Canada or the USA, will find some surprises in this book, and Australians will find many surprises, about the men who provided shipping for the transportation of convicts to Australia. Readers from Asia, or any Spanish or French-speaking country, or from any country adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, will find material in this book they are unlikely to have been able to read 50 or even 20 years ago.

Economic History and ‘hooking”

Meanwhile, it is a general and widely-accepted approach in Economic History to regard the commercial or trading career of a newly discovered location, or technology, as a matter of activities and/or resources, as being ¨hooked¨ into pre-existing, more developed and usually stronger economies. The view is taken in this book that the ¨hooking¨ is performed by merchants operating within networks, although sometimes it is apparent that mostly-European governments or regimes assist the work of “hooking”. It is apparent at times, too, that governments might act to inhibit or disinhibit ¨hooking¨ according to the political flavours of the times. And that where the effects of natural disasters do not prevail, war is mostly the major interruption to trade that merchant suffer.

In general, humanity prefers that trade not be interrupted. But after a product becomes commercially successful, the names of individual people can also, once they are ¨hooked¨ via commerce, might also enter folklore. In the history of pioneering Nineteenth Century America, the names of two gunmakers, Colt and Remington, ring very loudly here, more so to fans of American western movies.

Or, we could look here to the almost comically-absurd extents to which Australians have advertised their nineteenth century wool industry, with the result that in Australia the sheep shearer, an ordinary working man, became a high-voltage figure in Australian folklore, while for centuries previous, English and Scottish sheep shearers had been dutifully working season by season, yet English and Scottish folklores or folksongs say hardly a word about them.

While the more modern outcomes of ¨hooking¨ - more the products of new technology than old-style colonialism, can be very entertaining, engaging our curiosity on anything from shearing to the invention of gadgets utilising a once new-fangled resource such as electricity, to gossip about how an now-ubiquitous, aerated drink like Coca-Cola had once contained cocaine; now an illegal drug.

Given that entire histories that can be ranged around the idea of ¨hooking¨, one might perhaps wonder again how the Australian continent (or, the world´s largest island), was hooked to pre-existing economies. For ostensibly from 1788, Britain settled south-eastern Australia, the part most worth settling, as a government initiative, by way of transporting convicted criminals there, then sustaining colonies for them to populate, and to work in – mostly in agrarian pursuits. How did a government funded-and-managed establishment manage to develop a private sector? Was the investment worth it for the British government? For the British private sector? Is it worth asking, just how much money was represented by the investment? (This question had been asked by the Nineteenth Century. We feel it should continue to be asked.)

We adopt this line of argument with a proviso. Australian historians have generally under-estimated the extent to which merchants (shipowners) assisted their government´s activity of transporting convicts to Australia via a system of contracting for the provision of services offered by shipowners. For the period 1784-1800, we have found since we began our book, that new research by Assoc. Prof Gary Sturgess achieved a fuller realisation of the motives for the involvement of merchants in convict transportation. But we had anyway decided to examine merchant careers across a century or more of British Imperial History. Broadly speaking, as to theoretical frameworks in either of sociology, economic history or maritime history, we have placed our views of merchant careers partly with the terms of theories which emphasise the non-economic as well as the economic values of human networks. 8 We find, that merchants work within networks (as explained in the last chapter of this book). Membership of a network has values for a member that may be other-than-economic, due to support given, say, to religious or ethnic affiliations, or to interests in the use of new technology; or as in the case of Australasia, or the wider Pacific, the scientific as well as economic and maritime value of new explorations. One result of this approach is that we find it somewhat easier to dredge new material on merchants and their involvements. More surprises arise here for the reader …

Central here is one realisation we have drawn from economic and maritime, history, one which we feel that many economic historians, and other kinds of historians, using other kinds of expertise, have missed out on. It is one of those simple/complex realisations that tend to bedevil historians, in that it has to do with the assessment of levels of ineffable social complexity. Because if there is one thing historians find difficult to assess, it is how individuals (and their advisers), individuals such as kings, rulers, and other powerful people, actually experience and wield their power, their effectiveness. We are not here talking about geniuses, or even kings, but mere merchants. Merchants who in European society from Tudor times had to slowly climb from relative social obscurity and even oppression till centuries later they helped to advise rulers and governments.

Australia and penal colonization?

The work of colonizing Australia was part of this revisionary geo-political work. Australia (newly Anglicized) was hooked to larger economic and political concerns by plans hatched within a grand imperial strategy. (Which as shorthand we will term here, grand plans). Access to fresh supplies of naval stores, timber for shipping, and flax or hemp for ropes and sails, some Australian historians claim, had loomed large in the grand plans. 9 The present writers find for example that many of Prof. Frost´s claims are not borne out by the relevant shipping records. And since we understand that trade in the late eighteenth century was greatly a matter of carrying goods in ships, (whether or not a trading nation was a formidable naval power) we are at a loss to understand how and why Frost ignores the shipping records as he does. Frost ignores, for example, the role of London-based whalers in convict transportation. Frost concentrates greatly on the views of politicians, and ignores merchant names and activity that one might have thought relevant, such as in 1786-1788, the most important timber suppliers to the British navy. There is then, a mismatch of data to be discussed, a problem of timeframes. which the present writers viewed as presenting an opportunity. We moved from today´s writings back to square one, as far as university-produced writing is concerned, to the first two PhD theses written on the early colonization of Australia – by Wilfird Oldham (1933) and Eris O´Brien (1937), Oldham being unfortunately, little-read till recent years.

For their day, both Oldham and O´Brien gave suitable attention to the shipping used to carry convicts to Sydney, and both discussed a penal colonization, sans grand plans. Perhaps it can be said that because they had so strongly assumed a penal colonization, their discussion of shipping matters were re-examined little, and engrossed later writers very little. (From the 1930s, due to movies, and even before, the Pacific shipping business which did become conspicuous in popular history was, of course, the Mutiny on the Bounty!) In which Bateson, Australia’s chief historian of convict-shifting shipping, remarked: (p. 2): 11 "Its (Australia's) colonisation was the rich reward garnered from (James) Cook's voyagings, but its settlement was not effected in the tradition and spirit which had inspired the great navigator. The circumstances of the founding of Australia are divorced entirely from those of its discovery and exploration by Cook. The mainspring was very different, and in the conditions of the day, and the state of man's thoughts and outlook at the time, it was perhaps inevitable that it should be so. Never in history were a country's beginnings laid by such unhappy and unenthusiastic pioneers as the seven hundred and fifty-nine convicts of Australia's first fleet and the thousands of prisoners who followed them into an unwanted exile."

Agreeing with Bateson here, we are at a loss to understand “the Cook worshippers” of this world. Agreeing with the O’Brien theory of penal colonization as we do, though seeing events as an aftermath of the American Revolution, we proceed here then with a re-examination of the shipping records, and what they indicate, mean, imply and suggest, for The Botany Bay Debate. We arrive at conclusions quite different to Frost´s, and to those of other major voices of the debate, especially Blainey and K. M. Dallas.

We hope the reader discovers from this book, how the bunching of information on merchant networks can help us redevelop perspectives on history, history which is contested or not. In brief, we hope to have given our readers new things to think about in the context of the Europeanization of Australia, and the Europeanisation of the wider Pacific Ocean, whether the inaugurating spirit for Australia was penal colonization or not.

We rather feel that smarting after the loss of their American colonies, seeing how their numbers of transportable convicts were increasing, how the risk of convict uprisings was growing, as shows in the penal history formed by the Thames River prison hulks, Britain´s politicians remained more grumpy than anything else. The political decision to initiate convict transportation to Australia was basically a national, silent-majority decision; that something needed to be done went without saying. Convict transportation lasted in England from 1718 (if not before) till the 1860s, rather a long time for any single government policy to last … Sending convicts to Australia was more a question of government continuing to kick the national cat than of orchestrating novel ways to enhance a grand plan for Imperial expansion in a brand new ocean at the expense of the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and those annoying Americans as well. For it was also understood, if not much admitted or admired in Britain, that now-freed-up American ambitions would greatly energise trading scenarios around the world.

And so it was, American ships were calling into Sydney Harbour, Britain´s new convict colony, by 1792, surprisingly early! By 1850, American whaling had quite eclipsed British whaling in the Pacific Ocean, despite the fact that British whalers were the first to enjoy Pacific opportunities. In this book we follow then, Eris O´Brien´s views of 1937 – that the penal colonisation of Australia was an aftermath of the American Revolution. This then became our chief reason to begin a discussion with … The American War of Independence.

This book in short uses a gradualist, longitudinal approach. And our concerns have been broader than an interest in merchant careers ranged around the period of the British Imperial capture of the sovereignties of Australia and New Zealand, or the period following the American Revolution. We have then, re-explored many timeframes ... and implicitly we ask, if it is the case that some of these timeframes can turn out to be misleading, can they please be changed?

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Follows a list (mostly given alphabetically, and here shortened) of just some of the e-mailers (2006-2021) to our website, and/or the webmasters of relevant websites, who have kindly assisted with our work on re-assessing genealogies and merchant careers. Our emailers include: Elsie Mitchell re Macaulays of Blackheath, Kent. Tess Hocking re Captain W. W. Bampton. Tom Landers (USA re Lane, Son and Fraser, or LSF). And Professor Christopher Lloyd, PhD. Adjunct Professor in Social Science History, Helsinki University, Finland. Emeritus Professor in Economic History, University of New England, Armidale, Australia. Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

And : Raymond Chottel of Switzerland on Chottel/de Tastet family history. Joanne Heyland, Western Australian Genealogical Society, Convict Special Interest Group, newsletter. Marie C. Yarborough, Curator, William Otis Sawtelle Collections & Research Center, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine. Acadia National Park, 20 McFarland Hill Drive or POB 177, Bar Harbor, ME 04609, USA. (Re LSF.) E-mailers: Caroline Alexander, (Australia). Frances Allen (Brighton, UK on Scots names, various). Alex Asprey (on ship Hougoumont as a Blackwall frigate, the last convict ship to Australia, built 1852 in Burma and used in the Crimean War, built by Samuel Palmer Gladstone). Edward Attridge (UK, on whaler James Mather). David R. Arathoon (Canada, on The First Campbells on Jamaica and their descendants, of which he is one). Peter Barrett (Caloundra, Queensland, Australia on merchants Buckle, Buckle, Bagster and Buchanan of London). Ann Bell (re the Anglo-American bankers defunct from early 1793, Lane, Son and Fraser (LSF)).

Patrick Cates (on Thomas Lane of LSF). Tomas Christie (UK, re Calvert genealogies). Christopher Codrington (on Caribbean names). Dr. John Concannon, President, Gaspee Days Committee, USA on Captain Benjamin Page. Christine Crawford of Turramurra, Sydney, NSW, on a Phillips family and Sydney merchant Richard “China” Jones. Diane Cummings (on Duncan Dunbar II). Pauline McGregor Currien (India List, on directors and merchants of the East India Co. generally). Keith Dawson (Queensland, Australia, on the Enderby whalers of England). Peter Dickson (UK, on Dicksons as planters on Jamaica and The First Campbells on Jamaica plus JS&C – Stewart and Campbell, convict contractors from 1758-1775- from England to Virginia and Maryland.) Prof. Harry Duckworth (Canada, on Fraser of the bankers LSF). David Edwards on the Dunbar shipping line. Nick Freeman (on the convict contracting firm Buckle, Boyd, Bagster and Buchanan). John Freesmith on Gordons, the family of General “Chinese” Gordon of Khartoum who link in turn to Enderbys the whalers of Blackheath, London). Irene M. Fullarton (Melbourne, on Captain Essex Henry Bond). Michael Garry on William Larkins (the East India accountant-general in India for Gov-Gen Warren Hastings) of the Blackheath family. David Gibbon on David Scott Snr’s line in 2005. David Goodrich in 2015 re LSF in USA, not Britain. Shelli Gordon on London Alderman George Mackenzie Macaulay and Paul Robinson on same. David Gibbon on David Scott Snr in 2005. Richard Hardinge in 2018 re LSF. Chris Harris (on Ricketts of Jamaica). Richard Hazell (on John H. Hazell and Sons of St Vincent, West Indies). Mary Hover (USA, on the Pattle family). Christine Hughes (on convict ship Barwell). Patricia Iseke (of New Zealand, now deceased, on merchants associated with Forbes and Co. of Bombay from the 1790s to 1820+., and Tony Fuller, likewise). Helen Jackson (Australia, on Osbert Forsyth and names variously associated with Duncan Dunbar II). Thomas Kehr in 2012 of Northfield, New Hampshire, USA (on LSF). Pamela James on Larkins of Blackheath. Dr. Jennie Jeppersen (Melbourne University, on convict transportation to America then to Australia). Jacqui Jones (of Australia on Sir William Curtis). Kate Josepheson (on Thomas King of firm Camden, Calvert and King). Thomas Kehr (Northfield, New Hampshire USA on LSF in 2012). Anne Kelsall (of UK, on Larkins of Blackheath). Orel Lea (on the American mariner Captain Benjamin Page). Michael Longmire of Virginia, USA. Sue McCallum on the convict contractor W. C. Oldfield/Owlfield. Sherry McNair of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (on American colonial merchant Anthony Stewart). Jonathan Malone (on Larkins genealogy at Blackheath). Andrew Montgomerie (on nephews Anderson of merchant Richard Oswald). Andrew Montgomerie (of New Zealand re LSF.) London historian Derek Morris (UK, an associate of Ken Cozens). Assoc. Prof . Sinem Ogis (of Germany/Turkey, re insurance history in Britain.) Charles E. G. Pease on Chapman family of Whitby. Nicola Pledge (UK to Ken Cozens) on London alderman G. M. Macaulay. Allan and Yvonne Pope of New Zealand on Mangles genealogy. Jane Quinlan on Money family. George Rosenberg ( lawyer of UK/France on Anglo-American merchants William Neate and Henry Chapman and the Philadelphian merchants Wharton and their associates). John A. Rorabacher (re Laurence Sulivan and Bengal). Honor Sachs on convict hulk Justitia. Pamela Smith (Australia, of Blue Mountains City Council, Heritage Advisory Committee on Campbells of NSW). Marion Starr (on pre-1800 ship Pitt to NSW, owned by London alderman George. M. Macaulay). Prof. Gary Sturgess (Sydney, Australia, on British merchants involved in convict transportation to Australia 1786-1810). Michael H. Styles (US author on Capt. Michael Hogan).

Derek Townshend (UK and Hong Kong, on the genealogy of “Tommy Townshend”, Lord Sydney). Philip Vaughan (on emigration agent John Marshall). May and Nick Walker (London, UK, on Larkins of Blackheath). Tessa Watson on Third Fleet and Britannia and on her ancestor Captain Thomas Melville. Andrew Wells (UK, on the Wells shipbuilding family). Wayne Weighill (UK) in 2017 re Chapman of Whitby family history. Gay Wilson (on convict transport Capt. John Coghill and also Ken Vernon of Gold Coast, Australia). Mark Williams (UK on St Barbe lineages). Wendy Winter (UK webmaster on early British naval history). Gerry Whitmore (on Peter Evet Mestaers of London).

Genealogy remarks also from Leo van de Pas (1942-2016), Canberra, Australia. Leghorn Merchants Networks website. Genealogy researchers at www.stirnet.com/ and at famhist.familysearch.org/. Darryl Lundy, genealogist at www.thepeerage.com (128 Heke St., Wellington, New Zealand). Also my cousin Stephen Musgrave and his wife Deborah Watters (on the Fowke family’s travels from Clive’s India to Wales in Great Britain to New Zealand to Sydney, Australia.) Findagrave websites in UK, Canada and the USA. Genealogy websites in Australia such as Australian Royalty, and in New Zealand; re British-India, USA. Sam Sloan’s Big Combined Family Tree. The US website mysouthern family by Josephine Lindsay Bass and Becky Bonner. Websites on various Lee family(s) of Virginia. The Maryland State Archives website. William Adams Reitwiesner Genealogical Services (USA at www.wargs,com/).

Webmasters unknown: for example at Camilla von Massenbach genealogy. Also, genealogical websites (and other) by wikipedia (to whom we have donated), www.geni.com, de, rootsweb and other genealogical websites too numerous to mention.

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Shipping Timelines Five 1760-1780 (work-in-progress)

This file is devoted to presenting basic Shipping Timeline information in a global perspective for website readers. The items are often sketchy, and some have been extracted from other websites managed by Dan Byrnes. Where possible, ships will have their date-of-departure noted as the compilers believe that a ship's departure date gives some indications of the business plan of the owners, whatever the outcome of the voyage. These Timelines will be added-to intermittently, as new data and new e-mail arrives. Book titles will be entered according to the timeframes they treat.

This is file Shipping Timeline5 - To go to the next file in this Merchant Networks timeline series, click to Ships Timeline 6

Year 1760

Reference item 1760: George Blake, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, 1760-1966. London, Printed by Lloyd's Register of Shipping, nd? [1960?]

1760: Lloyd's: The customers of Edward Lloyd`s coffee house, who were used to doing business in its sociable atmosphere, formed the Register Society. This later became Lloyd`s Register. (This item is from a UK website detailing a Lloyd`s Register timeline from 1760)

Year 1761

More to come

Year 1762

1762: Reference item: A relevant title here is: Alice Keith, 'Relaxations in British restrictions on American Trade with the British West Indies, 1783-1802', Journal of Modern History, Vol. XX, March, 1948. Cf., Ruwell on US ship insurance, pp. 75ff, there were Philadelphia underwriters who insured the slave trade, as the books of Kidd and Bradford show, Philadelphia ships traded with African ports in 1762, as did those of Willing, Morris and Co. of April 29, 1762, Willing and Morris insured at 16 per cent the master of the brigantine Nancy, Captain/master William Rodman, from coast of Africa to Maryland. A Negro was valued then at 25 pounds sterling per head.

Year 1763

More to come

Year 1764

1764: Reference item: A. M. Schlesinger, Prelude To Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-1776. New York. 1957.

1764: Contractor, Gedney Clark (1711-1764), with a Lascelles firm (Wilkinson and Gaviller). (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

1764: Contractor, packet boat operations to West Indies 1764-1782, Edward Lewis (nd). (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

1764: Lloyd's: First Register of Ships published, to inform underwriters and merchants about the condition of vessels they insured or chartered. An important feature has been the classification of the hull and equipment of vessels. Following a survey, Lloyd`s Register assigned to it a "class", depending on how well it had been built and its current condition. If it was to remain "in class", the ship had to have regular surveys. 1768, Second edition published. (This item is from a UK website detailing a Lloyd`s Register timeline from 1760)

Year 1765

More to come

Year 1766

More to come

Year 1767

More to come

Year 1768

1768: La Boudese. French Navy. Captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. West Pacific Exploration.

1768: Etoile. French Navy. Captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. 1768. Exploration.

1768-1770: HM Endeavour. The ship used for Capt. James Cook's first voyage of exploration.

Year 1769

8 October 1769: New Zealand. Capt James Cooks lands on New Zealand together with Daniel Solander and Joseph Banks.

1769: Englishman Samuel Hearne makes some search for any North-West Passage from Europe by America to China or the Indies, or a passage from the Atlantic to the North Pacific. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 26.

Year 1770

1770s: Contractor military in India, George Clive (died 1779), later a banker.

1770s: Zong, slave ship, British, Notknown, Famous Mansfield legal case re ship insurance and the legality of slavery. See the wikipedia page on Zong Massacre.

1770: Endeavour. RN. Captain James Cook. 1767-1770. Pacific Exploration,and re Transit of Venus as seen from Tahiti. She was later bought by James Mather. A notable American sailing with Cook was "the traveller" John Ledyard, America's first travel writer.

1770: Reference item: Richard S. Dunn, 'Masters, Servants and Slaves In The Colonial Chesapeake And The Caribbean', in David B. Quinn, Ed.), Early Maryland In A Wider World. Detroit. 1982.

1770: Reference item: I. Turner, The Australian Dream: A Collection of Anticipations About Australia From Captain Cook to the Present Day. Sun Books, Melbourne, 1968.

1770: Endeavour HM. RN. Captain James Cook. 1767-1770. Exploration. British Whaling investor James Mather bought her after she was decommissioned as a naval vessel after Cook's return. She then re-entered the Navy and was lost to the Americans, ending in the harbour at Newport, Rhode Island.

Estimated 1770: Canada, contractor, William Grant, related to Robert Grant of London who had naval supplies contracts. (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

1770s

After the British take Quebec, Colin Drummond (died 1776) became an agent for London firm, of Fludyer and Drummond, also a partner with Jacob Jordon. Is deputy-paymaster of British forces in Quebec Province.

Contractor, for British military during Am Rev, an American, Loyalist John Watts (nd)

Contractor, military financing, Sir Bart1, Joshua Vanneck (1702-1777). Associated with banker Thomas Walpole (1727-1803).

Pre-1775, Contractor for mail to America, John Sargent (1714-1791) a director Bank of England. He also supplied to Africa. In business with Richard Oswald, John Mill, Augustus and John Boyd, Alexander Grant. Also with firm with George Aufrere as Sargent, Aufrere and Co. Also linked to Richard Strattion (1704-1759).

Contractor, American military, Robert Morris (1734-1806). See also his links to Daniel Parker contractor to American military (). And to Carter Braxton in Virginia.

Contractor, army clothier, Galfridus Mann (active 1770).

Contractor, victuals to Nova Scotia, loans to government, Robert Jones from 1770 till his death. (1704-1774). Partner with Peregrine Cust qv.

Contractor, American naval operations, John Holker Junior (1745-1822) and his textiler father Jean (1719-1785).

Contractor, military Victuals and John Baron1 Hennicker (1724-1803). His father was a mast importer.

Contractor, army, London Lord Mayor James Esdaile (circa 1715-1799).

Contractor, American Revolutionary War, military, William Duer (circa 1745-1799).

Contractor, British army clothier, James Duberley (nd).

Contractor, military, William Devaynes (1730-1809).

Victuals contractor, Cope. More to come.

Contractor, military, re supplying British in Am Rev, MP banker Abel II Smith (1717-1788) of Smiths Payne and Smiths bankers.

Army agents, Richard Cox (1718-1803) of army agents Cox Cox and Greenwood. See also, Richard Henry Cox. See also re Charles Greenwood (active 1782), a brother-in-law of Thomas Hammersley. Also, Charles Hammersley (1748-1832) related to the Greenwood family.


Year 1771

1773: Contractor, military re horses, victuals and ordnance, Nicholas Linwood (died 1773). Business partner with Brice Fisher and Sir William Baker qv. (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

1771: Contractor (various to America?), Christopher Kilby (1705-1771) a partner with Sir William Baker qv.

1771: 10 April: Breton noble and French naval officer Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Tremarec (senior) and his companion also from Breton, Louis Francois Marie Aleno de Saint Alouarn, (second-in-command), are given permission by Louis XV of France to make a voyage of exploration south to the islands of Saint Paul and Amsterdam with an aim of discovering Terres Australes. The two do try to discover what the French called Gonneville Land. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 2, pp. 26-27.

Year 1772

1772: Le Mascarin. French. Capt Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne. Exploration of Tasmania, later to New Zealand.

1772: 16 February, French mariner de Kerguelen decides to return to Ile de France where he arrives on 16 March. Then he went to France where he claimed (rather misleadingly) to have found a part of the terres australes which was situated advantageously in terms of other maritime holdings of France. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 4.

1772: 8 April: Gros Ventre leaves coast of West Australia and heads for Timor to arrive there 3 May 1772. Some crew were ill, island life was described. On 1 July these Frenchmen left Timor for Batavia and was there by 18 July, staying till 8 August, thence for home by 4 September. But having contracted illness in Batavia, Louis de Saint Alouarn died on 27 October 1772 at Port Louis, Ile de France. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 5, p. 199.

1772: 17 March. The French ship Gros Ventre (under de Saint Alouarn) had searched long for ship Fortune between Gap Bourbon and Gap Louis, but in vain. By 17 March Gros Ventre arrived off Flinders Bay to south of Cape Leeuwin. Corrections were made to older French charts, some 29 years before Mathew Flinders would be in the area. On 29 March Gros Ventre was off Turtle Bay, Dirk Hartog Island on Western Australian coast. Crew were sent on land to survey and claim possession. These Frenchman found little evidence of any human habitation. Some ceremony of possession by the French took placed on 30 March on the northern cliff of Dirk Hartog Island, overlooking Turtle Bay. This was an annexation, with a raising of a flag, firing of a volley of shots, and reading a document prepared for such circumstances. The document was then placed in a bottle buried at the foot of a shrub, and two ecus of six francs were left nearby. There was some other proof. Two anchors had been lost around Shark Bay. A gunner named Massicot had died and was buried at the foot of the cliff, the first Frenchman to be buried on Australian soil. Matters remained little-known till archaeology in 1998 verified French accounts. (No body of the gunner was found.) (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., pp. 4-6.

1772: Gros Ventre. French. Captain Louis-Francois Alleno de Saint-Allourn. 1771-1772. Exploration of north West Australian coast. Claimed possession for France He in Len Zell's second eco-tourism book on the n/w Australian coast is Francois de St Allouam at Cape Inscription, a northernmost point of Dirk Hartog Island.

1772: Contractor, army agent, John Calcraft (1726-1772). (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

Year 1773

1773: John Blackburn of London (died 1798), contractor, tea merchant to New York, is involved in Boston Tea Party tea deal.

1773: The Boston Tea Party

A variety of today's US websites unfortunately seem rather confused about the ships of the Boston Tea Party political protest. Some websites are confused about which captain was aboard which ship. Much confusion reigns about the ownerships of the ships involved, and/or the ownership of the tea cargoes. Confusion also reigns as to whether the tea was from China (Bohea tea) or from Darjeeling in India. (India did not produce tea for the EICo by 1773.) Today's US patriots on the Internet also tend to ignore the extent to which Americans by 1773 enjoyed smuggled (and cheaper) Dutch tea, a habit which had been concerning British merchants in Britain for some years, and presumably concerned their agents in America. Merchant Networks Project here tries to sort it out somewhat. The four ships intended to land tea at Boston were American-owned. The tea cargoes were British-owned, consigned to American merchants who never finally took delivery.

Two of the three ships were whalers owned (mostly) by Nantucket Island whaling merchant William Rotch (brother of the 23-year-old Francis noted below. You can find a treatment of Rotch genealogy here.)

Two of the three ships had carried cargoes of whale oil to London earlier in 1773. The three ships of the Boston Tea Party (by date of arrival to Boston before the Tea Party) were: Dartmouth Captain James Hall arriving Sunday 28 November, 1773, Eleanor Captain James Bruce (a Tory), arriving 1 or 2 December 1773 (reports differ) and Beaver Captain Hezekiah Coffin arriving Wednesday 15 December, 1773. Boston's patriots called a public protest meeting on 16 December.
A fourth tea-carrying ship intended to reach Boston, William, (treated below) was diverted by a storm and ended destroyed.

Dartmouth Captain James Hall was built as a whaler. Mate was Alexander Hodgon (as named in Drake, Tea Leaves). Had 114 tea chests, eight weeks from London, arrived Boston/Griffin's Wharf on Sunday 28 November. Online, a Boston Tea Party Gazette item says Dartmouth was allowed to unload all her cargo except the tea. Dartmouth was then moved to Griffin's Wharf. Francis Rotch (aged 23) represented the Dartmouth's owners, being a brother of the said owner, William Rotch, they being sons of Joseph Rotch (1704-1784) and Love Macy. (See also, Drake, Tea Leaves.) James Hall does not seem to appear for any Google query re Hall genealogy of Nantucket, his genealogy seems entirely unavailable. Dartmouth was built at Darmouth about 1767, and in April 1774 was loaded with oil at Nantucket and sailed for London; she foundered on her way back in November and her crew was picked up by Shubael Coffin of Nantucket.
Cf online at www.archive.org/stream, L. Vernon Briggs, (1889), History of shipbuilding on the North River, Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with genealogies of the shipbuilders, and accounts of the industries upon its tributaries, 1640 to 1872.

Eleanor, Captain James Bruce. (Bruce has been termed, "a hot Tory". Bruce's genealogy/family history also seems to be entirely absent on US websites. Presumably with a surname like Bruce his background was Scottish.) Eleanor when it arrived was told to moor by Dartmouth at Griffin's Wharf with a sentinel guard (with Captain Ezekiel Cheever) of Patriots. (See online, Benjamin Bussey Thatcher, Traits of the Tea Party: Being a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes, as a Google Books Result.)
One item online from Drake, Tea Leaves says Eleanor, Captain James Bruce, was "a constant trader", a term hard to interpret unless it means she worked a regular run between England-New England. This is in regards to a letter from John Dorrien Esq one of the EICo directors, at Nicholas Lane, 6 August 1773, recommending for the Beaver Capt Coffin (and Beaver was associated somehow with a tea factor, Mr Timmins), that John Rowe was a part-owner of Capt. Bruce's ship, Eleanor. Drake, Tea Leaves, has an item re Questions Proposed by James Bruce, master of Eleanor, 250 tons, his tea was consigned to Richard Clarke and Sons, Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, Benjamin Faneuil, and Joshua Winslow.

Beaver, Captain Hezekiah Coffin, with mate Jethro Coffin and part-owner Rotch. (You can find a treatment of Coffin genealogy here)

A note on a Davies Family website which has extensive family history here says that Hezekiah is said to have been the first to heave tea overboard (?) at Boston Tea Party (BTP) which does not seem plausible. Hezekiah married Lydia Folger, daughter of Jethro Folger and Mary Srarbuck. Hezekiah had a son Owen once on the Essex, a US whaler circa 1820 about the Marquesa Islands, and a story is told about a white whale named Mocha Dick - a story which evidently later came to the attention of novelist Herman Melville and used for Moby Dick.
Hezekiah (1741-1779) was son of Zacheus Coffin and Mary Pinkham, and he married Abigail Coleman daughter of Daniel Coleman and Elizabeth Mooers.

One US website on Coffin family history says the Coffins of Boston tended to Loyalism, as a group, but presumably fails to mention that many Nantucketeers were Quakers whose religion tended to pacifism, hence Quakers, whatever their political opinions, tried to avoid participation in war.
Hezekiah was also once captain of an early American ship around Cape Horn.

Beaver as a Nantucket ship had earlier in 1773 taken whale oil to London and then returned with tea. (Per items from Keith Dawson of Toowoomba Australia. See http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/c/k/William-B-Mcknight/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0592.html).

Beaver was built by Ichabod Thomas (see below). One report is that Beaver was about England in spring 1774 and her captain (whether Bruce or not at the time) died there in 1774, and that Beaver was sold. Beaver in one account by FC Sanford had gone to London by December 1772 with sperm whale oil consigned to Samuel Enderby who did "immense business" with Nantucket Island's whaling industry. (You can find a treatment of Enderby genealogy here)
Beaver had with 112 chests of tea, and docked at Boston Wednesday 15 Dec 1773. After Beaver's tea was thrown overboard, she went whaling on Brazil Banks in company with Bedford Captain Robert Meader (Bedford being owned by William Rotch aforementioned).
See online at www.archive.org/stream, L. Vernon Briggs, (1889), History of shipbuilding on the North River, Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with genealogies of the shipbuilders, and accounts of the industries upon its tributaries, 1640 to 1872., which says Beaver was built by Captain Ichabod Thomas Senior (who built ships at the Brick-Kilns, North River, till 1787-1788). Ichabod Thomas Snr married Euth (?) Turner, daughter of his shipbuilding teacher, Capt Benjamin Turner.

William Captain Joseph Loring met storm trouble about Cape Cod and came ashore. Her cargo, consigned to Jonathan Clarke, a son of Richard Clarke, was salvable but she was lost. The Clarke family owned William. The town of Truro became involved in the fracas about her tea cargo. This Captain Joseph Loring's family history is not visible on the Internet but he was probably related to Hannah Loring, the wife of one of the Boston consignees of EICo tea (and Loyalist), Joshua Winslow.

Other tea ships

By late 1773, other tea ships for America to be named include: Nancy for New York. A British ship Polly Captain Samuel Ayres for Philadelphia, would have arrived there 25 December 1773; he was threatened with being tarred and feathered. London Captain Alexander Curling for Charlestown South Carolina. In early March 1774, the brig Fortune (Captain Gorham, owned by Thomas Walley), arrived in Boston with tea consigned to Henry Lloyd connected with the London firm Davison and Newman. On 18 April, 1774, ship Nancy Captain Benjamin Lockyer came to Sandy Hook, New York, only to be detained by Sons of Liberty, and to agree to take the tea back to London. By 22 April 1774, the ship London Captain Chambers, met trouble again when it was claimed he was trying to smuggle in English tea for his own personal profit. About 23 May 1774, at Chestertown Maryland, Sons of LIberty protested a ship Geddes, (possibly owned by a local customs inspector and merchant, William Geddes), and dumped its tea. In late June 1774, Captain Richard Maitland on a British ship, Magna Carta, brought tea into Charlestown South Carolina, to fnd that a mob would ruin his cargo. (There is also note for late June 1774 of a ship Grosvenor, owned by one Edward Parry in London, bound for an unnamed American port)

At Annapolis Maryland, by 14 October 1774, trouble arose for the ship Peggy Stewart, Captain Richard Jackson, carrying 53 indentured servants and up to a ton of tea in 17 packages labelled as linen. This ship had a connection to Thomas Charles Williams, the London representative of an Annapolis firm whose members happened to repudiate the tea cargo, and who offered to see the ship burned, which it was on 19 October. This incident became known as the Annapolis Tea Party. (Some material in this section is from a helpful online article by Prof. John Buescher (USA), 'Are There Instances of Raids Similar to the Boston Tea Party?') At Yorke, Maine, 15 September 1774, a sloop Cynthia sailed in, with a mere 150 pounds of tea for a local judge and Tory, Jonathan Sayward. Her captain was Sayward's nephew, James Donnell. At Greenwich, New Jersey, summer of 1774, the captain of a small ship, Greyhound, avoided Philadelphia and tried to get his tea cargo into Greenwich, to be handled by a Loyalist, Daniel Bowen, who would try to see it sold in Philadelphia. Local men dressed as Indians on 22 December 1774 broke into Bowen's house and later set fire to the tea.

Consigneeships of the tea chests. The 342 or so tea chests handled at the Boston Tea Party, if delivered, would have been delivered to Richard Clarke and Sons, Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, Benjamin Faneuil, and Joshua Winslow all of Boston. Some small delivery (about 480 pounds worth) might also have been taken by clients of Davison, Newman and Co. of London, perhaps the single largest grocers in Britain.

The of the role East India Co. At the time, the East India Co. (EICo) was in debt to the British government. Simultaneously, the EICo in its warehouses had a huge inventory of unsold tea. Plans arose to sell the excess stock to the American market, derive revenue and reduce the EICo debt. Although, it was known that the major competitor in America for British-sold tea was smuggled Dutch tea. Perhaps, we might say today that the EICo decided to dump its tea into a captive market, except that the American colonies no longer provided a docile or compliant market.
By about September 1772, a major London-based buyer of American tobacco and a creative financial operator, Robert Herries (later Sir) inspected the issues and decided that the best tactic would be for the EICo to reduce its tea price and dump it on the Continental market, where it would presumably compete with Dutch tea. American was not mentioned in Herries' original plan. Herries met with EICo directors and found they liked his plan. So much that they grasped the nettle. A major supplier of smuggled Dutch tea to American colonies was the major firm in Amsterdam, Hope and Co (then run by Thomas and Adrian Hope). This time, the EICo suggested to Hopes that they co-operate with dumping cheap, British-sold tea in the markets of Europe. Hopes however were reluctant to become involved in a price war, and predicted that the plan might backfire, increasing the price of tea in England itself. Hopes' reluctance more or less ignited an alternative plan, to dump the tea on the American market (perhaps with, or perhaps without, a duty-free or a duty-reduced price). And in London, one tea dealer named William Palmer disagreed with the plan outlined by EICo/Hopes, and recommended the tea be dumped in America. (Palmer was in regular touch with Thomas Hutchinson, colonial governor of Massachusetts, who with his sons was himself a secretive tea dealer, as the Patriot Boston merchant John Hancock probably knew. Hancock sometimes dealt with Hayley and Hopkins mentioned below.)

Meanwhile, as news of the EICo's excess tea inventory spread, Philadelphia merchants Gilbert Barkly and John Inglis recommended that the EICo use warehouses in American colonies and hold regular auctions to dispose of tea to bulk buyers. London merchant banker Thomas Walpole thought much the same and that EICo tea dealing of this kind could be centred in Philadelphia. By mid-1773, a variety of British firms had been nominated by merchants in America as names with whom they'd prefer to deal with for tea. (EICO chairman at the time was Crabb Bolton.) The field of American merchants became dominated by a Boston-based group, being Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, Richard Clarke and Sons, Benjamin Faneuil and Edward Winslow (who were connected with Joshua Winslow (1736-1775) presumably a relative of Edward).
Jonathan Clarke offered the use of the Clarke-owned ship William. Geroge Hayley of Hayley and Hopkins were in a position to offer the use of the Rotch-owned ship, Dartmouth, which was carrying whale oil to London. Hayley also offered London which would go to Charlestown South Carolina. The Eleanor Captain Bruce was owned by merchant John Rowe. Beaver was also offered, and as she was a Nantucket oil-carrying ship it is presumed here she was owned by Rotches. (It is not impossible that behind Rotches was a ship-owner interest from Samuel Enderby Senior of London.)

Opinion on such deals began to circulate in America and it was predicted that Americans would be unhappy with the terms of trade. There are some views extant are that these new tea deals would have offered American consumers a dramtically-reduced tea price, up to 50 per cent less. Americans nevertheless objected.
Opinions travelled. Boston merchant Jonathan Williams Jnr wrote his uncle, Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Bromfield in London wrote to his Boston-merchant brother, Henry Bromfield. In London, EICo director Frederick Pigou Jnr, who was connected with a New York branch of Pigou and Booth, wrote to Philadelphia merchants, James and Drinker. Samuel Wharton in London wrote to his brothers in Philadelphia. One matter now at stake was the choice of "the tea-dealing capital of America" -- would be it be New York, Philadelphia or Boston? Philadelphia merchant names interested included: Abel James and Henry Drinker, Thomas and Isaac Wharton, and their brother Samuel in London. Perhaps too, some of the Philadelphia names were connected with Lane, Son and Fraser of London?

Importantly, the tea deals made in London were complicated as well as being novel in scope, and ultimately had British government backing. East India Co. chairman at the time was Henry Crabbe Bolton/Boulton, who died 8 October 1773, who has been little-researched (there is almost nothing on him on the Internet). It is interesting to ask if intermarriages, or, family linkages, had any role in any of the arguments. Boston tea dealer Richard Clarke (1711-1795) was married to Elizabeth Winslow, daughter of an Edward Winslow (1663-1753) and Elizabeth Dixey. Richard had a daughter married to tea dealer Thomas Hutchinson Jnr, son of the colonial governor of Massachusetts, Thomas. Her sister Susannah Farnum Clarke once married the noted American artist, John Singleton Copley, who in 1763 painted a portrait of Hannah Loring, who married Joshua Winslow in 1763. Hannah Clark was married to Henry Bromfield named above.

Linkages other

Gilbert Barkly (died 1799 at Bath, England)was a partner of Philadelphia merchant John Inglis and married John's daughter Anne. Barkly had earlier (May 1773) been worried about the extent of the smuggling of tea into America from France, Holland and Sweden. Barkly sailed back to America are making a tea deal on ship Polly. Barkley was worried by the tea deals and discussed "revolutionary" issues with Lord Dartmouth. He had been in Quebec 1765-1773, and was actually in Scotland when the American war broke out. In London, Barkly had a relqative, Aeneas Barkly. (See Walter Scott Dunn, Opening New Markets: The British Army and the Old Northwest as a Google Books Result and Walter Scott Dunn, People of the American Frontier: the coming of the American Revolution.)

Alexander Champion (died c.1795), a London merchant, is noted also as a co-founder from 1770 of what the British called the South Whaling operation, headed by Samuel Enderby Senior who resided at Blackheath, London. This South Whaling operation would have seen much co-operation between British interests (mostly London-based) and American whalers from Nantucket, and involved whalers working the southern Atlantic, the Brazils Grounds, and as far south as the Falklands Islands. In 1776, Samuel Enderby with Alexander Champion and John St Barbe (who lived almost next door to Enderby at Blackheath) used American vessels and crews to send 12 whaleships into the southern fishery. More were sent in 1777 and 1778. Alexander and Benjamin Champion in 1786 sent the first British whaler east of Cape of Good Hope, the Triumph, Daniel Coffin the master, an American.

American Jonathan Clarke, tea consignee, owner of the ill-fated tea ship, William, seems to have sailed back to America on the ship Hayley, which was probably owned by Hayley and Hopkins of London, who had some interest in the tea deals.

London grocers Davison and Newman of 44 Fenchurch Stereet London had long sold tea to Boston had made some small tea deals in 1773, later claiming 480 pounds in compensation for their losses by the Boston Tea Party. These grocers were partners Thomas Rawlinson, Monkhouse Davison, Abram/Abraham Newman and William Thwaytes. Very influential, they catered for the luxury end of the market and sold see lists fix. From about 1747 they are mentioned in the papers of Henry Laurens, who had extensive dealings with British merchants.

Henry Drinker was an ironmaster (dealing with Neate and Pigou) and a sometime land speculator in America, 1783-1809, and for some of the latter part of that period, Frederick Pigou also invested in American land.

Boston tea consignee, Benjamin Faneuil (died 1785). A Loyalist, he was spoken for commercially in London to the East India Company by RObert Rasheligh (partner with London alderman, Brook Watson, who had interests in Canada) and Benjamin Hallowell. Faneuil made a Loyalist's claim for compensation dated 19 October 1784. He was son of Benjamin Faneuil and Anne Bureau, and married Mary Cutler, fix blut

On John Rowe. Rowe's diary 1764-1779, is on the net at www.archive.org/stream/ -- A first child of his family, Rowe arrived in Boston by 1736 when aged about 21 and became a merchant-importer. He was a Boston Provincial Grand Master Freemason for many years. There was a Rowe Wharf in Boston. See note in p. 620 of AM. Schlesinger on Colonial Merchants, re Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759-1762, 1764-1779. (Ed. by A. E. Cunningham. Boston. 1903.) Rowe dealt sometimes with Lane, Son and Fraser of London. Rowe was owner of the ship Eleanor Capt Bruce of the Boston Tea Party, according to H. Allan's treatment on John Hancock, and unknowingly, according to Rowe's own diary. But another view is that Eleanor was owned or part-owned by John Lane and Lane, Son and Fraser in London. Rowe was friends with Rev. Samuel Parker and his son John Rowe Parker. Rowe's Will indicates that some of his estate details would come to the attention of Lane, Son and Fraser. Rowe as a Whig was known as lukewarm, and he had a conflicted family-loyalty situation since he was related to the Linzee family who largely remained Loyalists.
See an item on Rowe's letters and diary (1764-1779) at www.archive.org/stream/
Since Rowe had family links to the Loyalists named Linzee, see http://www.archive.org/stream/linzeefamilyofgr02linz/linzlinzeefamilyofgr02linz_djvu.txt - Also, Rowe's own Wikipedia page. (For more, see a treatment of Boston Tea Party issues by Dan Byrnes)

The variety of tea-dealer names in London of interenst ... (More to come here)

Other American consignees of tea in 1773-1774. (More to come here)

References used above regarding the Boston Tea Party include:
Briggs, See online at www.archive.org/stream, L. Vernon Briggs, (1889), History of shipbuilding on the North River, Plymouth county, Massachusetts, with genealogies of the shipbuilders, and accounts of the industries upon its tributaries, 1640 to 1872..
Material from an Enderby descendant in Australia, Keith Dawson of Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.
Francis S. Drake (online version), Tea Leaves. Boston, Smith and Porter Printers, 1884. (As edited by A. O. Crane.)
Walter Scott Dunn, Opening New Markets: The British Army and the Old Northwest as a Google Books Result, and Walter Scott Dunn, People of the American Frontier: the coming of the American Revolution.
George Hewes, his eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party as a participant, online versions,
Benjamin W. Labaree, The Boston Tea Party. New York, Oxford University Press, 1968.
Benjamin Bussey Thatcher, Traits of the Tea Party: Being a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes, as a Google Books Result.
Eduoard A. Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, The Rivalry between America, France, and Britain for Control of the Southern Whale Fishery, 1785-1825. University of Massachusetts Press, 1972.
And a great many websites (including those for genealogy) such as:
A webpage titled Boston Tea Party Gazette,
Davies Family Website, mentioning the Essex's whaling voyage of 1820.
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/c/k/William-B-Mcknight/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0592.html
Wikipedia page on the Boston Tea Party which has useful citations not used here including online items from Boston Tea Party Historical Society.

And all round it seems to a non-American that the Boston Tea Party, said to have ignited the American Revolution, was a significant action in that it legitimised punitive action by Patriots against Loyalists. This was part of the civil-war aspect of the American Revolution - Patriots after the Tea Party felt more comfortable about moving in a concerted way to dislodge Loyalists from their positions of power and influence. And there were many Loyalists indeed who benefited from a role reinforcing the rule of the British crown in America.




1773: HM Adventure. RN. Capt Tobias Furneaux. Exploration. Part of Cook's second voyage.

1773: Hayley. Owner, John Hancock of Boston. Captain James Scott. Nov 1773 to Boston. Trader, US. Aboard as passenger is Jonathan Clarke. Prior to the Boston Tea Party.

1773: Contractor, financial services to government, Samuel Touchet/Tuchet (1705-1773). (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

Year 1774

1774: Reference item:: James Pagan, Sketches Of The History Of Glasgow. Glasgow. 1847. cited in T. Thompson note 14, and Pagan notes that at least 46 different Glasgow firms alone were dealing in the tobacco trade in 1774.

1774: Richard Maitland’s Tea Party - (See The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies by David Lee Russell, p. 46): When tea arrived in Charles Town harbour aboard the British ship Magna Carta in late June (1774?), Captain Richard Maitland told local officials that he would return the tea to England. But on rumours that Maitland planned to sell the tea anyway, angry and unemployed men in the port boarded the ship as Captain Maitland quickly exited to take refuge aboard the British man-of-war Britannia. In November the Britannia, which carried consigned tea, landed. The Charles Town General Committee ordered the merchants to dump the tea in the Cooper River to avoid mob violence, which they accomplished. Henry Laurens of Charles Town said these new acts were simply the first of perhaps many laws to “mandate which Ministers Shall think proper for keeping us in Subjection to the task master who Shall be put over is.”
See Laboratory for Liberty: The South Carolina Legislative Committee System, 1719-1776, a book by George Edward Frakes; University Press of Kentucky, 1970. 201 pgs. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=98510546
CHAPTER VIII
Revolutionary Committee Activity, 1774-1776 Extract from p118 (119 not available)
In December, 1773, South Carolinians' concern over British policy shifted from New England to Charles Town Harbor. The problem was the arrival of the ship London carrying a load of East Indian tea. The tea ship docked at Charles Town at a time when South Carolinians and their fellow colonists were protesting against the Tea Act taxes. (4) The radicals in South Carolina politics, led by Christopher Gadsden, took advantage of the hostile climate of public opinion toward royal officials. Four days after the London arrived, the South Carolina radical leaders called a general meeting of all citizens at the Great Hall of the Exchange Building to discuss the constitutional issues A meeting at the Exchange Building was called on 3 December because 257 chests of East India Company tea had arrived in Charles Town two days before in Captain Alexander Curling’s ship, the London. George Gabriel Powell was elected chairman of the meeting, and it became apparent in the ensuing debate that most of the citizens present favored absolute non-importation of teas subject to tax. The East India Company consignees, who were present at the meeting, received the thanks and applause of the assembly when they promised not to accept the tea. (Lifted from www.antonymaitland.com/)

10 July 1775: Capture of the Philippa


(From www.antonymaitland.com/)

In early June 1775 the South Carolina Council of Safety learned of a shipment of gunpowder due to arrive in Savannah, Georgia. The information was that this was the annual present of gunpowder for the Indians. Since gunpowder and ammunition were in critically short supply in all the colonies, the Council of Safety determined to intercept the shipment.1
Two barges were sent from South Carolina, commanded by Captains John Joyner and John Barnwell of the 1st South Carolina regiment,2 with a total of about forty men each. These proceeded to Bloody Point to intercept the powder.3 Bloody Point, on Daufaskie Island, was the landfall for all vessels entering the Savannah River. From Bloody Point new arrivals were visible, as was the town of Savannah. (4)
Georgia Royal Governor Sir James Wright had anticipated trouble with the shipping in the river. Governor Wright had no military forces available in the colony and had written to General Gage and Admiral Graves for help. (5) Help was coming, although not in response to Wright’s letter. On 27 June HM Schooner St. John (Lieutenant William Grant) sailed from St. Augustine, East Florida with dispatches for Wright, from Governor Patrick Tonyn. (6)
St. John arrived off Tybee Island lighthouse on 29 June. At 1400 she was nine to twelve miles south southeast of the lighthouse. Here she stopped a sloop from New Providence and searched her, and apparently kept her for the time being. At 1730 she anchored off the lighthouse, observing a tent on the beach and many men ashore and in boats, and the “liberty flag” flying from the top of the lighthouse. Grant sent a letter to Sir James Wright in the sloop, and went to quarters, where the crew stayed all night. 7 The men ashore were the South Carolinians and, probably, some assorted Georgia “Liberty Boys.”
The next day Grant observed boats passing and re-passing to Tybee Island. He sent his master and a boat to find a conveyance for a letter to Sir James Wright at St. Augustine. In the afternoon St. John fired a few shots at a Carolina pilot boat, which refused to stop. St. John stopped another schooner from South Carolina and searched her, but she only had passengers for Georgia aboard. Grant’s men then boarded and searched a schooner from St. Vincent. Finally, Grant sent a boat and officer to town with a letter for the governor.8
On 4 July 1775 the Second Georgia Provincial Congress convened, and joined the Continental Association on 6 July. This brought the colony squarely into the rebellion.9 The Georgians had been aware of the presence of the South Carolinians and now blessed the enterprise by co-operating. The Georgians informed Barnwell and Joyner of the presence of the St. John. The schooner Elizabeth, owned by Samuel Price and Richard Wright of Savannah, was taken up and commissioned as the Liberty. Price cooperated with the Provincial Congress acting as schooner’s pilot.10 The Provincial Congress authorized Captain Oliver Bowen and Captain Joseph Habersham as commanders of the newly-outfitted ten-gun schooner. They were ordered to assist Captains Joyner and Barnwell of South Carolina (whose troops were on Tybee Island) in the capture of the incoming powder vessel. A secondary purpose was to nullify the St. John.11 Other reports list this vessel as having eight to ten guns, swivels, and a fifty-man crew.12 The cannon were 6-pounders. [cite]
The merchant ship in question was the 270-ton Phillipa [Philipa, Philippa, formerly the Magna Carta] (Richard Maitland),13 which had sailed from London, England on 2 May 1775 with a cargo of 13000 pounds of gunpowder, as well as small arms, and casks of musket balls. The cargo was intended for the Indian trade and for British troops and loyalists in Georgia and eastern Florida.14
Grant was making every effort to find the powder vessel first. On 3 July he ran down a ship outside the bar, but she was from Barbados in ballast and was released.15 The presence of the Liberty and the two barges may have influenced Grant, and he moved further out to sea. On 9 July two more ships were stopped and searched for powder, but were released.16 Unknown to Grant, he had already missed his chance.
On 7 July the Phillipa anchored nine miles from Tybee Point, to await a pilot to take her up to Savannah. The Liberty was anchored out of sight from Tybee, but Bowen and Habersham were no doubt informed of the arrival of a large ship. On 8 July Liberty moved up and anchored in the ship channel about three or four miles from the Phillipa. If the powder ship moved up river it would have to pass the schooner.18 At 1400 a pilot went aboard the Phillippa and she got underway.19
A change in the wind and an ebb tide forced both vessels to anchor. They remained at anchor until the following morning. Then Maitland was ordered to sail up the Savannah to Cockspur Island, with Liberty following. About three hundred men were camped there. Maitland was ordered to anchor, and the two South Carolina barges came out and joined the schooner. Bowen, Joyner, and Seth Cuthbert of Savannah led a boarding party to the Phillipa. Maitland was forced to hand over his papers. Next Captain Joseph Habersham came aboard. He had a written order from the Provincial Congress which authorized him to seize the arms, gunpowder, and whatever else was included in the cargo.26 Maitland was informed that the Americans would “take all the gunpowder, shot, lead, and Indian trading arms.”27 When the unloading had begun, Maitland was allowed to depart for Savannah in order to inform Governor Wright of what had happened.28
The Americans were able to take off 16,000 pounds of powder and “seven hundredweight of leaden bullets.” They also “took away all the bar-lead, sheet-lead, Indian trading arms, and shot, that were on board.” The Carolinians and the Georgians divided the cargo between them.29
All the gunpowder, along with a few kegs of musket balls, was transferred to the Liberty. There was no room aboard the Liberty for many of the kegs of powder and the small arms, so the Phillipa’s crew was instructed to keep her at anchor near Cockspur Island. A “prize crew” was put aboard to insure that she stayed put. On 12 July the Phillipa received instructions from the Georgia Committee of Safety to proceed to Savannah.30 There a second boarding party, led by William Platt, a Savannah merchant, and under the overall direction of the Committee, unloaded the rest of the cargo into boats and transported it to the city magazine for storage.31
Maitland met his ship at Savannah and was aboard by 12 July. Governor Wright urged Maitland to file a protest or affidavit with Anthony Stokes, the chief justice of the province. This would have had no effect but to draw more attention to Maitland. The necessity of having the cargo’s bonds cancelled finally forced Maitland to file an affidavit on 21 September 1775.32
The very real risk these early rebels ran was exemplified by the case of Ebenezer Smith Platt. Platt moved to Savannah from New York in March 1775. At Savannah, Platt was in the mercantile business. (33) Platt became a member of the committee of Savannah, and was among those that boarded the Philippa at Savannah. (34) In January 1776 Platt was en route to Saint-Domingue to purchase arms for the Provincial Congress. The prize was taken in to Jamaica. Because the vessel was registered as English, Platt was ordered to sell his cargo, but escaped prison. On his return voyage, in another vessel, Platt was again captured. (35) This time he was recognized as a leader in the Philippa affair. Platt was confined aboard a ship of war from March 1776 to January 1777. He was then taken to England, where he was heavily ironed and imprisoned in Newgate, and charged with high treason. (36) An unofficial British committee working for relief of American prisoners petitioned, in mid-March 1778, (37) that he be tried or admitted to bail. (38) Platt was released by 3 April 1778 and planned to go to France to return to America. (39)
Notes __________
1 Patrick O’Kelley, “Nothing but Blood and Slaughter:” Military Operations and Order of Battle of the Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, Volume One 1771-1779, Booklocker.com: 2004, p. 32
2 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:32
3 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:32
4 Hufford, Jon R., “Enough Gunpowder to Start a Revolution,” paper. Texas Tech University. 2007, 315. http://esr.lib.ttu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=lib_fac_research Accessed 1/28/08
5 Hufford, 315
6 NDAR, “Journal of His Majesty’s Schooner St. John, Lieut. William Grant, Commanding,” I, 766-767
7 NDAR, “Journal of His Majesty’s Schooner St. John, Lieutenant William Grant, Commanding,” I, 783
8 NDAR, “Journal of His Majesty’s Schooner St. John, Lieut. William Grant, Commanding,” I, 794
9 http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/wars/Revolution/revolution06.html. 1/24/08
10 Hufford, 316n8. This is from Allen D. Candler and Lucian Lamar Knight, comps.. The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, 26 vols., vols. 27-39, Manuscripts, 38, pt. I: 614, 615.
11Paullin, Charles Oscar, The Navy of the American Revolution, The Burrows Brothers Company: Cleveland, 1906, 459; NDAR, “Sir James Wright, Governor of Georgia, to Lord Dartmouth,” I, 845
12Paullin, Navy of the American Revolution, 459; NDAR, “Sir James Wright, Governor of Georgia, to Lord Dartmouth,” I, 845
13Coleman, Georgia, 53; Paullin, Navy of the American Revolution, 460; NDAR, “Sir James Wright, Governor of Georgia, to Lord Dartmouth,” I, 856; “Henry Laurens to John Laurens, London,” I, 885
14 Hufford, 315
15NDAR, “Journal of His Majesty’s Schooner St. John, Leut. William Grant, Commanding,” I, 812
16NDAR, “Journal of His Majesty’s Schooner St. John, Leut. William Grant, Commanding,” I, 848
17 Hufford, 317
18 Hufford, 317. Hufford cites the Affidavit of Richard Maitland, 21 September 1775, from Allen D. Candler and Lucian Lamar Knight, comps., The Colonial Records of the Stale of Georgia. 26 vols., vol. 2 manuscript, 38, pt. 1; 606-614
19 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33. Not on 9 July, as stated, however.
20 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33. Quotations from Maitland’s affidavit.
21 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33
22 Hufford, 317. Affidavit of Richard Maitland, 21 September 1775.
23 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33
24 Hufford, 317. Affidavit of Richard Maitland, 21 September 1775.
25 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33. Quotations from Maitland’s affidavit.
26 Hufford, 317. Affidavit of Richard Maitland, 21 September 1775. 27 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33. Quotations from Maitland’s affidavit.
28 Hufford, 317. Affidavit of Richard Maitland, 21 September 1775.
29 O’Kelley, NBBAS, 1:33. Quotations from Maitland’s affidavit.
30 Hufford, 318 and 318n13. Citing the Affidavits of First Mate Samuel Burnett and Steward Richard Scriven, on 10 January 1777. Old Baily Sessions Papers, Greater London Record Office, Middlesex Records. London, England.
31 Ibid.
32 Hufford, 318
33 Laurens, Henry. The Papers of Henry Laurens. University of South Carolina Press: Columbia, 1999, 413n18
34 Andrews, Charles MacLean. Guide to the Materials for American History to 1783 in the Public Record Office of Great Britain, Volume II: Departmental and Miscellaneous Papers . Carnegie Institute of Washington: Washington. 1914, 268
35 Laurens, Henry. The Papers of Henry Laurens. University of South Carolina Press: Columbia, 1999, 413n18
36 Andrews, Charles MacLean. Guide to the Materials for American History to 1783 in the Public Record Office of Great Britain, Volume II: Departmental and Miscellaneous Papers . Carnegie Institute of Washington: Washington. 1914, 268
37 Laurens, Henry. The Papers of Henry Laurens. University of South Carolina Press: Columbia, 1999, 413n18
38 Andrews, Charles MacLean. Guide to the Materials for American History to 1783 in the Public Record Office of Great Britain, Volume II: Departmental and Miscellaneous Papers . Carnegie Institute of Washington: Washington. 1914, 268
39 The Record of the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Benjamin Franklin Under the Auspices of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge April the Seventeenth to April the Twentieth A.D. Nineteen Hundred and Six. The American Philosophical Society: Philadelphia, 1908. Vol II, 388. (Lifted from pages at www.antonymaitland.com/)


1774: MP EICo director Robert Jones (1704-1774). (A name difficult to research)

Year 1775

1775: Reference item: mentioning London Alderman George Hayley) Petition Of London Merchants For Reconciliation With America, January 23, 1775, from Parliamentary History of England, Vol. XVIII, 1774-1777, cited pp. 168ff in Henry Steele Commager, Documents Of American History, 9th Edn, Prentice Hall Inc. NJ. 1973.

1775: Reference item:: Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts And The American Revolution. Philadelphia, 1951. cited in Langguth.

1775:Reference item: G. Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution. Meckler Pub. Westport. London. 1984. One page of entries on Delanceys, p. 214. Also entry on a relative of Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), Henrietta Colden, p. 165, citing AO12/101/186, she was in England in 1784 and 1785, and estimated the value of her husband's estate (in New York) at 21,790 pounds sterling [We know that DC helped her get a stipend for her sons' education at Edinburgh].

1775: Reference item:: J. G. Palmer, Bibliography of Loyalist Source Material. Meckler Books. 1984.

1775: Annual publication Of Lloyd's began. Subscribers in London could have their registers `posted` with alterations each week. They actually had two copies, and each week one was collected for amendment whilst the other was returned for use. `Posting` continued until 1966. (This item is from a UK website detailing a Lloyd`s Register timeline from 1760)

10 Sep, 1775: Capt, Oliver Bowen and Major Joseph Habersham (Americans) are ordered to Tybee Island to watch for a ship bringing gunpowder for Royalists. 17 Sep, 1775, Capt. Bowen, Capt. Barnwell (SC) Capt. Joyner (SC) and Major Joseph Habersham seize an armed British schooner off Tybee Island. (Re South Carolina and Georgia from www.antonymaitland.com/)

Reference item 1775++: David Syrett, 'The Victualling Board charters shipping, 1775-1782', Bulletin of Historical Research, The Institute of Historical Research (UK), Vol. 68, 1995., pp. 212-224.

Reference item 1775: A. G. E. Jones, Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade, 1775-1861 [Parts 1 and 2]: plus A Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen, transcripts of Registers of Shipping, 1787-1862 [Part 3] Canberra, Roebuck, 1986.

1775::++ List of Britain's South Whalers, 1775-1790. Enderby; A and B Champion; Mather and Co, Mr Mather's wharf at Blackwall- Thomas and John Mather, Rotherhithe in 1805; Montgomery (See re Capt.J. Piper, notes); Joseph Lucas (Oct. 1805); Bennett; Smith at Hull; Sanders at Southampton; Parr(?) Southampton; Wrangham (Canton 1792 brig Hope); Curtino(?); Mellish; Dudman; King; Bill; with Enderbys 1775, March 1790, St Barbe, London, Southampton; Curling; Yorke; Metcalfe; Paul, Simon of Tottenham Court Rd and his own wharf: Le Mesurier (Guernsey); Teast, Saml and Son, Bristol; Hurry and Co, Yarmouth; Ogle; Oliver; Mount; Hall (or Hull); Hattersley; Wardell; Thornton (See Oct. 28, 1786); Mills; Bell; Calvert; Mangles; Stainforth; Hayley, very early in fishery history; De Bond; Harrison; Harford; George Heyley; Daniel Coffin; Benjamin Rotch; Barclay; Powell; Brantingham; Williams; Price; Meader; .Peter Evet Mestairs,also owned a dock on Thames opposite Shadwells. (Another list of South Whalers is available as, Merchants of the Southern Whale Fishery, Enderby Papers, Australian Nat. Lib. Pethryk: MS 1701: worthy of much attention and analysis:

Year 1776

From 1776: Partner of JJ Angerstein at the early Lloyd's of London, Alexander Dick (active 1758). Also Angerstein's later partner, Vincent F. Rivaz. Also, an Angerstein connection of the American War of Independence period, shipping contractor Thomas Lewis. Angerstein partner Peter Warren. (Names difficult to research)

1776 Some further items begin here on American privateers of American War of Independence and related activity -Ed

PRO: Item details SP 89/82: Affidavit of Thos. Boog and others of the British ship Atlantic, relative to death of Robert Jackson after a scuffle with the mate, Alexander Kidd. 1776 Mar. 2 Lisbon. No5 Lisbon the 23 May 1776
My Lord,
I acknowledged by the last packet the honour of your Lordships letters of the 23 & 26th past.
We since learn by the Clementine Cat Brown from Philadelphia, that they left in Delaware bay two French armed ships frigate built and three merchant ships of the same nation, all laden with military stores: As this vessel has had a long passage and is several days arrived here, the news she brings will probably have been received in London before this reaches your Lordship; I mention it however, because the armed ships are talked of here as frigates, but thought they are indeed said to be very stout vessels, I am assured they are absolutely private property: I know not with what propriety I signify to your Lordship, that having Lord Viscount Weymouth
P2: in private conversation on this news, with the French ambassador at this court, hinted my wonder at the impolicy of his masters furnishing succours to the Americas, he assured me very solemnly, that though he would not answer for the boldness of private adventurers, tempted by most advantageous offers of barter, yet he was perfectly persuaded that the present French administration were honestly and thoroughly sensible, that France was interested against the success of the Rebels, and would neither directly nor indirectly give them any assistance.
Within these two days I have seen two English gentlemen just arrived after a short passage from Philadelphia. They ventured to assert, that the Southern colonies as far as New York inclusively, are generally disposed to return to their duty, on what the stile reasonable terms: that the Northern settlements are generally enough understood to mean independence: but would assuredly be abandoned by the others, if equitable conditions were held out by Great Britain; Entering into particulars, these gentlemen said they had been over the greater part of Pennsylvania and discoursed repeatedly and freely with eight of ten particular members of the congress, whose uniform capital article was redress in the matter of taxation, but on my inquiry whether these particular member had annexed any explicit sense to their idea of redress, on that head: the answer was, what your Lordship has doubtless heard a thousand times, that they agreed on the fitness of their contributions to the supplies of the state, but tat unless each colony were permitted to ascertain its own quota, they were not constitutionally Englishmen: In the mean time they say that hardly a boy of sixteen years old is unarmed, through all that province.
Having signified to Mr Walpole your Lordships mention to one of the dispositions in the affair of Alexander Kidd; he has put into my hands and I have the honour of forwarding them to your Lordship with this letter.
I also enclose and affidavit made before the British vice consul in this city, by William Darby and George Jay, two gentlemen on board the merchant ship Turkey frigate, George Jenkins master: these men, not as I understand any others of the crew, were ever upon by their captain to sign their contract for wages; this neglect has been the occasion of many vexatious contests both in the present occasion and in many other cases, I have therefore thought it necessary to lay before your Lordship, in order to prosecution for the panelaty of £5 per seaman; which by the Statute 2: George 2, C 36; is forfeited to the use of Greenwich hospital.
I have the honour to be
My Lord
your Lordships most humble
& obedient servant,
John Nort.
http://www.cas.sc.edu/SCIAA/mrd/documents/sc_shipbuilding.pdf - Occasional Maritime Research Papers Maritime Research Division, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, USC Extract:- ......Ships and Schooners - This Port Royal may have been Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
For evidence of ship design meeting environmental conditions and customer’s needs, we turn again to the available ship registers. They show that the Carolina-built, shiprigged vessel was, in general, of moderate size, yet larger than ships being built in the other shipbuilding colonies. South Carolina shipwrights were certainly able to build large ocean-going ships. The 280-ton ship Queen Charlotte, built in 1764 by John Emrie, (see Occasional Maritime Research Papers, Maritime Research Division, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, USC) -- the 260-ton ship Atlantic, built at Port Royal in 1773, are two examples. However, shiprigged vessels built in South Carolina during this time averaged 180 tons ... (From www.antonymaitland.com/)

Year 1777

More to come soon

Circa 1774: Data on Jonathan Lucas, English millwright emigrating to Carolinas who invented the rice mill.

Year 1778

1778: Resolution - Captain James Cook, arrived 18 January, 1778, departed 2 Feb., 1778 (This item is from a website Hawaiian Roots on ships to Hawaii before 1819) - Second visit - arrived 26 Nov., 1778, departed 4 Feb., 1779; but a broken mast on the Resolution forced both vessels to return 11 Feb., 1779. Captain Cook was killed 14 Feb. Vessels finally left islands 13 March, 1779.(This item is from a website Hawaiian Roots on ships to Hawaii before 1819)

1778: Discovery - Captain Charles Clerke, accompanied Resolution, Captain James Cook. (This item is from a website Hawaiian Roots on ships to Hawaii before 1819)

Year 1779

1779: Contractor military in India, George Clive (died 1779), later a banker. (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

Year 1780

London Banker Sir William Hart active 1780. Married Denise Gougeon. (A name difficult to research)

Uncertain entry, maybe only (in 1780s?), Sir Charles Buchanan, and see notes re wreck of HEICo ship Dodington in his entry for other uses.

Circa 1780: Contractor, military, clothier, once London Lord Mayor, Samuel Brudenell Fludyer (1704-1786). See also Thomas Fludyer (1711-1769). (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

Circa 1780: Contractor (finances?) to assist British colonial developments, merchant banker with Coutts Bank, MP Adam Drummond (1813-1786). See also John Drummond (1723-1774) and re banker Henry Drummond (1730-1795) (From MNP's specialist sub-lists on merchants who are contractors to goverment)

1780: Englishman John Barker Church, Commissary of French army in America from 1780, married Angelica Schuyler. (A name difficult to research)

Below are items still uncollected

1779: France engages in seizing of Grenada in Caribbean and the Savannah Expedition. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 71.

1742: Frenchman Lazare Picault is sent to survey a group of islands to north of Ile de France, The Seychelles. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 69.

1759: French ship Berryer is being built. Completed in March 1760. Began maiden voyage to Ile de France in March 1760. She sailed for Compagnie des Indes till 1770 when she was sold to the French navy when the King bought the harbour of Lorient from the Compagnie. Shortly by 1771 she would be sailed by Lt. Yves de Kerguelen. by 16 june 1771 berryer was in the atlantc, by 10 august in the indian ocean, to ile de france by 19 august 1771, . (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 56-57.

1530: Astronomer Regnier (Reinerus) Gemma Frisius (1508-1555) inspects the navigational problem of finding longitude, in his De Principius astronomiae et cosmaographiae published in 1530. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 22.

1749: British Admiral Lord George Anson seizes all charts on board a Spanish galleon, priceless works which aided Britain´s rise to naval supremacy. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 22.

1741: French naval authorities institute an advanced school for young shipwrights, founded on rather more socially democratic lines, giving artisans a better technical education than had been the case, in maths, physics, hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, new sciences such as hydrography, naval engineering. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 15.

1628: Sweden. Famous naval disaster. Swedish warship Vasa sinks on her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. Her remains are now in Vasa Museum in Stockholm. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 13.

1641: (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 162.

1755: June. Britain undertakes the mass expulsion of French (Acadians), from Canada. France sends reinforcements to Canada not exactly in time to be useful. Followed naval warfare between France and Britain, France ending with 300 ships and 6000 seamen less. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 10.

1713: Re French naval developments. On 11 April 1713, King of France Louis XIV signs peace treaties at Utrecht with Britain, Netherlands, Savoy, Portugal, Prussia. France ceded Nova Scotia or Acadia, Newfoundland, Saint Pierre and some islands off Newfoundland. the Hudson Bay Territory, St Christophers Caribbean, (St Kitts), all to Britain. Separate treaties were signed by France and Spain. All this greatly assisted the rise of Britain´s naval and commercial sea power. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 8.

1738: Quote verbatim: France played little part in the continued search for the South Land until Bouvetr de Lozier set out in 1738 to explore the south Atlantic and south Indian Ocean for Compagnie des Indes. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 2.

1712: Dutch VOC ship Zuytdorp is lost with all hands. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 134.

1697: Three Dutch vessels reach Dirk Hartog Island off Western Australian coast. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 134.

1629: Splendid Dutch ship Batavia on her maiden voyage sank on Abrolhos Islands which had been discovered in 1619 by Frederik de Houtman. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 132.

1598: Discovery of Mauritius, later known as Ile de France. The Dutch were there by 1610, yet left it largely unsettled till 1710. From there they sailed to Straits of Sunda which separate Java from Sumatra, Indonesia. From 1602 Dutch ships would often be becalmed in the Indian Ocean till in 1610 the Roaring Forties were discovered by Hendrik Brouwer, later Dutch Gov-General of East India. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 71.

1619: Dutch VOC in Indonesia decides to locate its main eastern office in Batavia (today´s Jakarta) as overseen by Governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen. . (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 126.

1602: 20 March 1602, formation of the United Dutch East India Company, VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) by the central government of the Dutch Republic. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 125.

1619: Dutch mariner Frederik de Houtman on ship Dodrecht sights extreme south western shoreline of Western Australia. She was followed up in 1622 when Dutch VOC ship Leeuwin (Lioness) discovered and named a south-western point of Australia at latitude 35 degrees south. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 111.

1738: Frenchman Bouvet de Lozier becomes commander of ships Aigle and Marie, two ships of the Compagnie des Indies, to discover the mythical land of Terra Australis Incognita. He took with him protocols for declarations of possession of lands. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 71.

1779: During Seven Years War, France engages in seizing of Grenada in Caribbean and the Savannah Expedition. (Item from Philippe Godard and Tugdual de Kerros, 1772: The French Annexation of New Holland. The Tale of Louis De Saint Alouarn. (Translated by Odette Margot, Myra Stanbury and Sue Baxter.) Perth, Museum of Western Australia, 2008., p. 71.




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