High Court of Admiralty. Captured ship: Le Basque of Bordeaux (master Dominique Dascoube),...

High Court of Admiralty.

Captured ship: Le Basque of Bordeaux (master Dominique Dascoube), formerly La Magdalene and other names.

Capture history: a French merchant ship (snow) (162 tons, 5 guns, 2 swivels, 6 muskets, 21 men and 3 passengers) bound from New Bern, North Carolina to Bordeaux, laden with tobacco; taken on 1 July 1778 in latitude 44° N five leagues from Cabo de Peñas, Spain, by HMS Pelican (Henry Lloyd commanding), and brought into the River Thames.

Intended voyage: from the United States to France.

The armateur was Monsieur Pédesclaux of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Bordeaux. She was built in New England and purchased as a prize.

At New Bern, Domé (second in command of Le Basque) took command of the brig Sally which Dascoube purchased to ferry out cargo from New Bern to Le Basque, lying in deeper water in Ocracoke road (there is a nice French chart of Ocracoke in HCA 30/728 packet 73). But she was captured and plundered by the Scipion de Bordeaux. Another vessel, the brigantine L'ami de Williamsburg, was also involved in ferrying cargo, perhaps replacing the lost brig.

Court Papers:

• [CP 1]: allegation.
• [CP 2] - [CP 4]: examinations of: Dominique Dascoube of St-Jean-de-Luz, 43 years (master) not married, lives with his sister in St-Jean-de-Luz; Jean Distiart of St-Jean-de-Luz, 15 years (mariner); Jacque Domé of Bordeaux 25 years (mate). Examinations dated 5 September 1778.
• [CP 5]: attestation as to papers for the papers nos. 1 to 10 give by Dascoube to the prize master. Dated 16 July 1778.
• [CP 6]: attestation as to papers for the papers nos. 11 to 100 found concealed in the hogshead of tobacco and in a cask of skins. Dated 10 August 1778.

Ships Papers: (in HCA 30/728).

According to the testimony of Dascoube, the master: there were books and papers including a passport for St Pierre et Miquelon concealed in a hogshead of tobacco marked no. 210, and other papers in a small barrel of skins marked with chalk. She sailed from Bordeaux to Saint-Domingue, and from there not to St Pierre but to New Bern in North Carolina, where she got a new passport, the one brought in to the court and now marked no. 5 (SP 5). The ship's papers numbered 1 to 10 were annexed to the attestation of Stephen Peter Mouat (Dascoube wrote his name on the back of these 10 papers for the court). There were also the papers and books in the two casks, and"five or six private letters addressed to different persons in France which he threw overboard after he was taken".

Passengers names: Pierre Bargeau from La Tremblade and Auguste Cailleau from Bordeaux, both French seafaring men whose ship Le Comte de St Germain had been wrecked on the coast of Carolina, and John Peter Barrier?, their (French-born) cook. Several of the crew were survivors from the wreck of Le Diamant - see SP 54 and 74/47 in HCA 30/728.

Dascoube admitted that all of the papers nos. 1 to 10 were false and colourable (i.e. fake), except for nos. 7 and 9; and the beginning of the log book no. 10 is false, it being there said that they left Cap François Saint-Domingue on 12 May 1778 whereas he himself was at that time in the town of New Bern and the vessel did not depart from Ocracoke until 19 May, and he paid Mr Teesdale, Justice of the Peace at New Bern 50 dollars for the two papers marked nos. 5 and 8 and for two others of the same kind not filled up (now numbered HCA 30/728 nos.74/99-100) [William Tisdale Judge of the Court of Admiralty - see packet no. 73].

Languages of the Ship's Papers in HCA 30/728: French, English, Basque, Spanish, a few words of Italian (no.52).

[Papers previously numbered as: Court Papers 1-11, Ship's Papers 12-28 (large pencil numbers). Renumbered and catalogued January-February 2025].

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