Captured ship: La Venus of Marseilles (master Gaspard Fouque). History: a French...

Captured ship: La Venus of Marseilles (master Gaspard Fouque).

History: a French merchant ship with letter of marque (250 tons, 16 guns, 70 men - French, Genoese, Maltese, Italians and Spaniards) bound from Marseilles to Saint-Domingue via Toulon, Carthagena, Malaga and Estepona, laden with wine, soap, candles, flour, oil, cheese, bale goods, shoes, stockings, velvets, hats, stamped linnen etc; taken in fight on 6 June 1758 in 36°N by the privateer Nelly's Resolution of London (Benjamin Smith commanding) and brought into Falmouth.

Court Papers:

• [CP 1]: allegation;
• [CP 2]: standing interrogatories;
• [CP 3]: examinations of Eustache Fouque (captain's son), Philipe Maurel and Jerome Depere.
• [CP 4]: commissioners' affidavit;
• [CP 5]: attestation as to papers;
• [CP 6]: translation and abstract of the ship's papers now numbered SP A, SP B, and SP 1- SP 6.

Ships Papers:

• SP A: letter of marque;
• SP B: muster roll;
• SP 1-SP 6: letters and papers extracted from the"large box" of letters and numbered 1-6 for the court.
• [SP 7]: permit for Captain Fouque to careen his ship at Marseilles, dated 23 September 1757.

Mail-in-Transit: from Marseilles and Bordeaux to Saint-Domingue and Martinique (in French, except two in Italian and one in Spanish), now numbered 1 to 195, inc:

• family letters, some of low literacy (mostly 113-151; others in range 1-112).
• letters to the crew of the Pallas, captain Vence (113-124).
• death certicate of a 15-year old slave Catherine who died in hospital in Bordeaux (180C).
• letter to an Italian sailor in Saint Domingue from his wife in Marseilles, in French (176).
• two letters in Italian from Marseilles, one in Spanish from Malaga to Martinique (177-179).

(Some of the mail in transit had been entrusted by the senders to the care of Jean Baptiste Auseline Roubaud, the ship's écrivan e.g. no. 175.)

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Personal Archives ("PoFo") etc, 196-216, inc:

• letter to Pierre Yvan (crewman of La Venus in the muster) from Brussels to Marseilles (196) (added from HCA 30/265/4 in October 2023).
• two letters to Antoine Laget (crewman of La Venus in the muster) (197-198).
• letter to Carthagena, presumably undelivered (199).
• packet of two letters to Guillaume Rebout, carpenter of L'aventurier, captain Ginbal (200).
• list of the contents of a surgeon's chest for the vessel commanded by Capt Descoube, 11 Juillet 1755 (203) (does not belong in HCA 30/728 Le Basque (Descoube) because of the date, which is quite clear).
• • bill of lading for La Dilligence, Magnus Ahlstroom master, for a voyage to Livorno (Leghorn), 20 May 1746;
  • bill of lading for La Ville de Harlem, Nicolas de Boer master, for a voyage to Marseilles, 28 March 1749;
  • other papers annotated uniformly. (204-208).
• words of various songs (209-216):
  • Pierrot sur le bord d'un ruisseau, and an 'autre agréable chanson' (209),
  • L'âne et le Renard, Fable (210),
  • Le Berger infortuné, ou l'amant au desespoir (211),
  • de l'amour j'ai subis les loix (212),
  • dans un bois sombre et solitaire (213),
  • pour tromper une none austere, le maudit petit amour... (214).

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Note: many of the papers in this piece were previously numbered in various misguided ways when they were lumped in with other inappropriate pieces and so now bear more than one number. The references used here are to the bolder numbers with a ring round them.

HCA 65/2