Captured ship: St Jacob of Copenhagen (master Daniel Laurensen Turmand) (owners Frederick...

Captured ship: St Jacob of Copenhagen (master Daniel Laurensen Turmand) (owners Frederick Muller and Nicholas Muller).

History: a Danish merchant ship (flyboat, 100 tons / 40 lasts, 10 men), bound from Bordeaux to Copenhagen, laden with brandy, molasses, prunes, wine and yellow ochre; driven into Plymouth by contrary winds, and seized in port on 30 January / 9 February 1695/1696 by HMS St Paul (John Mitchell commanding).

Documents:-

Each of the documents are described in detail at item level, see: HCA 32/1889A/1, HCA 32/1889A/2, HCA 32/1889A/3, HCA 32/1889A/4.

As an overview, the documents comprise of:

• Court Papers numbered CP 1-CP 9, including examinations, claim, abstracts and translations of the ship's papers;
• Ship's Papers in four bundles covering several voyages of the St Jacob from 1694-1696, numbered SP 1/1-SP 1/3, SP 2/1-SP 2/21, SP 3/1-SP 3/15, SP 4/1-SP 4/53 [with gaps]; comprising papers found loose on the ship and taken from Daniel Laurensen Turmand's pocket book, in Dutch and Danish; they include bills of lading, certificates, receipts, a muster roll, customs papers, lighthouse and ship's passes, sailing journal, psalms, sailing instructions, letters of recommendation, a song, accounts, medical notes, a surgeon's bill, commercial letters to Turmand;
• Mail-in-transit, numbered A 1-A 43a(ii)/1: personal and official letters from Swedish and Danish sailors on other ships whose south-west-bound convoy had been detained in Plymouth, and who took the opportunity to send letters on the St Jacob back to men and women in Copenhagen, Kalmar, Karlskrona, Helsingør, Marstrand, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Västervik and Kristiansand, for onward delivery across Scandinavia; many of the letters aboard this ship are from sailors previously aboard the Sophia Amalia (master Johan van Nanden), that was captured on 22 December 1695 on the way to or from Cádiz; the sailors were stranded in Plymouth and mostly writing to family members, reporting their capture and experiences of past voyages.

[Decision: not yet known, appealed]