Captured ship: Le Grand Don de Dieu , Antoine Duvigneau master. Details: French merchant...

Captured ship: Le Grand Don de Dieu, Antoine Duvigneau master.

Details: French merchant ship with a letter of marque on a voyage from Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to Bordeaux, when captured on 9 September 1778 by the privateer Pitt.

Documents: c 50 personal and business letters (mostly in French, some in English) from Cap Français, Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and Virginia for onward delivery to addresses in France. Enclosed in the letters are: accounts of cargo and bills of lading for ships including Le Mars, Michel master; some numbers of the courant Affiches Américaines printed at Port-au-Prince, 1778; an inventory of belongings and furniture. Also:

• collection of c 75 letters dated between October 1774 and October 1777 from Marguerite Rey at Toulouse to Gabriel Jean-Baptiste Larchevesque-Thibaud [b. 1745] at Port-au-Prince and Cap Français, at that time a Deputy in the Saint-Domingue assembly, and some letters from him and other correspondents to Rey, along with financial accounts etc;
• set of legal documents dated between 1722 and 1771 concerning title to land of Monsieur Dureau in Saint-Domingue, with two colour plans dated 1747;
• list of drugs and medicines in the surgeon's chest of the ship Le André;
• printed paper (in Latin) concerning philosophical and mathematical theses considered by the Supreme Court of the Senate of Toulouse, 1776;
• notebook (in Dutch) for 1776, noting things such as quantities of ballast and ship or personal expenses (mentions Archangel).

See HCA 30/272/1, HCA 30/279, HCA 30/280, HCA 30/281, HCA 30/282 and HCA 30/303/1 for more letters and papers, and HCA 32/344/26 for the main collection of ship's papers and court process etc

Topics

Trade and commerce

Caribbean

Europe and Russia

Piracy and privateering

Armed Forces (General Administration)