Captured ship: San Francisco Xavier alias La Perla (master Don Josef Perez Muente)...

Captured ship: San Francisco Xavier alias La Perla (master Don Josef Perez Muente) (José Pérez del Muente) (former master Don Melchor de Alarcón).

Details: Spanish register ship (400 tons, 4 carriage guns, 2 swivels, 50 muskets, 70 pistols, 100 cutlasses, 66 men and 9 passengers) bound from Callao (Lima) in Peru, to Cadiz, laden with 168,000 dollars of silver and gold, and copper, wool, cocoa and cascarilla; taken on 29 October 1779 off the Azores by the British privateers Sprightly (James Bett commanding) and Shark (William Waring commanding), and brought into Falmouth.

Sailed from Callao 12 May 1779, Muente joining the ship as master that month. The owners of the ship were Don Juan Hortis Deforonda, Don Josef Deforonda, Don Manuel Deforonda and Don Francisco Deforonda. The nine passengers were: Josef Tortosa and Manuel Allonso (friars), Juan Ponizo, Juan Antonio Morales and Manuel Costa (gentlemen), Bartolome Josef Romero and Anselmo Oyaque (merchants), Ignacio Baca Sargento (invalid or surgeon) and Phelipe de Altolaguirre (priest).

Documents: nos. 1 to 350, 1904, 1915, 1916, 1919, 1928, 1945, 1949, 1951 and 1994: c 350 personal and business letters (mostly in Spanish) from Lima for onward delivery to Cadiz, Madrid and other destinations; report issued by the Royal Court of Lima in connection with request to set up an entail (mayorazgo) for Don Joaquin Manuel de Azcona (contained in a canvas bag marked 'Adm Juan Martin de Aguine, Cadiz', no. 1992); letters from the Visitador-General of Peru, Don José Antonio de Areche, to Don José de Galvez, the Secretary of State in Madrid (no. 1994).

Note: the letters and papers captured from La Perla are in pieces HCA 30/275 and 276, and 311 to 316, and have been re-ordered, as far as practicable, in one continuous sequence using the original numbers given them by the Prize Court in 1779 (nos. 1 to 1993). The sequence has been extended to no. [2111] for papers which either were never numbered or which have lost their association with an original number through damage or separation.

This re-ordering supersedes the previous bundle numbers used as references in Xabier Lamikiz Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (2010). References from that work can be traced using the number of the letter, where given, ignoring the piece and bundle numbers. Refer to the catalogue to find in which piece a particular numbered paper is now located.

The contents of each piece are described at piece level, except for items such as bills of lading, bills of exchange and invoices which are common enclosures in many letters, and certain items which are known to be among these papers but it is not known in which piece. These are:

• death certificate of Don Diego Antonio De Parada, Archbishop of Lima, 25 April 1779;
• letter from Father Diego Cisneros to Father Julian de Villegas, Prior of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, explaining why he is not taking the risk of sending the convent's silver with El Buen Consejo;
• letter regarding a donation towards the work of the collegial church of Oñate;
• letter to the parish priest of Albistur requesting that he remove any damaging information about Antonio Elberdin from the Tolosa archive and report to Father Francisco Javier Vasquez, Prelate General of the Order of Saint Augustine in Rome;
• letter to the Conde de Peñaflorida [Xavier María de Munibe e Idiáquez (1723-1785], in Bergara (in Basque);
• letters addressed to Don Juan Bautista de Goizueta (member of his Majesty's Council, Minister of the Real Junta del Comercio y Moneda, Director of the Real Companía Guipuzcoana de Caracas and President of the Real Fábrica de De San Carlos y Santa Bárbara de Ezcaray);
• stock lists, expense accounts and pay lists for officers and crew, and many other papers relating to the ship and her cargo.

The letters and papers of La Perla as a whole are written in Spanish, with a few in French, Italian, Latin, English, Portuguese, Catalan and Basque

See HCA 30/276, HCA 30/311, HCA 30/312, HCA 30/313, HCA 30/314, HCA 30/315 and HCA 30/316 for more letters and papers, and HCA 32/334/9 for the main collection of ship's papers and court process etc

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