Abraham Browne’s Captivity by the Barbary Pirates, 1655

1 A board, about six feet long and twenty-four inches wide, bearing a scribed plan of a small vessel, perhaps a coasting sloop, was found in Warren, Rhode Island, in the spring of 1977. From details of the design practices depicted the writer would date the plan at least pre-1750.

2 Since the writing of this paper in 1975 further study of the plaster ceiling decorations in Hook House, mentioned earlier, has tended to discount their value as representations of the Ark and Dove.

1 Charles Browne, “Memorandum concerning Abraham Browne, of Boston,” New England Historical & Genealogical Register, ii. (1848), 45–46.

2 James A. Spaulding’s query in New England Historical & Genealogical Register, xlv. (1891), 166.

3 David Hannay, “Barbary Pirates,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (London, 1910), in. 383–384

4 Abraham Browne, “Journal,” 1–3.

5 Browne, “Journal,” 5–7.

6 A small, light coasting or fishing vessel.

7 Browne, “Journal,” 19.

8 Browne, “Journal,” 20–24.

9 Browne, “Journal,” 27–28. Richmond’s Island lies off the southern shore of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, about half a mile distant from the mainland. It was at the time a commercial center and fishing station.

1 Browne, “Journal,” 29.

2 The following account of this voyage and Browne’s captivity is in his “Journal,” 38–58.

3 Corunna, Spain.

4 Sale, a seaport town of Morocco opposite Rabat.

5 Algiers. Spanish, “Argel.”

6 An ensign or flag.

7 Portuguese.

8 Browne, “Journal,” 89–90.

1 “The accounts of this interview given, on the one hand, by Smart and Southack and, on the other, by St. Ovide are irreconcilable,” writes John Stewart McLennan in Louisbourg from Its Foundation to Its Fall (1918).

1 For maps of Boston and Boston Harbor, see:

• Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, [Report to the Society on Boston maps before the Revolution, with a letter from G. G. Smith], Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vu. (Boston, The Society, 1863), 35–40; and Shurtleff’s A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, 3rd ed. (Boston, Common Council, 1891).
• John Appleton, “Early Charts of the Harbor of Boston,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vm. (1864), 475–477.
• Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols. (Boston, J. R. Osgood, 1881), ii. 491–533 (Provincial); in. i–vii (Revolutionary).
• Engineering Department, Boston. “List of Maps of Boston published between 1614 and 1822, copies of which are to be found in the possession of the City of Boston.” Annual Report of the City Engineer, Appendix II, 1 February 1903 (Boston, 1903), 248 pp.
• P. L. Phillips, “A Descriptive List of Maps and Views of Boston in the Library of Congress,” [Washington, D. C], 1922, 275 pp. (a typed list, found in several libraries).
• John R. Reps, “Boston by Bostonians: The Printed Plans and Views of the Colonial City by its Artists, Cartographers, Engravers, and Publishers,” Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775 (Boston, The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1973), 3–56.

2 A facsimile of the Cellere manuscript (Morgan Library MS., MA766) with an accompanying transcription and translation, is in Lawrence C. Wroth, The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano 1524–1528 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970), 97–143. This is the best biography of Verrazzano, with full documentation and reproduction of pertinent maps.

3 This reproduction is from a full-scale photograph of the original in E. L. Stevenson, Maps Illustrating Early Discovery and Exploration in America 1502–1530 (New Brunswick, N. J., 1903), No. 12. Another smaller unsigned world chart in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, has been identified as by Gerolamo, with the suggested date of 1528, with additions of about 1540: Marcel Destombes, “Nautical Charts attributed to Verrazzano (1525–1528),” Imago Mundi, XX. (1954), 57–66. Maggiolo’s world chart of 1527, formerly in the Ambrosiana Library, Milan, with information not on the Gerolamo charts, was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War (reprod. in Stevenson, op. cit., No. 10). A fourth manuscript map, presumably lost, was still extant as late as 1582, according to Hakluyt in his Divers Voyages, ii. 2, 287: “Master John Verazzanus, which hath been thrise on that coast, in an olde excellent mappe which he gave to King Henrie the eight, and is yet in the custodie of master Locke.”

An early and very popular printed map that showed Verrazzano’s discoveries was a quaint woodcut of the western hemisphere by Sebastian Münster, “Insulae Novae,” that first appeared in Münster’s edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia (Basle, 1540) and later in Münster’s Cosmographia (1544), published in some twenty-eight Latin, German, French, and Italian editions throughout the rest of the century. This woodcut in effect shows three connected continents: “Francisca” above Verrazzano’s false gulf, connected by a narrow peninsula with “Terra florida” and several Central American countries; below these is South America, “Insula Atlantica quam uocant Brasilii & Americam,” separated by “Fretum Magnaliani” from yet another antarctic land mass.

4 The best attempts to identify some of the Verrazzano names are in W. F. Ganong, Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, ed. T. E. Layng (Toronto, Toronto University Press, 1964), 104–194; L. C. Wroth, Verrazzano, 88–90; and Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of North America (New York, Oxford University Press, 1970), 308–311.

5 Wroth, Verrazzano, 141.

6 These and other maps showing Verrazzano’s Sea are examined in Wroth, Verrazzano, 178–212.

7 The pertinent documents by these three are printed in Henry Harrisse, The Discovery of North America: A Critical, Documentary, and Historical Investigation (London and Paris, 1892), 229–243.

8 L. A. Vigneras, “The Voyage of Esteban Gómez from Florida to the Baccalaos,” Terrae Incognitae, ii. (1970), 28.

9 Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish Settlements within the Present Limits of the United States, 1513–1561 (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901), 161.

1 This large vellum planisphere (82 × 102 cm.) was given to Count Baldassare Castiglioni, papal legate to Spain and personal friend of Charles V, and is still in the possession of the Castiglioni family in Mantua. It was examined by the present writer in 1958. Although unsigned, it is clearly the work of Diego Ribero; the date is given twice: “1525” in the astrolabe in the lower right-hand corner (as in the signed Ribero charts, Vatican 1529 and Weimar 1529), and in the legend near New England, “Land, discovered by Estebam Gómez in this year of 1525 by order of his majesty.”

2 L. A. Vigneras, “The Cartographer Diogo Ribeiro,” Imago Mundi, xvi. (1962), 76–83.

3 On some of the later maps Cabo de Arenas was transferred to apply to the northern tip of Cape Cod, although the early charts give Cabo de Santiago as the northern point. Around the middle of the sixteenth century some charts show Cape Cod not as a thin straight finger pointing northeast but as a simple straight-line jutting to the east with no Cape Cod Bay and with the coast continuing directly southward from its point, somewhat like a “7.” Examples are Pierre Desceliers 1550 (reprod., W. P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and D. B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America (London, Elek, 1971); John Dee (from The Simon Fernandez map) 1580 (reprod., Cumming, ibid., 195); Levasseur 1601 (Service Hydrog., Paris, Arch. 5).

4 Alonso de Chaves, Quatripartitu[m]en cosmographia pratica, with tables made for the year 1539; the original manuscript is in the Real Academia, Madrid. See Appendix B. Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps (New York, Bonanza Books, 1949), 141–144, has a good summary of the origin, functioning, and laws governing the Casa de Contratación, the pilot majors, and the official charts (padron real and padron general).

5 Reprod. (detail) from Alonso de Chaves, Islario General, ed. by Franz R. V. Wieser (Innsbruck, Wagner, 1908), pl. 4.

6 Reprod. (detail) from Cartas de Indias (Madrid, Ministerio de Fomento, 1877), Facsimile R. The original is in the Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid. Commentary on the map is in W. P. Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 1962), 114; photographic reproduction of the entire map from the original from South America to Nova Scotia is in Cumming, Discovery, pl. 193, p. 172. The Cartas de Indias facsimile has small errors of transcription that are corrected in the list in Appendix B.

7 Examples are Rotz 1542 (reprod., Cumming, Discovery of North America, pi. 116); anonymous maps in Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, circa 1540 (reprod., ibid., pis. 54, 152); Pierre Desceliers 1550 (reprod., Cumming, ibid., pi. 139); Guillaume Le Testu 1550 (reprod., Cumming, ibid., pis. 99, 141, 147, 163); Diogo Homem 1558 (Cumming, ibid., pi. 140). Wilma George, Animals and Maps (London, Seeker & Warburg, 1969), examines with many reproductions the portrayal by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cartographers of animals as typical of different regions.

8 Ganong, Crucial Maps, 180–187; Bernard G. Hoffman, Cabot to Cartier (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1961). Reprod. of Lopo Homem 1554, I. P. N. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York, R. H. Dodd, 1915–1928), ii. pl. 11; Diogo Homem 1558, Cumming, Discovery, pl. 140, 126–127.

9 Reproduced from Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeois (Paris, 1613), Harvard College Library copy. The maps and drawings of Champlain, including the Library of Congress map of 1607, the original drawings in the John Carter Brown Library, and those in published works, with useful notes, are in The Works of Samuel de Champlain, ed. by H. P. Biggar and others (Toronto, Champlain Society, 1922–1936), in eight volumes including an accompanying portfolio. W. F. Ganong edited, with translations, the first book of Les Voyages (1613) and the first two books of Les Voyages (1632), in this series (Vols. II and III), with useful notes.

1 Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel de Champlain, Father of New France (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1972), 36.

2 The Works of Samuel de Champlain, ed. H. P. Biggar (Toronto, 1922–1936), (Les Voyages, ed. W. F. Ganong, Book I), ii. 346.

3 Reproduced from Champlain, “Description de costs…de la nouvelle france,” 1607, from manuscript original in the Library of Congress.

4 Numerous editions are reproduced in Tony Campbell, Netv Light on the Jansson-Visscher Maps of New England (London, Map Collectors’ Circle No. 24, 1965).

5 Reprod., I. P. N. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan-Island, 6 vols. (New York, 1915–1928), 11. pl. 21A and 49; Gabriel Archer’s account of Gosnold’s 1602 voyage in Samuel Purchas, Hakluyt Posthumous or Purchas his Pilgrimes, 20 vols. (Glasgow, 1906), xviii. 304–305; for Pring 1603, ibid., xviii. 324. For identifications of the harbor, Henry S. Burrage, ed., Early English and French Voyages, chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534–1608 (New York, 1906), 346–347; D. B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620 (New York, 1974), 426–427, argues convincingly for Provincetown.

6 Alexander Brown, Genesis of the United States (Boston, 1890), 455–460. Reprod. of Velasco map: Cumming, Discovery, 266–267; also Stokes, op. cit., ii, frontispiece and 51, 135.

7 Burrage, ed., Early English and French Voyages, 335 (Gosnold); 358 (Waymouth).

Mr. Philip L. Barbour, who is preparing a new edition of the Arber-Bradley Works and Travels of Captain John Smith, has found a German map derived from Waymouth’s chart.

8 Henry O. Thayer, The Sagadahoc Colony. Gorges Society, iv. (Portland, Me., 1892), with the text of the manuscript in the Lambeth Palace Library, giving the relation of the voyage under George Popham and Raleigh Gilbert and a reproduction of the Simancas plan. Cf. also reprod. in Cumming, Discovery, pl. 313, and p. 257.

9 John Smith, Travels and Works, ed. by Edward Arber, revised by A. G. Bradley (New York, B. Franklin, 1910), i. 188, 190.

1 Ibid., ii. 704; I. 190.

2 Ibid., i. 170. Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, i. 52, gives a list of changes that distinguish ten issues of the plate, usually with only minor changes and additions. See also Joseph Sabin and others, Bibliotheca Americana, 29 vols. (New York, Bibliographical Society of America, 1868–1936), xx. 230–231, where nine issues are distinguished; the first issue of 1616 has forty-eight names along the coast to which forty-two names are added by the ninth issue of 1635. For comments on the map, see Philip L. Barbour, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 308–310, 326–327.

3 Smith, Travels and Works, ed. Arber and Bradley, i. 123; II. 699–700.

4 Reproduction of the De Laet and Dudley are in Stokes op. cit., ii. pis. 31, 35, 37, with bibliographical references; for Sanson reprod. see Blathviayt Atlas, ed. J. D. Black (Providence, R. i., 1970), i. map 6.

5 Reproduced in Cumming, Discovery of North America, 291, and elsewhere. Justin Winsor suggests that Wood’s map is based on the same survey as that in the Henry Fitzgilbert Waters-Governor John Winthrop manuscript map (British Museum, Add. MS. 5415. G. 3) of about the same time and which Winsor reproduces with explanatory notes (America, iii. 380–383). The Waters-Winthrop map includes the coast only from Boston Bay to Merrimac River but is more detailed for the land area around the bay than Woods.

6 Original in the State Archives, The Hague. It is an anonymous undated manuscript map, extending from just below the entrance to Chesapeake Bay north to Penobscot River on the coast and to the Saguenay River in Canada. It was presented to the States-General of the Dutch Republic 11 October 1614 by Gerrit Witsen and his associates in the New Netherlands colonizing venture to show the discoveries made by their three ships between 40° and 45° N.L. It was most probably copied from an original by Block, who sailed in 1614 through Hellegat (East River and Long Island Sound) along the south coast in his ship Onrust, the first ship built on Manhattan Island: cf. Stokes, ii. 67, 136–137, pl. 23. The most accurate and best reproduction of this so-called “Figurative Map of Adriaen Block” is a full-sized chomolithograph executed at the Hague about 1854 by E. Spanier, lithographer to the King.

An unsigned, undated seventeenth-century coastal outline of New England in The Hague Algemeen Rijksarchief, Versameling Kaarten No. 517 (photocopy in the Library of Congress) is interesting because it is a draughtsman’s sketch on a cross-lined sheet that shows the shore line in considerable detail, with offshore islands but with no names. It is unlike the published Dutch Jansson-Visscher charts in the smallness of Buzzards Bay and the shape of Cape Cod as well as in the intricacy of coastal delineation.

7 Stokes, ii. 137–138, pls. 25, 27; the excellent commentaries on early cartography are by F. C. Wieder, author of Monumenta Cartographica.

8 Stokes, ii. 80–82, 138; no example is known of the 1621 chart, but a later state with the imprint of Jac. Robin, otherwise apparently unchanged, is reproduced as plate 28.

9 Stokes, ii. 86, 143, pl. 31, from de Laet’s Beschryvlnghe van West-Indien (Leyden, Elzevir, 1630).

1 Stokes, ii. 88, 144–145, pl. 31; first found in the English edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas (Amsterdam, [1636]).

2 Stokes, ii. 88, 143–144, pl. 32.

3 Stokes, i. pls. 7, 7a, 7b, 7A. The best cartobibliographical study is Tony Campbell, New Light on the Jansson-Visscher Maps of New England (London, Map Collectors Circle No. 24, 1965), with twenty-four plates illustrating various editions. Additional information on the Jansson-Visscher series is scattered through the volumes of Cornelis Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici: Bibliography of Terrestrial, Maritime and Celestial Atlases and Pilot Books, Published in the Netherlands Up to 1880. 5 vols. (Amsterdam, 1967–1971).

4 “A New Mapp of the north part of America from Hudson Straights.…Including Newfoundland…New England…& Carolena…by John Thornton.” (1673) Reprod. and notes in Jeannette D. Black, The Blathwayt Atlas (Providence, R. I., Brown University Press, 1970), No. 5, and the Blathwayt Atlas: Volume II: Commentary (Providence, 1975), 48–55.

“A New Map of the English Plantations in America…By Robert Morden…and William Berry” (1673). Reprod. and notes, Blathwayt Atlas, No. 3, ii. 43–45.

“A Mapp of Virginia…& New England by John Thornton…and by Robert Greene” [1678–1679]. Reprod. and notes, Black, Blathwayt Atlas, No. 10, II: ii. 75–81.

“A Map of y^e English Empire…by R. Daniel…R. Morden…W. Berry” (1679). Reprod., Stokes, Iconography, ii. 158, pl. 51. Comment, Cumming Southeast, 157; for 1685 edition with changed imprint, ibid., 163.

“A Chart of the Sea coasts of New England…and Carolina. From C. Cod to C. Hatteras” and “A Chart of the West Indies from Cape Cod to the River Oronoque, By John Seller. Hydrographer to the King,” in Seller’s Atlas Maritimus (London, 1675): see Cumming, Southeast, pl. 38, 153–154.

5 David Woodward, “The Foster Woodcut Controversy: A Further Examination of the Evidence,” Imago Mundi, xxi. (1967), 52–61.

6 Seller’s “A Mapp of New England” was advertised for sale in the London Gazette, no. 1085 (10–13 April 1676); see Black, Commentary, 80, n. 14. See Stokes, Iconography, ii. pi. 52, p. 157: “A Mapp of New England by John Seller,” with the dedication to Robert Thomson, in his Atlas Maritimus.

Since Seller’s map is earlier than Foster’s woodcut, since it has many differences from it in detail and coastal configuration, and since it has settlements apparently relating to King Philip’s War not on the Stoughton-Bulkeley map (deriving from the Reed map of 1665), Seller must have had other sources not yet identified in addition to some version or copy of the Reed map. He was gathering information for his English Pilot and other publications, presumably including New England correspondents. In this connection it is interesting that the second edition of his “Mapp” is dedicated to Robert Thomson, a London merchant involved in the New England Company: see Black, Commentary, 84–85.

7 Cf. Cumming, British Maps, fig. 18, p. 31.

8 Black, Commentary, Map 8, pp. 63–72.

9 Black, Commentary, 67, 69–71.

1 Mr. Boulind generously allowed the writer to read the typescript of his “William Hack and The Description of New England,” to be published by The Colonial Society of Massachusetts. He makes a detailed study of many names found on the Hack map and analyzes the differences in four charts that include New England in Hack’s atlas, A Description of the Coasts, Islands & C^a. in the North Sea of America, in the British Museum (K. Mar. VII. 3). None of these is as detailed as the Hack map in the Plymouth Society; No. 3 is the closest to it.

2 John Seller, Praxis Nautica (London, 1669), Postscript, quoted in full in Coolie Verner, A Carto-bibliographical Study of The English Pilot, The Fourth Book (Charlottesville, Va., University Press of Virginia, 1960), 5–6.

3 Samuel Pepys, The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. Edwin Chappell, Publications of the Navy Record Society, Vol. 73 (Greenwich, England, 1935), 107.

4 The English Pilot: The Fourth Book; London, 1680, ed. Coolie Verner (Amsterdam, Theatrum Orbis, 1967), xix–xx.

The following is a list of charts of the New England coast with the dates of their first and last inclusions in various editions of The English Pilot:

1. 1. A New Chart of the Sea Coast of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New England, New Jersey, Virginia…(1689–1706).
2. 2. Part of New England, New York, East New Jersey, and Long Island…(1689–1706).
3. 3. Part of New England…(1689–1706).
4. 4. Boston Harbour in New England (1689–1698).
5. 5. A Large Draught of New England New York and Long Island…Inset: Boston Harbour (1706–1737).
6. 6. Chart of the Sea Coast of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New England, New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland (1713–1794).
7. 7. New Survey of the Harbour of Boston in New England…(1721–1732).
8. 8. Harbour of Casco Bay…Captain Cyprian Southicke…1720…Em. Bowen (1721–1774).
9. 9. Correct Map of the Coast of New England…1731 (1737–1760).
10. 10. New and Correct Chart of the Sea Coast of New England from Cape Cod to Casco Bay…Henry Barnsley (1767–1773).
11. 11. A Map of the Coast of New England from Staten Island to the Island of Breton as it was actually surveyed by Capt. Cyprian Southack…Insets: Town of Boston in New England [top left];[Atlantic Ocean, north of equator] [top right] (1775–1794).

5 “Part of New England” extends from Penobscot to eastern Long Island. The Fourth Book of 1689 has two other charts showing the sea coast from Newfoundland to Virginia and from southern New England to the Bahama Islands; on a smaller scale, they give less detail.

British Museum Add. MS. 5414.22 is a rough line drawing of the coast from Plymouth and Cape Cod to include southern Maine, with settlements on the rivers (circa 1680). Two manuscript maps of the New England coast in the Public Record Office have some similarity in coastal delineation to the 1689 chart: P.R.O., CO. 700. New England. 2, showing rivers and numbered references to a list with 130 references; and P.R.O., CO. 700. New England. 1, similar to the preceding with some details to the interior. In the British Museum are a number of undated maps of the New England coast that have not been identified as influencing printed charts: K. Top. 120.23 (Kennebec River; for Gov. Winslow by Indicott); Add. MS. 5414.21 (circa 1670); Add. MS. 5415, g. 2 (by Hack: circa 1680); Add. MS. 13970a (circa 1680); K. Mar. vii.9 (circa 1700). The dates, given in the B. M. Catalogue, iii. (1843), 536–540, are unreliable.

6 “Harbour of Casco Bay…by Capt. Cyprian Southicke…1720…Em. Bowen” was retained for over seventy years, until 1794.

7 P.R.O., CO. 700. Maine 3.

8 Clara E. LeGear, “The New England Coasting Pilot of Cyprian Southack,” Imago Mundi, XI. (1954), 137–144, with a list of Southack’s charts.

9 Bellamy’s wreck and Southack’s expedition have been recounted from original records in J. Franklin Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period (New York, Macmillan, 1923), 290–311.

1 Pp. 43–65

2 [Braddock Mead] Explanation for the Neiv Map of Nova Scotia and Cape Britain (London, T. Jefferys, 1755), 5; William Douglass, Summary…of the British Settlements in North America, 2 vols. (Boston, Rogers and Fowler, 1749–1752), i. 362.

3 Cumming, British Maps, 40–45.

4 Public Record Office, CO. 700. Nova Scotia, 4.

5 Cumming, British Maps, pp. 10, 86, pl. 7; Arthur H. Robinson, “Nathaniel Blackmore’s Plaine Chart of Nova Scotia: Isobaths in the Open Sea?” Imago Mundi, xxviii. (1976), 137–141. Professor Robinson saw a photocopy of Blackmore’s chart in 1970, when the present writer was discussing Moll’s use of another map by Blackmore of Nova Scotia in his “Dominions” and later maps. Professor Robinson first noted the significance of Blackmore’s contour lines and has made a careful and judicious analysis of the problems involved. For the controversy between Mitchell and John Green [Mead] over Blackmore and his maps, including Mitchell’s attack on Blackmore in the second edition (ca. 1757) of his map of North America, see E. and D. S. Berkeley, Dr. John Mitchell, Chapel Hill, 1974, pp. 208–209, which gives an account of the controversy and its background.

6 Arthur H. Robinson, “The Genealogy of the Isopleth,” Surveying and Mapping, xxxii. (1972), 332, 337.

7 “A New and Exact Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain on y^e Continent of North America,” in H. Moll, The World Described (London, 1709–1720), No. 8. See Cumming, Southeast, 43–44, 181–183.

8 A Map of the British Empire in A merica with the French and Spanish Settlements adjacent Thereto, by Henry Popple, with introductory notes by William P. Cumming and Helen Wallis (Lympne Castle, Kent, Harry Margary, 1972).

9 Cumming, British Maps, 34, 90–91. Copies of the rare Douglass map are in the Library of Congress, British Museum, and Harvard College Library. The Douglass map was not engraved until after his death by order of his executors (circa 1753). Many copies of Douglass’s Summary have a copy inserted of Huske’s “A New and Accurate Map of North America…1755” in the 1760 edition of the work.

1 “A Map of the most Inhabited part of New England…by Thos. Jefferys, 1755,” North America at the Time of the Revolution: A Collection of Eighteenth Century Maps, Part II, with introductory notes by Louis De Vorsey, Jr. (Lympne Castle, Kent, Harry Margary, 1974), ii, sheets J1 to J4; Cumming, British Maps, 34, 91; Erik Akorn, “Geographical and Place names, Taken from A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, lxxxix. (1953), 275–287. The differences in the numerous states of the Jefferys map are noted in Stevens and Tree, “Comparative Cartography,” Map Collectors Circle, xxxix. (1967), 326–327.

Mead (alias John Green) does not acknowledge Douglass in the list of authorities used for the map, but the “List of Maps” prefixed to Thomas Jefferys’s A General Topography of North America…(London, 1768), states that the Douglass map is the basis for the “Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England.”

2 Charles Morris’s “Draught of the Northern English Colonies…” dedicated to William Shirley (British Museum, K. Top. 118. 52) is a careful, finely executed manuscript map on vellum dated Boston, 16 August 1749. Morris, born in Boston in 1711, had already been surveying the coast for several years; he was appointed surveyor general of Nova Scotia 25 September 1749: see Don W. Thompson, Men and Meridians (Ottawa, Queen’s Printer, 1966), i. 117–118.

3 Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, Dr. John Mitchell: The Man Who Made the Maf (Chapel Hill, U.N.C. Press, 1974), 175–213, has the best analysis of the sources and influence of Mitchell’s map. A full-scale facsimile, with notes, is Louis De Vorsey, North America at the Time of the Revolution Part II (Lympne Castle, Kent, Harry Margary, 1974), pis. M1–8. The different editions of the map are given by Richard W. Stephenson in W. W. Ristow, A la Carte: Selected Papers on Maps and Atlases (Washington, Library of Congress, 1972), 109–113.

Neither the Berkeleys nor Mitchell himself in his notes engraved on the map give specific information about the sources used for New England, although Mitchell (Sheet 7, col. 3) makes detailed criticism of the latitudes on the maps of Moll, Blackmore, and others and cites the observations of those whom he follows.

4 An annotated list of the American maps in the Bernard Collection is given in Cumming, British Maps, Appendix A, 28–30, 75–78. In 1959 the writer looked over these maps; ten years later, 1969, Dr. Helen Wallis of the British Museum and the writer visited Nether Winchendon, examined the collection, and took photographs.

Other manuscript maps and charts of Maine made for Sir Francis are in the Public Record Office: Maps and Plans, Vol. II (America), ed. P. A. Penfold (London, 1974), CO. 700. Maine no. 18 (“Rout from Fort Pownall…to Quebec 1764”), and probably CO. 700. Maine no. 16 (“Six Townships on the East side of the River Penobscot…1763”); C.O. 700. Maine no. 18 (“seven Townships…on the East side of Mount Desert River…1764”); C.O. 700. Maine no. 19 (“Bay and River of Penobscot” [1764]).

5 Cumming, British Maps, 30.

6 “A Map of the Middle British Colonies in North America…by M^r Lewis Evans …with the Addition of New England…By T. Pownall…London…1776”; off the Maine coast is the legend “**The coast included within these marks is copied from Governor Bernards Surveys, including M^ọ Desart I^ḍ &c.” See reproduction and notes in ed. Lois Mulkearn A Topographical Description…By T. Pownall (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1949).

7 A major legal factor in the rival claims of the Kennebeck Company proprietors and their opponents was whether the Kennebec River extended to the sea or whether it ended at Merrymeeting Bay and from there was the Sagadahoc River and therefore not included in the original Plymouth Council patent. At least part of the lower river below Merrymeeting Bay and the coastal bay into which it flowed was known to the English as the Sagadahoc from the time of Popham’s short-lived Sagadahoc Colony settlement in 1607. Sagadahoc is derived from the Indian sanktai -i -wi, to finish, and -onk, a locative, meaning a finishing place: where a river ceases to be a river, the mouth of a river: cf. Edward Ballard, Geographical Names on the Coast of Maine (Washington, Coast Survey Report, 1868). Fannie Hardy Eckstrom, Indian Place-Names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine Coast (Orono, Maine, Maine University Press, 1941), 129, 172, lists ten different spellings of Sagadahoc, with early references to its Indian meaning.

The French used the name “Quinibequy” for the entire river from the time of Champlain (1604) and his maps (Cumming, Discovery, 273, 274). J. N. Bellin’s map in P. F. X. de Charlevoix, Histoire et Description Generate de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1744), ii. facing 237, gives the entrance as “Baye de Kinibequi.” Both John Green, Explanation for the New Map of Nova Scotia and Cape Britain (London, 1753), 6, and Thomas Johnston in his “Plan of Kennebeck and Sagadahock Rivers…1754” refer to Bellin’s map. Johnston, attempting to limit the name to the Androscoggin River, that branch which also flows into Merrymeeting Bay as well as the Kennebec, notes along the river “Sagadahock or Amorescoggin River, so called by Mr. Pople [Popple’s “A Map of the British Empire in America…1733”], Sagadahock R. so Called by Monsr. Bellin and also by most or all the Ancient Plans.” In 1757, however, Bellin, probably confused by Green’s maps which he used, has both “Sagadahoc” and “Kinibeke” flow into the “Baye de Sagadahock” in his “Carte de la Nouvelle Angleterre…1757” that appeared in his Histoire Générale Des Voiages (Paris, 1746–1761), xiv. (1757).

The ruling of the Privy Council did not come until 1771 and then was inconclusive (Kershaw, Kennebeck Proprietors, 190); they ordered the case returned for a new trial to the Massachusetts Superior Court. It was not until after the Revolution that the Proprietors equivocally won their case; they were granted other land to compensate for that which they claimed.

Gordon E. Kershaw, The Kennebeck Proprietors 1740–1775 (Portland, Me., Maine Historical Society, 1975), 175–200.

Gordon E. Kershaw, “Settling the District Called Frankfort,” Maine Historical Society Newsletter, x (February 1971), 73–83, with a reproduction of Johnston’s “Plan of Kennebeck & Sagadahock…1755.”

8 L. C. Wroth, “The Thomas Johnston Maps of the Kennebec Purchase,” In Tribute to Fred Anthoensen, Master Printer (Portland, Me., 1952), 161, 163, with reproductions of Johnston maps.

James C. Wheat and Christian F. Brun, Maps and Charts Published in America Before 1800 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1969), 34.

Sinclair Hitchings, “Thomas Johnston,” Boston Prints and Printmakers, 1670–1775 (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1973), 83–132, with reproductions of Johnston’s “A True Coppy…1753” and “Kennebeck and Sagadahock…1754.”

9 Willis Chipman, The Life and Times of Major Samuel Holland, Surveyor General, 1764–1801 in Papers and Records, Ontario Historical Society, xxi. (1924), 21.

1 Louis De Vorsey, ed., De Brahm’s Report of the General Survey in the Southern District of North America (Columbia, S.C., University of South Carolina Press, 1971), 33; De Vorsey’s Introduction is the best life of De Brahm.

2 Don W. Thomson, Men and Meridians (Ottawa, Queen’s Printer, 1966), 100.

3 Chipman, Holland, 11–15; Thomson, Men and Meridians, 108.

4 P.R.O., C.O. 700. Maine 20.

5 Louis De Vorsey, “Hydrography: A Note on the Equipage of Eighteenth-Century Survey Vessels,” The Mariner’s Mirror, lviii. (1972), 173–177.

6 G. N. D. Evans, “Hydrography: A Note on Eighteenth-Century Methods,” The Mariner’s Mirror, lii. (1960), 247–250. G. N. D. Evans, Uncommon Obdurate: The Several Public Careers of J. F. W. DesBarres (Salem, Peabody Museum, 1969), 13–14.

7 Evans, Uncommon Obdurate, and Thomson, Men and Meridians, 93ff., are somewhat complementary in their biographies.

8 There is no complete list of the works that DesBarres supervised and published, but several libraries have published their holdings in map catalogues. Some of the productions of DesBarres’ workshop, chiefly profiles that may have been discarded, are known only by a unique copy in some collection. The most extensive list so far is the typewritten list by Henry Stevens, “Catalogue of the Henry Stevens Collection of The Atlantic Neptune, with revisions to 1937 (London),” a careful carto-bibliography of the charts, profiles, and views that he owned and of other states that he had observed. His collection has been acquired by the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Other large collections are in the British Museum; the Hydrographic Department of the Navy at Taunton, Somerset; the New York Public Library; and the Library of Congress. The collection of sets and separate sheets in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress (totaling some 2,300 items) is at present being collated by Dr. John R. Sellars and Miss Patricia Molen van Ee in a Library of Congress Bicentennial project. At the time of writing, the finest private collection is owned by Mr. Augustus P. Loring of Prides Crossing, Massachusetts; from it were chosen the full-scale reproductions in the four-portfolio reproductions of The Atlantic Neptune published by the Barre Publishing Company, Barre, Mass., 1966–1969.

The library at Taunton holds a number of the original drafts of the New England coast sent by Holland and his assistants to London; these deserve special study not yet made, to examine their relation to the finished plates produced in London by DesBarres. See A Summary of Selected Manuscript Documents of Historical Importance Preserved in the Archives of the Department of Hydrography: Department Professional Paper No. 13. London: Admiralty, 1950, pp. 5, 19 ff. In 1820 the Admiralty purchased the original copper plates used for The Atlantic Neptune from DesBarres, later selling 84 of the 241 purchased. In 1946–1947 the Admiralty presented to the Canadian government 30 of the original plates and to the United States of America 34 plates; these have later been distributed to appropriate local archives and libraries. At Taunton are also four sets of The Atlantic Neptune, one from George III with his coat of arms.

9 The profiles in The Atlantic Neptune are usually depicted as they are seen about thirty feet above water from an off-shore vessel. Some plates have been erased and new profiles from a different angle engraved, indicating the continuous sketching done as the surveying vessel was making soundings.

The writer is indebted to Mr. Loring for his analysis of changes in profiles and views on different states of the same chart, illustrated by examples from his collection and photographs of the same views, taken two hundred years later, from the same locations.

1 The writer is indebted to Mrs. William P. Cumming who has done the research with him and read the MS. at all stages, and to Miss Jeannette Black for suggestions and corrections that have added to the usefulness of this essay.

1 “Diary of Samuel Sewall,” 4 April 1706, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5th Series, vi. 157.

2 Colonel Robert Quary to the Council of Trade and Plantations, 10 January 1708, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies, xxiii. No. 1273.

3 Declaration of Denis & Bernard Godet of Annapolis Royal, 1 September 1714, Public Archives of Nova Scotia, MG7, 52, 53; B. Pothier, “Joseph de Monbeton de Brouillon, dit Saint-Ovide,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, III, (Toronto, 1974), 454

4 Governor Francis Nicholson of Nova Scotia to Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts, Boston, 25 December 1714, Public Archives of Nova Scotia, MG7, 49.

5 De la Forest (? to the Minister of Marine), 12 September 1717, Archives des Colonies (France), Series CiiB, ii. f.274.

6 Cyprian Southack to Lieutenant Governor John Doucett of Nova Scotia, Boston, 9 January 1718, Public Record Office (London), Colonial Office 217/2, ff.188, 189.

7 Memorial to Governor Shute, the Council and General Court of Massachusetts by Oliver Noyes et. al., Boston, June 1718, P.R.O. C.O. 217/2, f.283.

8 Massachusetts Council Minutes, 15 March 1721, P.R.O., C.O. 5/794, 123.

9 Massachusetts House of Representatives to Governor Shute, November 1720, P.R.O., C.O. 6/794, f.85.

1 Giles Hall to Mrs. Hannah Pickering, Boston, 11 September 1723, Pickering & Derby Papers, 10, Essex Institute (Salem, Mass.).

2 Peirce to Dolebra, Portsmouth, 10 September 1728, Peirce Letter Book, Baker Library (Harvard University).

3 Peirce to Peter Faneuil, Portsmouth, 9, 30 November 1733, Peirce Letter Book.

4 T. Barrow, Trade & Empire, The British Customs Service in Colonial America 1660–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 169.

5 Memorial of the King to Saint-Ovide and Mezy, Paris, 12 May 1722, Archives des Colonies, Series CiiB, xiv. f.235.

6 Complaint enclosed in a letter from the ministry of the Marine to Saint-Ovide, 17 May 1728, ibid., x. ff.24, 25, 29.

7 Maurepas to Saint-Ovide and Mezy, 18 June 1728, Archives Nationales (France), Series B, lii. f.582v.

8 Officers of the Admiralty, Louisbourg, 5 December 1730, Archives des Colonies, Series CiiB, xi. ff.111–113.

9 Mezy to the Minister of the Marine, Louisbourg, 3 February 1732, list of New England ships sold at Louisbourg in 1732, ibid., XIII. ff.7, 100.

1 Boston Gazette, 17 September 1733.

2 New England Weekly Journal, 8 January 1733.

3 Boston Gazette, 16 August 1731.

4 Ibid.

5 E. Pearse to William Pepperrell, London, 6 December 1721, Pepperrell MS., Book 2, New England Historical and Genealogical Society (Boston).

6 Orders and Bills of Lading, July 1721, Pepperrell Papers, Box 212, 1718–1721, Maine Historical Society (Portland); William Pepperrell to Captain John More, Piscataqua, 25 July 1721, Pepperrell Papers, Collection 35, No. 12, p. 5, Maine Historical Society.

7 William Pepperrell, Sr. to Captain Thomas Richards, 8 August 1726, ibid.

8 “Acct. of Mes. H. Grangent with Wm. Pepperrell & B. Clark,” 13 November 1729, ibid.

9 H. Grangent to William Pepperrell, Martinique, 11 January 1731, ibid.

1 Invoices nos. 119, 120, 121, 1, 10 September and 17 November 1729, P. Faneuil Ledger, 1730–1732, 3, Baker Library.

2 J. Peirce to P. Faneuil, Portsmouth, 9, 30 November 1733, Peirce Letter Book.

3 Governor Richard Philipps to John Henshaw et al., Public Record Office, C.O. 217/6, f.150.

4 Faneuil to Thomas Kilby, Boston, 20 June 1737, Faneuil Letter Book, Baker Library.

5 Account of Trade for 1736, Archives Nationales, Series CiiB, xviii. f.170.

6 Faneuil to Kilby, Boston, 19 April 1737, Faneuil Letter Book.

7 Bigot to the Minister, Louisbourg, 18 June 1742, Archives des Colonies, Series CiiB, xxiv. ff.87–89.

8 Archives Departementales, Charente-Maritime (La Rochelle), Series B, Cours et Jurisdictions (Amirauté de Louisbourg à La Rochelle), registre B272, ff.510–515, 555–560.

1 The introductory essay in Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery from Its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876 (Washington, 1878) remains the most useful account of the colonial fishery.

2 James F. Shepherd and Gary M. Walton, Shipping, Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, England, 1972), Appendix IV, Table 2, pp. 211–216.

3 Three quarters of a century earlier, French whalemen at Spitzbergen attempted unsuccessfully to operate tryworks at sea. See Friedrich Martens, “Voyage into Spitzbergen and Greenland” (1671), in A Collection of Documents on Spitzbergen and Greenland, ed. Adam White (London, 1855), p. 130. The American practice may have begun in the 1740s, but logbook or other contemporary references to tryworks on board have not been found before the 1750s.

4 But see a puzzling advertisement in the Boston Nevus-Letter, 30 March 1748, offering “Sperma Ceti Candles, exceeding all others for Beauty, Sweetness of Scent when extinguished…[and] emitting a soft, easy expanding light.” As no evidence for the manufacture of spermaceti candles in the American colonies before 1750 has been found, the vendor, James Clement, possibly imported his wares. Yet no foreign source nor sperm whale fishery outside the colonies is known.

5 Although documentary material on outfitting costs and crew sizes for colonial whaling vessels is fragmentary, three useful sources are (1) Aaron Lopez Ships’ Book: 1767–1772, vol. 559, Lopez Papers, Newport Historical Society, (2) Ledger B (1769) of William Rotch, Sr., and (3) Journal B (1771), also of Rotch, in the Old Dartmouth Historical Society.

6 Except for a well-known one-paragraph description of whale hunting by Penobscot Indians in A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage made this Present Yeare 1605, by Captain George Waymouth, there is no other documentary or archaeological evidence to sustain the assertion of an independent whaling tradition by native Americans. Without such confirmation, the Waymouth account should be treated with care.

7 For variations in available whaleboats of the period, see the letter from Jacob Rodriguez Rivera to Henry White, 19 June 1767: “I have agreeable to your request been with a Whaleboat Builder to git one built as you direct, but your directions not being explicit enough he is fearful to begin it till I hears from you.…The Common Whaleboats here row with 5 oars, they are 20 foot keel & 27 foot from stem to stern & about 5 foot 4 in. broad. If you incline to have it either longer or broader it shall be done. He wants to know if she is to be (as she is to steer with a Rudder) Square Stern or in the form of a Common Whaleboat.” Aaron Lopez Letter Book, 1767, vol. 81, Lopez Papers, Newport Historical Society.

8 For a detailed description of colonial whaling practices, see Adams’ notes and minutes for the case, in The Legal Papers of John Adams, ed. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, II (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 68–97. Useful information may also be found in Douglass C. Fonda, Jr., Eighteenth Century Nantucket Whaling, As compiled from the Original Logs and Journals of the Nantucket Alheneum and the Nantucket Whaling Museum (Nantucket, 1969).

9 Among the earliest accounts of fastening to a whale with a whaleboat in colonial America is Felix Christian Sporri’s description of a capture off Narragansett Bay in 1662. Originally published in his Americanische Reiss-beschreiburg Nach den Caribes Insseln, Und Neu-Engelland (Zurich, 1677), a translation is available in Carl Bridenbaugh, Fat Mutton and Liberty of Conscience: Society in Rhode Island, 1636–1600 (Providence, 1974), Appendix V, pp. 144–145.

1 See Logbook of the Sloop Dighton, 1769, in Old Dartmouth Historical Society, and Fonda, Eighteenth Century Nantucket Whaling, p. 10.

2 For brief summaries of the conditions of the Massachusetts fishery before the Revolution, see the “Replies to Queries: Massachusetts,” submitted to Thomas Jefferson in 1784, and Jefferson’s “Memoranda Concerning the American, British and French Fisheries” (1788), in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., vii. (Princeton, 1953), 339–343, xiv. (Princeton, 1958), 226–234.

3 Henry Cruger, Jr., to Aaron Lopez, Bristol, 28 July 1766, in Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 1726–1774, ed. Worthington C. Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 7th series, ix. (Boston, 1914), 165. See also Cruger’s letters to Lopez, 9 April 1766, and 6 April 1768, Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 152–153, 236, and the blunter remarks of William Stead, London, to Lopez, 10 February 1764, Aaron Lopez Papers, Box 651, Newport Historical Society: “As to the 44 casks of white oyl my cooper tells me they most of them stunk.”

4 Henry Lloyd to Aaron Lopez, Boston, 10 May 1756, in Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 68.

5 Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, iii. (Boston, 1878), 546–547. See also Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1750–1751, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston, 1952), pp. 115, 135, 165, and Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery, pp. 149–150. The date of the petition is misstated by Starbuck and others as 1750. The confusion is probably due to the fact that the period from 1 January to 24 March 1751, was considered part of 1750 under the Julian Calendar still in effect in Great Britain and the colonies.

6 Invoice, Benjamin Crabb to Obadiah Brown, Providence, 21 August 1751, and “Schem for a Contract with Obadiah Brown” in Miscellaneous Papers, Obadiah Brown, 1742–1757, Box B-814, Rhode Island Historical Society.

7 The assertion that Brown was disappointed with Crabb’s ability was made by Obed Macy in his History of Nantucket, published in 1835, p. 69. See also James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations: The Colonial Years (Providence, 1968), pp. 9, 89

8 Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1752–1753, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston, 1954), p. 78.

9 Journals of the House of Representatives, 1752–1753, pp. 132, 147, 153.

1 Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, ii. (Cambridge, 1962), p. 46. See also George Francis Dow, Whale Ships and Whaling (Salem, 1925), pp. 36–38.

2 A Pennsylvania candleworks is known to have been in operation in the 1750s, perhaps as early as November 1751, when Benjamin Franklin referred in a letter to “a new kind of Candles very convenient to read by,” which were made at Marcus Hook in Chester County. From the description, they seem almost certain to have been spermaceti rather than tallow candles: “You will find that they afford a clear white Light; may be held in the Hand, even in hot Weather, without softning; that their Drops do not make Grease Spots like those from common Candles; that they last much longer, and need little or no Snuffing.” Letter, Franklin to Susanna Wright, Philadelphia, 21 November 1751 in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, iv. (New Haven, 1961), 211.

3 The largest single collection of Lopez papers is in the Newport Historical Society. For biographical details, see Stanley F. Chyet, Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince (Detroit, 1970). On the Jewish merchants of Newport, see Jacob Rader Marcus, Early A merican Jewry: The Jews of New York, New England and Canada, i. (Philadelphia, 1951) and S. Broches, Jews in New England, Six Monographs: Jewish Merchants in Colonial Rhode Island (New York, 1942).

4 For specifications and equipment of various candleworks, see (1) “Account of Cost Spermaceti Works,” in Obadiah Brown, Misc. Papers, 1742–1757, Box B-814, Rhode Island Historical Society, (2) Letter, J. Palmer & Co. to Nicholas Brown & Co., 26 August 1763, in Brown Papers, P-U5, John Carter Brown Library, (3) “Spermaceti Agreement” in Commerce of Rhode Island, t. 137–139, and (4) William Rotch, Jr., Account Book, “Spermaceti Candle Mfg. Accounts, 1772–1776,” in New Bedford Free Public Library.

5 The most complete description of the process of refining head matter and spermaceti is in Charles H. Stevenson, “Aquatic Products in Arts and Industries: Fish Oils, Fats, and Waxes,” U. S. Fish Commission Report for 1902 (Washington, 1903), pp. 200–201, 244–247.

6 An impression of Hurd’s label for Rome is in the collection of the John Carter Brown Library. The label for Palmer & Co. is reproduced in Dow, Whale Ships and. Whaling, p. 37.

7 Shepherd and Walton, Shipping, Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial North America, Appendix 6, pp. 211–126.

8 The story of Hancock’s participation in the whale-oil trade is told in detail by W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775 (Cambridge, 1945). See also N. S. B. Gras and Henrietta M. Larson, Casebook in American Business History (New York, 1939), pp. 66–69.

9 Baxter, The House of Hancock, pp. 168–174.

1 Letter, Henry Cruger to Aaron Lopez, Bristol, England, 6 December 1769 in Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 300.

2 The problems of smuggling head matter under the guise of common oil are vividly described in two “remarkably saucy” letters from Joseph Rotch & Sons to (1) Rivera & Co., Napth. & Isaac Hart, Thos. Robinson and Aaron Lopez, 31 July 1764, and (2) Robert Jenkins, 16 August 1764, both in Brown Papers, John Carter Brown Library.

3 On the Browns’ whaling ventures, see Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations: The Colonial Years, pp. 87–88. For Lopez, see his Ships’ Book, vol. 559, Lopez Papers, Newport Historical Society.

4 On the strategic position of the producers, see the series of letters from the Boston merchant, Henry Lloyd, to Aaron Lopez in 1755–1756, in Letters of Boston Merchants, 1. Baker Library, Harvard University. On the dominant position of the Rotch firm, see Lloyd’s letter to Lopez of 7 June 1756, in the Newport Historical Society, and the letter of another Boston merchant, John Rowe, to the London dealers, Booth and Lane, in Letter Book of John Rowe, 1759–1762, also in Baker Library. Pertinent material may also be found in Chapter iii of a doctoral dissertation, “The House of Rotch: Massachusetts Whaling Merchants, 1734–1828,” by Joseph L. McDevitt, Jr. (American University, 1978).

5 This and subsequent agreements of the “Spermaceti Trust” are best described in Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations: The Colonial Years, pp. 94–103.

6 The text of the agreement is printed in Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 88–92.

7 Letter, Collins & Rivera, Naph. Hart & Co., Aaron Lopez to R. Cranch & Co., Newport, 29 July 1762; letter, R. Cranch & Co. to Nicholas Brown & Co., 16 and 23 August 1762; Brown Papers, John Carter Brown Library, L & A 59–92 Sp. C. The letter to Cranch is printed in Marcus, Early American Jewry., i. 132–133.

8 The agreement is printed in Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 97–100.

9 Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 288–289.

1 Baxter, The House of Hancock, pp. 226–227.

2 Letter, Hancock to Barnard & Co., Boston, 17 August 1764, as quoted in Gras and Larson, Casebook in American Business History, p. 67.

3 Letters, Hancock to Barnard & Co., Boston, 5, 18 April 1765, in Gras and Larson, Casebook, pp. 67–68.

4 Letters, Hancock to Barnard & Co., Boston, 17 April, 8 November 1766, in Gras and Larson, Casebook, pp. 67–68.

5 Baxter, The House of Hancock, pp. 243–250.

6 Ellis, History of New Bedford and Vicinity, 1602–1892, pp. 58–59.

7 Tax Valuation List, Dartmouth, 1771, Old Dartmouth Historical Society. The property taxed to Joseph Rotch & Sons exceeded in value the combined total of the next six propertied residents of New Bedford. See also John M. Bullard, The Rotches (New Bedford, 1947), pp. 14–15.

8 Nicholas Brown & Co. to Jacob Rodriguez Rivera & rest of Spermaceti Manufacturers at Newport, Providence, 21 January 1768, Brown Papers, P-R5, John Carter Brown Library.

9 William Rotch Account Book, “Spermaceti Candle Mfg. Accounts, 1772–1776,” New Bedford Free Public Library.

1 Letter, Jacob Rodriguez Rivera to Nicholas Brown & Co., Newport, 7 February, 16, 26 September 1769, and letter, William Rotch to the Manufacturers of Head Matter at Newport and Providence, 24 January 1774, both in Brown Papers, P-U5, John Carter Brown Library.

1 The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1878), iii. 1062.

2 The first Province Galley, a snow, served from 1694 to 1704 when she was sold. The second, built in 1705, ended her days as a merchant vessel eleven years later. Prince of Orange was a snow-rigged galley, lost in 1745. The ship Massachusetts-Frigate, the largest of the Province vessels until construction of King George, served for about nine years before being sold out for a West Indiaman. The activities of these, and other, smaller Province vessels are described in Howard M. Chapin’s companion volumes Privateer Ships and Sailors, The First Century of American Colonial Privateering, 7625–7725 (Toulon, 1926) and Privateering in King George’s War, 1730–1748 (Providence, 1928).

3 The Acts and Resolves…of the Massachusetts Bay, iii. 1062.

4 Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts (Boston, 1960), xxxiii. pt. 2, 434.

5 Reproduced in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, lxiv. (1928), 199.

6 Journals of the House of Representatives…, xxxiii. pt. 2, 33.

7 The Boston Gazette, and Country Journal, No. 108, 25 April 1757.

8 Reproduced in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, lxiv. (1928), 200.

9 The Boston Gazette, and Country Journal, No. 127, 5 September 1757.

1 See Philip Chadwick Foster Smith, Caftain Samuel Tucker (1747–1833), Continental Navy (Salem, 1976).

2 See the “Journal of the Voyage of his Excell’y Thos. Pownall, Esq., Capn General and Governor in Chief in and over his Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts Bay, to Penobscot, and of his Proceedings in Establishing Possession of his Majesty’s Rights there in Behalf of the Said Province,” photostatic copy at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

3 Ibid.

4 The Boston Weekly News-Letter, No. 3017 (numbering out of sequence), 5 July 1759.

5 Ibid., No. 2940, 6 November 1760.

6 See The Boston News-Letter and New England Chronicle, No. 3043, 21 October 1762; No. 3083, 20 January 1763; and at the Public Record Office, London: Captain’s log of H.M.S. Northumberland, Adm. 51/3925; Captain’s log of H.M.S. Gosport, Adm. 51/406; Captain’s log of H.M.S. Syren, Adm. 51/966; and Admirals’ Correspondence (Colville), Adm. 1/482

1 Neil R. Stout, “Goals and Enforcement of British Colonial Policy, 1763–1775,” The American Neptune, xxvii. (1967), 211–220.

2 The memo of the Treasury was based on reports from the London Commissioners of Customs, 21 July and 16 September 1763, Treasury 1/426, Public Record Office; Order in Council, 4 October 1763, W. L. Grant and James Munro, eds., Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series (6 vols., 1908–1912), iv. 569–572.

3 Instructions of Lord Colville, 15 October 1763, Admiralty 1/482, P.R.O. In direct quotations capitalizations and spellings have frequently been modernized.

4 3 Geo. iii c. 22, no. iv, Statutes at Large, xxv. 345–351.

5 Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, iv. 560–562. There is a printed copy in Adm. 1/3866, P.R.O.

6 This enumeration is taken from the 1771 Boston table of fees in T. 64/45, P.R.O. The other American ports are also listed there.

7 Captain John Brown to Customs Collector, 10 December 1763, Captain Brown to Admiral Colville, 12 December 1763, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

8 John Temple to Commander of H.M.S. Hawke, Boston, 19 December 1769, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

9 Commissioners of Customs to John Temple, Custom House, London, 19 January 1765, T. 1/441; also Adm. 1/4286, P.R.O.

1 Ibid.

2 The theoretical ramifications of the case especially for smugglers are in Herbert A. Johnson and David Syrett, “Some Nice Sharp Quillets of the Customs Law: The New York Affair, 1763–1767,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, xxv. (1968), 432–451. As the case was not decided until 1767 I am not sure what influence this decision had on the practice of smuggling.

3 E.g., Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 19 May 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

4 Cf., e.g., Colville to [Archibald] Cleveland, Halifax, 10 April 1761, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.; Gambier to Philip Stephens, Boston, 6 November 1770, Adm. 1/483, P.R.O.

5 A Table of Dimensions etc., Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

6 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 19 May 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

7 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 18 June 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

8 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 26 July 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

9 Thomas Hill to Colville, Newport, [30 June 1764], Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

1 New York Post Boy and Gazette, Supplement, 26 July 1764; see 2 August 1764.

2 Thomas Hill to Colville, Newport [circa 12 July 1764], Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.; Captain Smith [of Squirrel] to Colville, Rhode Island, 12 July 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

3 General Reports of Attorney and Solicitor General, 22 December 1765, Huntington MSS. HM 220, Huntington Library.

4 Thomas Lougharne to Colville, Halifax, 11 August 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

5 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 24 August 1764, 9 September 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

6 Colville to Philip Stephens, [Halifax], 24 August 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

7 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 9 September, 13 November 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

8 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 9 November 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

9 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 9 September, 13 November 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

1 An Account of the Disposition of H.M. Ships…14 December 1764, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

2 An Account of the Disposition of H.M. Ships…10 July and 7 November 1765, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

3 Colville to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 7 June, 31 July 1766, Adm. 1/482, P.R.O.

4 Samuel Hood to Philip Stephens, Halifax, 28 July, 24 October 1767, 28 March, 23 October, 11 July 1768, Adm. 1/483, P.R.O.; Massachusetts Gazette, 10 November 1768.

5 L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, eds., Legal Papers of John Adams (3 vols., Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1965), ii. 173–210, especially, 180.

6 An Account of Warrants…of Incidental Expenses, 7 September 1767 to 10 November 1769, T. 1/461, P.R.O. These figures do not agree with those in the Legal Papers of John Adams (see footnote 5 above); nor with the accusation of John Temple that the cost was £1,500. John Temple to “My Lord Duke,” Boston, 25 October 1769, T. 1/469, P.R.O.

7 Reid had fought in the last war as a midshipman and mate. Colville had promised him a post in North America but was unable to obtain one. He had commanded the packet between Halifax and Boston. He was recommended to the command of Liberty by Colonel Dalrymple. Memo of William Reid, 29 January 1771, T. 1/482, P.R.O.

8 Deposition of William Reid, Newport, 21 July 1769, T. 1/471, P.R.O. See all the documents in this bundle connected with Liberty, especially Deposition of Joseph Adams, 21 July 1769; Deposition of Joseph Packwood, 21 July 1769; William Reid to Governor Joseph Wanton, Newport, Wednesday [19 July 1769], 11:00 P.M.; Charles Dudley and John Nicoll to Governor Wanton, Custom House, Rhode Island, 12 July 1769; Governor Wanton to Charles Dudley and John Nicoll, July 1769, etc.

The man who may have started the whole business, Barnabas Wilson, a tidesman in New London, was roughly handled by the mob on 25 July 1769. John Miller and Thomas Moffatt to Commissioners of Customs, New London, 27 July 1769, T. 1/471, P.R.O. The Commissioners gave Wilson £2.5 for his trouble. An Account of Warrants, T. 1/461, P.R.O.

9 See, e.g., Commissioners of Customs to the Treasury, 25 January 1771, T. 1/483; 11 February 1773, T. 1/501, P.R.O.

1 Memo of William Reid, 29 January 1771, T. 1/482, P.R.O.

2 Advices from Amsterdam, copies to Commissioners of Customs, the Lords of Admiralty, Collector at New York, 7, 15 October 1770, T. 1/480; Andrew Elliot and Lambert Moore to Treasury, 7, 16 January 1771, T. 1/482; Commissioners of Customs to Treasury, Boston, 25 January 1771, T. 1/483; James Gambier to Philip Stephens, Boston, 16 November 1770, 21 January 1771, Adm. 1/483; John Swift to Commissioner of Customs, Philadelphia, 5 February 1771 [Cf. Custom House Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, xi. 1346]; John Swift to Treasury, Philadelphia, 30 April 1771, T. 1/485; John Swift to Commissioners of Customs, Philadelphia, 5 February 1771, T. 1/482; Richard Reeve to John Robinson, Boston, 1 March 1771, T. 1/482; Case, ibid.; John Swift to Andrew Allen, n.d., T. 1/485, P.R.O.

3 Commissioners of Customs to Treasury, Custom House, London, 21 July 1763, T. 1/426; An Account of Receipts, Payments…from 8 September 1767 to 5 January 1777, T. 1/461, P.R.O. Another set of figures in this bundle of documents for 1769 gives gross revenue as £42,787, payments as £5,106, net £37, 681; another set in T. 1/486 and another in T. 1/504 gives £40,024; £18,242; £21,181. See also Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, iv. 569–572.

4 An Account of the Duties…from the 10th of October 1766 to the 10th of October 1767, T. 1/452; An Account of Receipts, Payments…from 8 September 1767 to 5 January 1777, T. 1/461, P.R.O.