Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 172

Price Realized: $ 1,188
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(MARITIME.) Hugh McKibben. Letters written as an American seaman impressed into the British navy. 30 items: 19 Autograph Letters Signed to uncle James McKibben of Belfast, Ireland; plus 11 letters to Hugh McKebbin from uncle James, cousin John and others. Various sizes and conditions, a few worn or with early repairs; various inked stamp or manuscript postal markings. Various places, 1791-1800
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The first two letters in this collection are dated August 1791, in which our correspondent Hugh McKibbon is preparing to sail from Glasgow "aboard a ship called the Blanford bound to Virginia." On 15 August 1795, he writes with distressing news from Môle-Saint-Nicolas on the Isle of Hispaniola in what is now Haiti. While serving as a master's mate on an American merchant ship, "fortune is determined to persecute me to the last. We had scarcely arrived in the West Indies when I was pressed into His Majesty's Service although I had made myself a citizen of America by every means required by that government. Indeed, I am not alone as the ship I am now on board of is half manned with Americans and there is no distinction made between mates & men. . . . I have had repeated offers of master's mate berth on board the ship but I am determined never to enter voluntarily into such a tyranical service." On 27 April 1796 he reported that his original American vessel had been lost at sea, resulting in the loss of all the property he had still counted upon after his release. On 16 May aboard the HMS Plymouth he reports that "I have taken the bounty and they have taken care not to trouble me with any such offers" of a master's mate position. He notes that aboard the HMS Regulus there were "upwards of fifty real Americans" who had tried writing the American minister "but as they had nothing to prove themselves, so could not get clear." On 24 June 1796 aboard the HMS Irresistible, "I narrowly escaped being discovered in an attempt to get off. I hired a boatman to come under the bows at an appointed hour in the night. He came, I got in, & got some ways ahead of the ship when the centry on the forecastle perceived us, hailed the boat & fired his musket at us. The waterman, scared to death, pulled the boat round go alongside again. I made him pull to the bows, caught hold the cable, clambered up it & got in by the spar hawse hole unnoticed." On 8 July 1796 he accepted promotion to midshipman, which "will take me away from amongst the low trash that always infests these ships, but how am I to support the rank, which the wages is far from being equal to."

His 4 May 1797 letter describes a naval battle in which the Irresistible defeated two Spanish frigates "after having a great numbers of men killed"; it is dated from the captured ship Ninfa, renamed the HMS Hamadryad.

Discussed in Willcocks, "England's Postal History, to 1840," page 111.