Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 278

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(SOUTH CAROLINA.) A petition against the mutinous harbor pilots of Charleston. Retained manuscript draft, unsigned. One page, 16 x 12 1/2 inches, docketed or signed "Sic subscribruser" on verso; folds, minor foxing and wear. [Charleston, SC], circa 1767-73
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This petition was drafted by "the masters and commanders of vessells now lying in the harbor of Charles Town" and presented to Lord Charles Greville Montagu, who served as colonial governor of South Carolina for most of the period from 1767 to 1773. Ship captains would routinely hire a local seaman to help navigate through the difficult Charleston Harbor. These masters complained that the navigators were behaving mutinously, and had managed to get the local authorities to support their aggressive behavior:
"They for the majority have not only violated their engagements but have even in a rebellious manner aggravated many to use severity . . . and at last came to such a pitch of mutiny as even to threaten the lives of some of their commanders when drunk to compell the said commanders to give them their discharge, to support which some gentlemen of the law have taken upon themselves to hurt and molest your petitioners interest in behalf of the seamen, and your petitioners humbly aquaint your Excellency that it is not from any ill treatment or want that induces this murmuring."
Could this have been an act of revolution? In Philadelphia in 1773, a "Committee for Tarring and Feathering" discouraged harbor pilots from bringing tea into port. Charleston had two known near-violent tea incidents in December 1773 and June 1774, though these were not known to have involved the pilots, and took place after Montagu's March 1773 departure.