Mar 13, 2008 - Sale 2139

Sale 2139 - Lot 47

Price Realized: $ 3,120
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
FRENCH PRIVATEERS FITTED OUT IN BOSTON KNOX, HENRY. Letter Signed, as Secretary of War, to John Hancock ("His Excellency Governor Hancock"), transmitting instructions from the President that two schooner prizes "be restored to their former owners." 1 1/2 pages, tall 4to, with integral blank; separations at vertical fold repaired, docketed on the terminal page. War Department, 5 September 1793
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The fledgling U.S. government struggled to maintain its neutrality as war raged between Republican France and the rest of Europe. To prey upon British merchant fleet, the French had unleashed a fleet of privateers, several which were outfitted in American ports. Some of the ships captured by the French were also brought into American ports for sale. The privateer Roland had been fitted out in Massachussets, hence the letter to Hancock (he died less than a month later).
Knox orders Hancock to have the British vessels captured by the Roland restored to their original owners. This letter was wrtten, coincidentally, on the same day that the Reign of Terror was beginning across the Atlantic in France.
". . . The President has directed me to request that you would be pleased to order that the two schooners prizes to the Roland french privateer be restored to their former owners . . . and that in future you would be pleased to order any prizes which may be sent in by the privateers to be restored to their former masters or owners immediately after arriving in port, provided they be not of the description of neutrals or [A]mericans . . ."