May 23, 2013 - Sale 2316
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Sale 2316 - Lot 77

Price Realized: $ 5,280
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 5,000
"THE SAID BLACK GENERAL . . . MAY BE SENT TO ST. DOMINGO" NELSON, HORATIO. Letter Signed, "Nelson & Bronte," to Rear Admiral [Alexander] Cochrane, requesting him to take aboard a Haitian general and his servant to await passage to Jamaica. 2 pages, folio, with integral blank. "Victory at Sea" [near Antigua], 11 June 1805
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"Having ordered Captain Tobin to receive the black General and Several named in the Margin [Joseph Chretien and Petit Desireé] on board the Northumberland and Victual them the same as his Ship's company 'till an opportunity appears of sending them to Jamaica. I am to request you will be so good as order the said Men a passage to Jamaica, in the very first Vessel of War going there . . . . I have given the said black General a Letter for Rear Admiral Davies which he is directed to deliver to him personally, in order that himself and servant may be sent to St. Domingo as early after their arrival at Jamaica as Possible."
Written as he prepared for the final leg of his Transatlantic pursuit of the French fleet which concluded later that year at the Battle of Trafalgar. The general to be transported to Jamaica was from the newly-independent republic of Haiti--a nation viewed by Great Britain as a potential ally in its efforts to wrest the colony of Santo Domingo from Franco-Spanish control. Only four months after Nelson was killed at Trafalgar, Admiral Cochrane would command the HMS Northumberland at the Battle of San Domingo in a spectacular British victory over the French.