Catalogue description D1169 [part]. Captured ship: Diamond of London (master James Clarke). History: an...

D1169 [part].

Captured ship: Diamond of London (master James Clarke).

History: an English slave ship, trading from London to Guinea to Havana, taken on the return voyage from Cuba by the French privateer Bellona and retaken by HMS Goliath, August 1803.

Documents: Mail in transit from Elmina and elsewhere in Guinea to the Netherlands, most marked to go by the Diamond, Captain Clarke, from the Dutch West India Company and successors for the establishment in Dutch West Africa [Dutch Guinea or Dutch Gold Coast, now Ghana], and from individuals there, 1802-1803, as follows:-

Packets 1-10: official correspondence, original and duplicate, to the Raad der Americaaansche Colonien at The Hague, mostly unopened [no. 7 was added from a miscellaneous set of records in HCA 30/385 in 2015].

Letters 11-22: private letters to officials at The Hague.

• Letter 11 B2 contains a string of glass beads as a sample for slave trading goods.
• Letter 11 C2 contains a further string of glass beads.

Letters 23-32: private letters addressed to The Hague.

Letters 33-58: private letters addressed to Amsterdam.

• Letter 34 A3 contains two strings of glass beads as a sample for slave trading goods.
• Letter 36 C1 K1 contains a drawing of several fish, intended for engraving as a print, now marked 36 C1 K1 A.
• Letter 51 A contains a string of glass beads, in poor condition.
• Letter 54 A1 contains a twisted gold ring.
• Letter 54 B contains two gold rings.

Letters 59-74: private letters to other places in the Netherlands.

[These letters were unopened by the court, and were only opened in 2017: the numbering system reflects envelopes containing both individual letters and other enclosures containing further letters].

An unrelated bundle of letters from the 1750s was moved to HCA 30/254/3 in 2015