Catalogue description Items extracted from HCA 32/1047 and HCA 32/1048 being papers taken from the Prussian...

Items extracted from HCA 32/1047 and HCA 32/1048 being papers taken from the Prussian ship Henriette (master Gottlieb Jager) on capture in 1803.

Number 1446 (from HCA 32/1048): a red leather wallet, stamped 'Jan Bekker Teerlink te Vlissingen', with papers annotated by the captors or the court 'Trifles which were found in the super-cargo's pocket book' and 'Patterns of silk and thread (inclosed in no 1446)'.

Jan Bekker Teerlink was the Dutch supercargo on the Prussian ship Henriette returning from China by way of Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope to Emden with a cargo of tea. The Henriette was captured by HMS Lapwing off the Dutch coast on 31 May 1803, and all the documents on the ship were seized and passed on to the High Court of Admiralty.

The contents of the wallet include samples of Chinese silk and chintz fabric and 41 neatly folded paper pockets of 32 different species of seeds. A few seeds from each species were sent to the Millennium Seed Bank in 2009: of these, three of the species germinated successfully. a shrub called Liparia villosa, a stunning pincushion-like flower called Leucospermum, and a type of acacia, from South Africa.

Also in the wallet is a prayer written in the centre of paper cut into a flower shape; and a small envelope enclosing a lock of dark hair and seeds, annotated as coming from letter 75f or 75g (these letters should be in HCA 32/1047).

[Catalogued to this level in 2017.]