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INVESTIGATION INTO THE WRECK OF A SPANISH FRIGATE
NOTARIZED BY OFFICIALS IN HAVANA & LONDON
[MANUSCRIPT / SHIPWRECKS / CUBA]. [Official Report on the Wreck of the Spanish Merchant Frigate Navegador, off the Coast of Cuba]. Havana , 1814.
Folio , MS, 32 pp., stitched and unbound. Text in a neat secretarial hand. Front page stamped with the Spanish royal seal. Last page bears the engraved stamp of the Colegio de Notarios Escribanos de Habana, as well as the signatures of numerous notaries.
$3,500 Extremely rare official manuscript report of the wreck of the Spanish merchant frigate Navegador in February 1814, drawn up and signed in Havana by notaries of the Colegio de Notarios Escribanos, and dated 14 March 1814. The report contains a thorough account of the accident by Captain Manuel Garcia de La Prida, and also includes a detailed inventory of the ship’s salvage, the witness statements from nine crew members, and the signatures of multiple notaries—including a signed and dated statement in English by an agent from Lloyd’s of London.
Captain Garcia de La Prida’s report begins when the Navegador weighed anchor from Portsmouth in late November 1813, as a member of an international shipping convoy under British escort. He then recounts the series of misfortunes that led to the ship’s destruction off the Havana coast: after being separated from the convoy and almost capsizing during a protracted storm, the Navegador reunited with a single escort, the HMS Esther, which was soon crippled when a trio of Royal Navy ships sighted the Spanish colors and prematurely opened fire. After two months, sailing near Cuba’s northern coast, both the Navegador and Esther were beached in a second storm; the Spanish frigate lost her rudder and, buffeted by continual gales, was reefed after her anchor slipped. The document goes on to inventory the items salvaged from the wreck, including sails, rigging, cables, and the ship’s pump and bell.
The witness statements from 9 members of the ship’s crew are of additional historical interest. Though their primary purpose is to confirm their captain’s account, their presence also testifies to the international character of the convoy—the witnesses include sailors from Britain, Cuba, Sweden, Ireland and New York—that reflects Britian’s flexible maritime strategy during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars. As Nicholas Rodger remarks, “all and any ships were… allowed to trade so long as they sailed under British convoy for the whole voyage, ensuring that they went to or from a British or friendly port. British harbours and convoys were filled with foreign-owned and manned merchantmen flying neutral or enemy flags…” The Spanish monarch Joseph Bonaparte was a natural French ally, but political unrest in Spain made the status of her merchant ships—particularly those unaccompanied by British escorts—uniquely ambiguous, which doubtless explains why the helpless Navegador was fired upon by the Royal Navy.
The statements notarized by Lloyd’s of London, and by the members of Havana’s Colegio de Notarios Escribanos, indicate that the present manuscript was copied from an original drawn up for the ship’s owner, Francisco Leyseca. Nevertheless we have located no other copies of this document, in manuscript or in print.
CONTENTS OF THE MANUSCRIPT:
1. Petition by Captain Manuel Garcia de la Prida calling for an investigation into the wreck, dated February 19 1814.
2. Notarized statements confirming the investigation, dated October 1814.
3. Account of the voyage and wreck of the Navegador by Garcia de la Prida, dated 19 February 1814.
4. Inventory of items salvaged from the wreck, dated 18 February 1814.
5. Witness statements from nine crew members, dated 23 February 1814.
6. Signed statement by Havana conslar secretary Blas Ignacio Zarate, dated 14 March 1814.
7. Signed statement of three notaries, confirming Zarate’s authority.
8. English-language statement by Lloyd’s of London, confirming the investigation.
* For historical background, cf. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean (2005), p. 559; and Esdaile, The Peninsular War (2003).
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