Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- General Introduction
- Abbreviations and Short Titles Used in Citations
- I The Beginning of an Enduring Relationship, June 1978–December 1800
- II The Baltic Campaign, January–June 1801
- III The Channel Campaign, July–October 1801
- IV Settled, May 1803–August 1805
- V The End, September–October 1805
- Appendices
- Sources and Documents
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
6 - The Taking of the Swift Cutter: An Attempt to Trace the Documents Captured by l’Espérance in 1804
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- General Introduction
- Abbreviations and Short Titles Used in Citations
- I The Beginning of an Enduring Relationship, June 1978–December 1800
- II The Baltic Campaign, January–June 1801
- III The Channel Campaign, July–October 1801
- IV Settled, May 1803–August 1805
- V The End, September–October 1805
- Appendices
- Sources and Documents
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
In documents 315, 321, 322 and 323 Nelson vents his anger at the loss of the Swift cutter. The fate of the ship and the documents it carried can be reconstructed from French documents at the archives of the Foreign Office in Paris and Nantes as well as the National Archives in Paris.
On ‘21 Germinal an 12’, that is on 9 April, the French consul at Barcelona, Pancôme Louis Adélaïde Viot, reported to ‘His Excellence’ the ‘Citizen Minister’, Talleyrand, about how and by whom the British Swift cutter had been taken:
on Saturday, the 17th of this month [= 5 April 1804] the French privateer xebec, l’Esperance, Captain Escoffier of Nice, entered this port, carrying with her an extremely important prize as her object, the dispatch cutter Swift, Captain Leake, coming from Plymouth and Gibraltar with a considerable number of dispatches from the English Admiralty for Nelson and for several officers of his squadron; others are destined for the English troops at Malta; there are probably more than 150 separate letters addressed to officers in the English fleet in the Mediterranean that can give [an idea] about the English presence and perhaps about the horrible conspiration that was so happily discovered. All was s[aved] at the moment the English commander disappeared to t[hrow] the dispatches overboard; he was hit by two balls and fell dead over his papers.
This cutter had sailed from Plymouth on 11 M[arch] last. It was met on the 15th of this month [3 April 1804] at 10 nautical miles [off the coast?] by the French privateer who had sailed the sa[me] day in the morning from [?] and heading to the Roads of Catalonia, between Palomar and St-Antony.
We have [lost?] a sailor in this [action?].
I got the dispatches delivered immediately after the arrival of the privateer in port; they were treated with vinegar; I got them dried, [?] and wrapped into a case, which weighed about 30 to 35 pounds marc, sent all to Perpignan to be handed over to the Prefect of the Department of the Eastern Pyrenees. I requested that the case would be passed on by the fastest and safest [means] to the address of the Minister of the Navy and Colonies – according to article 68 of the regulations on the [?] in force since 2 Prairial of year 11 [= 21 May 1803].
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- Information
- Nelson's Letters to Lady Hamilton and Related Documents , pp. 573 - 580Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020