Caraïbes

1898 · réf. List2965 — United States and Caribbean 1898. Approximately twenty-nine pieces: logbook of eighty-four double-sided pages measuring 13 x 20 inches; eight letters seventeen documents and forms and three pieces of miscellany. Much wear and significant damage to logbook including water damage mildew and tearing; log book overall fair to good minus. Other materials good to very good. Overall good. William Higgins 1791–1872 was a farmer sea captain and owner of and investor in ships from Bowdoinham Maine. According to the Maine Maritime Museum which holds his family papers Higgins’ ships traded mainly in lumber which they took from Wilmington North Carolina to the Caribbean. Offered here is a logbook recording the travels of several of Higgins’ ships particularly the brigs Mary Jane and Llewellyn alongside related documents and personal letters. The logbook dating between 1832 and 1836 extensively documents the course wind data and weather remarks for travels of the ships between east coast US port cities and various locations in the Caribbean including Barbados St. Thomas and Martinique. The logbook also contains a copy of astronomer and mathematician Elijah Burritt’s illustration “A Plan of the Solar System Exhibiting its Relative Magnitudes and Distances” engraved by W. G Evans and printed in 1835 by F.J. Huntington. The letters and documents date from 1830 to 1867 and are also mostly business-related including an insurance document for the brig William Parrington a roll of sailors enlisted to work on a six-month journey between the Caribbean and the US in 1845 a bill of sale for ¼ stake in the brig Mary Jane and receipts and logs for items including various liquors sugar molasses casks and so on. One letter from a young man in Wilmington requests advice on how to start his own business in the style of Higgins’; other letters concern family matters. One interesting undated document is a writ addressed to the Marshal of the District of Maine concerning a lawsuit filed against Higgins and Rufus Carr master of the William Parrington by Zachrisson Nelson Co. The suit alleged that Carr acting as an agent for the ship’s owners that is Higgins had agreed to an affreightment involving shipping from Jamaica to Spain to New York but had then “wholly neglected and refused to do so”. Of interest to scholars of maritime history and trade in the mid-19th century. unknown books