The Jersey Post gives by the stamp: The Jersey privateer CHARMING BETTY captured the French Bark ST CHARLES off Point L’Abbé on 16 January 1744 in Brittany, France. Armed with cutlasses and pistols, the crew boarded to find the French vessel leaking and almost unseaworthy so decided to let her go for a ransom of 20,000 livres. The ships captain was unable to pay and so selected a certain Thomas Garnier from the French crew to be held for ransom in Jersey where he remained detained until 1748.
In the book Jersey Sailing Ships is she given as a sloop and used as a privateer under command of Captain Nic. Fiott and owned by Lemprié & Fiott and used as a privateer from 1758-59 in the same book is given that Nicolas Fiott was a privateering captain from 1734 till 1763 on board the CHARMING BETTY and CHARMING NANCY.
If privateers captured a French vessel and found that neither the boat nor its cargo were particularly valuable, it was accepted practice for them to take a crew member as hostage on the understanding that a ransom would be paid.
But the crew of the vessel concerned were not always particularly quick to carry out their side of the bargain and restore the release of their comrade.
So it was in 1744, when the CHARMING BETTY captured the French barque ST CHARLES and demanded a ransom of 2,000 livres, which was certainly more than the vessel was worth.
Thomas Garnier was chosen as a hostage and taken to Jersey where, despite several letters now in the city archives of St Malo demanding to know why he had not been ransomed, he was to languish for four years, until the money was paid in 1748.
Captain Fiott
The same Jersey privateer was active in the Channel a decade later. In 1757, under the command of Capt Fiott, it captured a French brigatine, loaded with a valuable cargo of sugar.
The following year Fiott and his crew, accompanied by LE BURNETT took the ADVENTURER, a London vessel, away from French privateers who had captured her on a voyage from Jamaica. The prize became Fiott's and the cargo, sugar, spice, logwood, mahogany, rum, coffee and cottons fetched a great deal of money.
Returning to Jersey the CHARMING BETTY, although short-handed after putting a prize crew on the ADVENTURER, captured a Dutch vessel carrying 200 tunnes of wine from Bordeaux to St Malo.
Capt Fiott was in action again in 1759 when he captured two more ships, which together with their unidentified cargoes, are known to have been sold for 30,000 livres. That was an enormous sum at the time and shows just how profitable privateering could be if the captains and their crews were both adventurous and lucky.
Her fate not known.
The ship in the foreground is the French ST CHARLES and in the background is the CHARMING BETTY. Have not any details on the ST CHARLES.
Jersey 2014 56p sg?, scott?
http://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/ ... ming_Betty''