Chesterfield

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Chesterfield

Post by shipstamps » Mon Sep 08, 2008 6:30 pm


The stamp shows the mail packet CHESTERFIELD repulsing a French privateer in the summer of 1810 while sailing between Weymouth, England and Jersey.

Chesterfield’s captain Starr Wook, wrote in his log “It was a large lugger and had 14 guns and was full of men

We gave him broadside which made him sheer off.” It is supposed that the Frenchman was SAN JOSEPH, 14 guns, which was captured in Channel Islands waters the following October, She carried 68 men



It is given in The Times of 25 November 1811 that the CHESTERFIELD packet was underway from Weymouth to Guernsey and was taken by a French privateer.

In letters received from some of the passengers on board and taken by the privateer, they state, that as far as the French police laws will permit, they are treated by the inhabitants of Cherbourg with great humanity and politeness; but they had orders to be all marched to Verdun in the course of a week after their landing.

English banknotes were not passable.

The French privateer permitted the passengers to keep their watches and valuables.

A British army colonel going to join his regiment was severely wounded; and the Captain and two men of the packet died of their wounds at Cherbourg.
SG316


Source Watercraft Philately 32 page 60 and The Times.

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