The Spanish Town Papers by E. Arnot and 47 similar items

marks on cover cloth. minor edge wear. page edges discolored. no marks on text. age spots on dustjacket, rub marks and scratches. dustjacket edge tears, chips, nicks and creases. Nearly a thousand bundles of old sailing-ship documents - log books full of lovely phrases, love-letters written by the crews of fighting ships, a very peculiar note from young Horatio Nelson, along with a still more remarkable Clearance Paper signed by George Washington - these are among the Spanish Town Papers. None has been copies or written about before this book. Each bundle represents a prize captured by the Royal Navy or British privateers from the rebellious colonists in the War of American Independence. Together they provide a unique footnote to history and, for the general reader, an engrossing picture of life ashore and afloat in the eighteenth century. For almost two hundred years this extraordinarily varied cache has been neglected and left to moulder in the West Indies. In this book Miss E. Arnot Robertson presents for the first time a transcription of the most interesting of the Spanish Town documents against a background that gives them coherence and perspective.