RARE BOOK AND COLLECTOR'S SALE July 30th & 31st, 2024

65 Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 A fresh to the market remainder collection of the early 19th Century Maritime Shipping Papers of the St. Sebastian Basque international trading company of The Widow Bermingham & Sons. - The collection provides an eclectic window into T.W. Bermingham & Sons extensive maritime trading and agency businesses handling the ships/cargoes of many U.S. shipping adventures originating in Boston, Salem, New York, and Baltimore, bound for the St. Sebastian trading company, chosen likely for its neutral autonomous Guispasco republic strategic location at the Atlantic Bay in Basque country, where Spain borders France. The original unresearched papers provide salient details and results of the Napoleonic Wars, the Barbary War, and the UndeclaredWar with France Germain, to unlocking the critical issues facing early shipping entrepreneurs who were trying to capture the very high European commodity prices caused by these wars and resulting government policies. They reveal a likely widespread use of the “neutral” St Sebastian trading company as an effective strategy to overcome changing British and French restrictions on shipping destinations / cargoes that turned disastrous just when it had become a most popular strategy for early 19th Century American merchant traders and shipping companies. They reveal disastrous consequences of the 1801-9 Jeffersonian foreign policies - Non Importation Act 1806, Embargo Act 1807, Non Intercourse Act 1809 - on the Salem (and other) merchant shipping entrepreneurs, including John Gardner and several of his local contemporaries. US/European Shipping Papers 1800-1814 A fascinating collection of papers and documents showing the importance of the North Atlantic trade and the problems created by the French confiscations of American shipping in the first two decades of the 19th century. Most of these papers are linked to the Hiberno/Hispanic company, the Widow Bermingham and Sons of San Sebastian. The Berminghams were a prominent Galway family, some of whom emigrated to St. Sebastian. There they established a shipping agency providing facilities for the import and export of goods between St. Sebastian and North America and Europe. The port of San Sebastian was a key centre for the importation of American products from the southern states of the US and the Caribbean islands, most notably, Cuba, that transited through east coast ports such as Boston, Philadelphia, Salem, before heading across the Atlantic to San Sebastian. The documents show that, after the sacking and destruction of St. Sebastian in August 1813 by the British and Portugese forces, the Bermingham family moved its operation to Pasajes (spelt in the documents as Passages) a small Spanish port about ten kilometres from St. Sebastian. The documents contain a passport issued on the 19th of March 1849 by the town of Bayonne allowing Richard Bermingham, described as a native of St. Sebastian and a ‘rentier’ to travel to Bordeaux. Richard Bermingham was seventy years old at the time. Another member of the wider family was Rafael Echaigue y Bermingham (1815-1887), who became the Spanish Governor of Puerta Rica and later the Philippines in the 19th century. As a manuscript collection, w.a.f. *An amazing survival [See Full Listing] The Documents are classified as follows: (1) Eight sequestration orders issued by the Government of Guipuscoa at the Port of St Sebastian relating to the confiscation of US ships and their cargoes. Seven of these ships were sequestered on the 28th of December 1809 and one of them, the Trim of Baltimore, on January 1, 1810. (2) Five laisser passer documents issued by Isaac Cox Barnet, agent for the United States of American in Bordeaux. All are signed by Isaac Barnet and all with the seal of the United States. The documents relate to passes provided to US captains and seamen to travel freely to St. Sebastian. (3) Twenty nine bills of lading, all signed by the respective ships’ captains, for goods to be delivered by US ships to the Widow Bermingham and Sons. The bills of lading are for the period 1800 to 1814. (4) Five certificates issued by the port of Philadelphia attesting to the import and transfer of goods (cocoa, white and brown sugar) from La Guira and Havana, Cuba, to ships bound for St. Sebastian. All of these documents relate to 1806. (5) Two certificates (duplicates) bearing the seal of the state of New York signed by John Keese, notary public, dated October 12, 1801. The document relates to the acquisition by Thomas Tinson and John Noble of that ‘good American ship’ the Eliza of Charlestown, captained by Webster Brown. The ship was sold by George Alexander Wyllie of the City of London as attorney to Samuel Wyllie of Charlestown, the late owner. (6) A sworn affidavit of Samuel Cooper, notary public for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, dated, 14, August, 1800, certifying that Eben[ezer] L Boyd, merchant, presented an invoice and bill of lading ‘the sole property of John Parker Boyd’ for goods to be shipped on the Schooner, Betsy, to the Widow Bermingham and Sons in St. Sebastian. On the verso is a sworn statement (with Spanish seal) by Juan Stoughton, Consul General for Spain, in New Hampshire, Massachusetts stating that Samuel Cooper is a notary public in Boston. Included in these documents is a very detailed list of the cargo of Savannah sugar, Carraccas cocoa, North Carolina tobacco, Georgia tobacco, James River tobacco. (7) A sworn affidavit of John Gardner, Justice of the Peace for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, dated May 15, 1807, relating to bill of lading for Gardiner Greene and Thomas L Winthrop, merchants of Boston, for goods to be exported to the Widow Bermingham and Sons of St. Sebastian. This document is accompanied by a certified document from the Collector’s Office of the District of Boston and Charlestown with a detailed list of the same goods, along with the ships that transported them to Boston to constitute the cargo on the Schooner, Amazon, captained by Luther Peirce. The detailed list of the Collector’s Office, signed by Benjamin Weld, Collector, shows goods that were imported from Havana and India. This document also includes a sworn French document from the office of Marc-Antoine Alexis Giraud, the French Consul at Boston, affirming that John Gardner was a justice of the peace in Boston. (8) Parchment document, July 14, 1801, issued by the High Court of Admiralty for England restoring the ship called the Nancy, captained by Alexander Fraser, which had been captured by the private ship of War, Ajax (captain David Picoh) and brought to Jersey to be returned to its owner Fermin de Tastet. 543. U.S. / European Shipping Archive 1800-1814 TheWidow Bermingham & Sons Collection