Vindication (70 page)

JB on ‘pecuniaries' (Feb. 1795):
Houghton, b MS Am 1448 (67). In Feb.–Mar., Ruth was again at her London address, 18 Great Titchfield Street. I have wondered if she could have been a safe emissary to Imlay, since it was dangerous for her husband to enter England. Late in 1794 the French army, literally skating across the ice, drove the English out of Holland, and the ice-bound Dutch fleet was captured. Merchants from the Netherlands began to trade through Hamburg, whose shipping doubled in 1794–5. Neutral American agents were in demand. Swan's international debt machinations of March–June might also be borne in mind.

the freeze
: Morris,
Diary
, ii, 79, 81, notes that the bulk of the shipping on the Elbe was American.

ships ‘beat about by the Ice'
: Robert Fitzgerald to William Wickham (19 Mar. 1795) from Kuxhaven at the mouth of the Elbe. Wickham,
Correspondence
, i, 31–3.

Rowan's sixteenth-century ancestor
: James Hamilton, Viscount Claneboyne.

Rowan and the United Irishmen
: Rowan's
Autobiography
; Foster,
Modern Ireland
, 276, 271f., and
SC
, i, 83.

fête
: On 21 Sept. 1794.

Rowan's first encounter with MW
: Rowan, 253–4. This letter was written after MW departed for England (after Apr. 1795).

‘croak'
: Rowan's reminiscence to MW of his ‘fashion' [habits] in Paris (15 Sept. 1797), KP, i, 285–7.

‘all the sanctity…'
: Rowan,
Autobiography
, 256.

MW on marriage in conversation with Rowan
: Letter to his wife (20 Mar. 1795), delivered in Ireland by EW. Ibid., 259.

weaned Fanny
: Jacobs,
Her Own Woman
, 185, suggests weaning was a preparation for sex, for it was then assumed that nursing mothers should abstain.

GI's reception of MW
;
shared house
:
Memoirs
, ch. 8.

GI's excuses to BW
: His letter (Nov. 1794) cited by KP, i, 217.

Mary's blow to BW
: BW returned MW's letter, and wrote to EW on 8 May: ‘Would to God we were both in America with Charles. Do you think it would be possible for us to go from Dublin in an American ship to Philadelphia–this is my only HOPE.' Early in June she sent another letter to MW (it has not survived) and waited in suspense, but there was no reply, for Mary had left. She urged GI to look
after her sisters in her absence, though he did not. The anger Mary provoked at this moment would have repercussions for her daughter Fanny twenty years later.

‘whirl'
: MW to GI (27 May 1795).

libertinism
…
liberty
: Seelye,
Beautiful Machine
, 189.

‘Inckay' sold the ship
: Record of sale and date in the Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

the ship did not sink
: Proven by Molden, ‘The Silver Ship Emerging', 139–54.

GI's orders for MW
: 19 May 1795. Abinger papers: original untraced, present text taken from Pf's microfilm of the Abinger Collection, reel 9. Two reasons for giving the letter almost in full are, first, the difficulty of penetrating the convoluted paragraph about MW's task in Norway, and second, the curious emphasis on Messrs Ryberg. KP, i, 227–8, quotes a large extract. Shorter extracts in Durant's Supplement, 295; Holmes,
Sidetracks
, 238; and Jacobs, 205–6.

meet up
: There was some talk of Basle (one of the centres of the French secret scheme to gain provisions).

12
FAR NORTH

Uncited quotations are from MW's letters to GI of June 1795–Jan. 1796 in
MWL
, 289–328;
MWletters
, 295–337. This chapter offers a solution to the mystery of the silver ship. The notes below present the substratum of the evidence in lieu of the elusive proof.

impressions of Beverley
:
Travels
, letter 9.

Onsala peninsula
: Suggested in Buus, ‘Promethean Journey', replacing Nyström's idea of the Nidingen reef.

Ellefsen's background
: Peder's grandfathers were brothers, Hans and Peder Ellefsen, who married daughters of a rich man called Isaac Falch. The two families were joint owners of the flourishing Egeland ironworks which manufactured the decorative iron stoves that were the necessity of every Norwegian house. A son of one house, Ellef Hansen of Arendal, married a daughter of the other, Margrethe of Risør, uniting two fortunes.

Groos
: Not far from Grimstad.

delay in Groos
:, Ellefsen claimed that the bottom of the ship was damaged in the ship's log for 21 and 22 Aug. Molden has ascertained bad weather at the time.

galloped
: Ellefsen could have hired a boat, but my guess is that in his hurry, a boat, subject to wind, would have been too uncertain.

Ellefsen sold the ship
: The deed states he had bought the ship for his stepfather, Major Christopher Henrik Hoelfeldt, at Le Havre.

Sandviga
: Gunnar Molden has identified the docking place for sailing ships in the late eighteenth century, to the left as you enter Arendal along the Galtesund Channel.

silver as a speciality in Schleswig-Holstein
: This area often changed hands. At the time it belonged to Denmark. A stunning array of eighteenth-century silver is in the North German Museum in Altona, the capital of Holstein. In 1965 silver objects previously stored went on permanent display. See Manfred Meinz, ‘Die
“Silberkammer” des Altonaer Museums',
Altoner Museum in Hamburg
:
Jahrbuch 1966
, iv (Hamburg: D. R. Ernst Hauswedell & Co. Verlag), 38–75; and a sequel on the
silberkammer
in
Jahrbuch 1967
, v, 79–136.

local folklore about the silver ship
: Foss,
Arendals byes historie
.

plan to sink the ship
: Judge Wulfsberg's report (18 Aug. 1795) to the
Stiftamptmann
in Oslo, and to the Danish Prime Minister, cited in Molden, ‘The Shipwreck That Never Was'. I am grateful to Molden for a copy of this letter. Molden adds in ‘No Riches for the Descendants' that the ship was rumoured to have sunk ‘just off Torungen', near Skurvene. A lighthouse there marks danger.

fresh moves to detach from ship
: On 11 Sept. Ellefsen approached Captain Gabriel Engström from Hamburg to replace him. This didn't work out.

signed over ship
. In the 1970s Nyström found the deed of transfer at the Aust-Agders Archives, Arendal. Further facts are revealed in the interrogation of Ellefsen in Arendal Town Hall (28 Apr. 1795), a shaming event in his family town.

three witnesses
: The lawyer Mr Ussing; Peder's stepfather's representative; and his brother Isaac Falch Ellefsen.

crew at the time of handover
: Judicial inquiry in Arendal, 30 Apr. 1795. Kristiansand Archive: Police Protocol 1 (1783–99), p. 287B. Wulfsberg, report of 18 Aug. 1795, seems to suggest a change of crew in the course of the voyage when he says that Ellefsen ‘troubled himself to obtain the kind of people on board the ship, who would be party to the ship's sinking'.

likely time for attempt to sink the ship
: On 22 Sept. 1794 Ellefsen borrowed 588
riksdaler
from his lawyer, with the ship as security. Although it was common to raise money in this way if repairs were necessary during a journey, this would later be questioned as a criminal act, and a reason could be that damage to the ship had been deliberate. The ship was still making for Gothenburg, Ellefsen reassured EB in late Sept. and again on 7 Oct.

storm
: Crew's testimony on 23 Dec. 1794. Quoted in Molden, ‘The Silver Brig'.

EB leapt into action
: GI did not tell EB about the silver until 24 Oct. (the day before the
Rambler
with its bullion reached Gothenburg). EB approached Christoffer Nordberg, the leading merchant in the Swedish border port of Strömstad. Nordberg consulted the town's district judge, A. J. Unger, and also Wulfsberg.

Waak
: Queried Ellefsen's right to mortgage the ship, and took him to court.

magistrate of Risør
: von Aphelen cross-questioned Ellefsen on 8 Nov. 1794.

Ellefsen extracted the receipt
: Opinion of Judge Wulfsberg (18 Aug. 1795).

Ellefsen's allegation that Coleman ‘escaped'
: ‘On 11th [Nov. 1794], after being forced by the local magistrate to fire the person I hired as captain of the Maria Margreta, the aforesaid mate Mr Kolmand [Coleman], and demand the return of all the ship's papers because of his lawless and untoward circumstances, this person, unbeknown to me
…
has on this day gone to sea and escaped with the ship from East Risør harbour.' Report of the
Kristiansands Addresse Kontors Efteretninger
(27 Nov.), the only newspaper in that part of Norway at the time. Discovered by Molden.

crew's testimony
: 23 Dec. 1794, after the ship landed in Kristiansand, and following Coleman's interrogation. Discovered by Molden.

failed attempts to land in Sweden
: 15 and 16 Nov. 1794.
Travels
, letter 6.

Coleman interrogated at Kristiansand
: 13 and 15 Dec. 1794. Ellefsen had tried to forestall
this with an attack on Coleman on 5 Dec., declaring that Coleman was using the flag illegally. Subsequent interrogations queried Ellefsen's own right to fly the Danish flag. When Ellefsen was questioned on why he had not taken the ship from Arendal to Gothenburg, he made the flag his excuse, saying that he did not want to commit a ‘wrong'. He gave a different excuse in a letter to EB: he was unwell, he claimed, and his private affairs prevented his completing the journey. Neither excuse rings true. Ellefsen made a bad impression on Magistrate von Levetsow and police chief Rasmus Sørensen. (Kristiansand Town Magistrate, 34. Collegial Protocol (1793–4), 213. Includes a report from Levetsow to his Danish superiors.)

document vital to the case against Ellefsen
: The document, in English, was translated into Norwegian by 15 Dec., within four days of the ship's docking in Kristiansand, and included in the magistrate's report to Copenhagen. Another document that came to light at this time was the introduction of GI to EB, giving the impression that the two didn't know each other and as yet had no dealings (ch. 11, above). The letter, signed by Delamotte and GI himself and dated from Le Havre, 26 Thermidor (13 Aug.), was in French. The magistrate ignored this because it did not mention Ellefsen or the ship. A record of this inquiry was presented at a more searching interrogation in Arendal on 28 Apr. 1795. (Kristiansand State Archive: Arendal Town Magistrate, Police Protocol 1 (1783–99), p. 287B.)

‘crooked business!'
: GI had not altogether contravened the American position on trading practice. Jefferson, as Secretary of State, had recently laid down that ‘our property, whether in the form of vessels, cargoes, or anything else, has a right to pass untouched by any nation, by the law of nations: and no one has a right to ask where a vessel was built, but where is she owned?' (Jefferson to Morris in Paris, 13 June 1793: Morris, Papers.) Given Jefferson's principle, a French ship is no longer French if an American buys it. GI, though, may have ventured beyond the bounds of law when he disguised his American ship as a Norwegian one. When Ellefsen declared that the ship had no right to fly a Norwegian flag, he was exposing GI's infringement of Norwegian law.

Royal Commission
: Set up 30 Jan. 1795, under Judge Wulfsberg of Tønsberg and Lauritz Weidemann, Magistrate of Nedenes.

further judicial inquiries
: On 28 and 30 Apr. 1795. There was also an investigation on board ship. Mr Isachsen translated questions into English for Coleman who, on 15 Apr., handed over the ship's papers, the documentation of the sale of the
Liberté
(the original name of the
Margrethe
), which was confirmed by a Danish consul in Rouen on 20 July. Coleman and the investigators searched the captain's quarters in vain for Ellefsen's receipt for the silver. When Ellefsen was asked to produce GI's final instructions to him, he ‘declared that the said communication had been mislaid amongst his papers' in Risør.

GI's instructions to Ellefsen
: Dated 13 Aug. Ellefsen had signed an agreement to deliver unspecified ‘articles' to EB in Gothenburg, who would then give him further instructions. (Kristiansand Town Magistrate. Notary Protocol 8 (1794–1804). Discovered by Molden.)

‘Who were fooled?'
: Email to Verhoeven, co-editor of Imlay,
Emigrants
.

Waak arrived in June
: He had signed on a crew to sail the ship at the end of Apr., and
it may be at this point the extent of its damage was made known to EB.

‘Marin Inclay' oversees the sale
: Gunnar Molden has discovered an amusing document showing that the magistrate of Strömstad registered the sale, instigated in Gothenburg on 26 Mar. 1795 by ‘Gilbert Inckay', and carried through by ‘Marin Inclay his wife according to the lettre of Horning' (meaning, presumably, a letter of attorney). Curiously, the document introduces a sentence in English as though ‘Mary Imlay', dictating it, was misheard by an official so anxious to get it right that he did not translate. Records of the repairs to the ship are enclosed with the ship's papers in the Riksarkivet, Stockholm:
Kommerskollegium Huvudarkivet
1795 F IIb.
Fribrevshandlingar
vol. 143.