1799 Letter from an American Ship's Captain Describing the Embargo at Surinam and Plans to Depart with a Fleet of Seventy-Five Vessels “Under Convoy of the United States Ship Portsmouth”.
Surinam River: March 26, 1799. Autograph letter signed, one page on a folded sheet, with integral address panel to Moses Brown of Newburyport, Massachusetts. 7 ½ x 9 inches. Old folds, scattered soiling and minor losses and splitting along folds. Good. Item #BK0195 A firsthand account of the embargo on American shipping at Surinam during the Quasi-War with France, written by Captain Joseph H. Woodman to the Newburyport merchant and shipowner Moses Brown. Woodman had arrived at Surinam on February 27, finding “an Embargo on all American Vessels and the Market Stock’d with every kind of American Produce.” Writing a month later, he reports plans to depart with “a fleet of 75 Sail of American Vessels Under Convoy of the United States Ship Portsmouth and a Number of private Arm’d Ships.” Despite the crowded market, Woodman reports selling his outward cargo and purchasing a return shipment of sugar, molasses, cocoa, coffee, and cotton. He also discusses remittances to Brown, whose extensive commercial interests in the West Indies and South America are documented in surviving correspondence at Harvard’s Baker Library.[1] A contemporary account reproduced in Naval Documents Related to the Quasi-War Between the United States and France confirms that American vessels were embargoed at Surinam from February 3 to March 25, 1799, and independently records their departure under convoy of the USS Portsmouth, commanded by Daniel McNeill.[2] Woodman’s letter was written the following day, providing a contemporary merchant captain’s account of the disruption and the American naval protection organized in response. [1] Moses Brown papers, Baker Library, Harvard Business School, accessed October 12, 2026, https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/catalog/bak00105.
[2] Naval Documents related to the Quasi-War between the United States and France, Vol. II, part 3 (United States Government Printing Office, 1935), 588.
Price: $500.00