To James Madison from Francis Cook, 29 January 1806 (Abstract)
From Francis Cook, 29 January 1806 (Abstract)
§ From Francis Cook. 29 January 1806, Collector’s Office Wiscasset. “I take the freedom to enclose a Letter from Spencer Bennet Hopkins1 an american Seaman in the Spanish Gaol at Lima, in South America: also a Certificate of his Citizenship from the Town Clerk of this Town. In using your influence with the Spanish Government to obtain his release you will greatly oblige his distressed Parents.”
RC and enclosures (DNA: RG 59, Records Relating to Impressed Seamen, 1794–1815, Misc. Correspondence, box 5). RC 1 p.; docketed by Daniel Brent as received 29 Feb., with his notes: “Confined in Lima, as British subject” and “to be sent to the Minister of the U S. at Spain”; and Wagner’s note: “To be sent to the Minister at Madrid.” For enclosure, see n. 1.
1. The enclosures (4 pp.) are (1) Spencer Bennet Hopkins’s 11 Jan. 1805 letter to his mother from “Lima Gaol” stating that, ill with scurvy, he had been left at “the Sandwich Islands” for seven months; that when he had regained his health, he shipped on board a British vessel for $1,600 for the voyage, but when war broke out, he was told he would be impressed if he went to England. He then went first into a Spanish ship and then into an American one, which he did not wish to return home in when it proved unsound; that he returned to the mainland where an order had been issued to imprison all Englishmen, but since Spain did not differentiate between English and Americans, all had been imprisoned, and he was sent to Lima. He stated that he had written to his sister “begging her to send … a protection,” which he now asked his mother to do; that he would be happy to receive any news from Boston; that his prison allowance of a quarter of a dollar a day was “pretty good”; that he lived well on it but could not afford to buy clothes which he badly needed; that “Capt Steward” would bring back an answer; and that he wished to be remembered to family; and (2) the 29 Jan. 1806 certificate of Joseph Christophers, town clerk of Wiscasset, that Hopkins was born on 23 Nov. 1782 to Solomon and Betsey Hopkins.