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| The Wreck of the "Feversham".
In September, 1711, His Britannic Majesty's Ship, Feversham , a 32-gun frigate of the North Atlantic Squadron, was ordered to act as escort for three transports destined for Quebec City where she was to join in British operations there. The Feversham also took on her own supplies in New York and, being low in specie for pay, her purser requisitioned silver coin from the British naval officer of New York . This coin was taken directly from the circulation of that city. All in order, the Feversham set sail.
We might wonder what British forces were in Quebec in 1711 during a war that would not end for two more years. The answer is that the "forces" in question was the "Walker Expedition", consisting of 72 British ships and transports with a fighting force of 13,000 men for an attack against Quebec, the mightiest armada in North American waters up to this time. Under the command of Sir Hovenden Walker, a rank amateur jumped up from private citizen to knight to full admiral through political pull, the operation ranks as one of the most botched in history. On the night of August 22, 1711 , the fleet sailed onto the Egg Island Rocks at the western mouth of the St. Lawrence River with a loss of seven ships and about 1,000 men. The next morning, Walker ordered the whole remaining armada to hightail it back to England . His excuse for the debacle - and one still quoted in history books (when this sorry episode is mentioned at all) - was the unlikely combination of high winds and heavy fog.
Such were the slow communications of the day that even a month later, the failure of the expedition was not known in New York and Feversham made aware of the fact that her orders had been cancelled. That they arrived just after she sailed from New York sealed her doom.
Making her way along the coast of Nova Scotia, the Feversham and her charges were hit by one of the notorious Maritime "line gales" that are so prevalent in this region at this time of year. It may have even been a late-season hurricane. Fighting to "thread the needle" between the rocky Nova Scotia shore to the west and the infamous Sable Banks to the east, the Feversham lost the battle and on the night of October 7/8, 1711 was driven on the rocks of Scatari Island, just off the point of present-day Cape Breton. Of the 146 men on board, an even hundred perished that night and the Feversham slipped beneath the waves in deep water, her grave effectively guarded for 250 years by treacherous rip currents and water just above freezing. The cold water retarded the corrosive action of the salt water and, generally, the recovered coins are fairly well preserved.
Though a tragic loss, the Feversham has proven a valuable time capsule to numismatists and economic historians now that she has been salvaged. Her cargo has answered a number of questions and in some cases has provided the only evidence we have.
4-real silver "cob", Potosi ( Bolivia ), 1762. About actual size. One of the last cobs ever struck, it is nevertheless remains the same in appearance and weight as the others from the previous 150 years and more. (Not from the "Feversham")
As was expected, the majority of the recovered pay chest silver specie was in the form of Spanish American "cobs": 8-, 4-, 2- and 1-real denominations. What was not expected was the significant numbers of Massachusetts "Tree" coinage, almost all of it consisting of the shilling denomination or cut pieces thereof. Strictly speaking, these coins were illegal to British officialdom but the hoard proves that on station, the officials were much more pragmatic - in this case, a British port officer as well as a ship's captain. So many coins were light through clipping and paring that we have to assume these officials would only have bought them by weight; on what basis they would have been paid out, we don't know. The Massachusetts "Tree"coinage was struck 1652-82, but with a frozen date of "1652". Actually, none were struck in 1652; what appeared that year was the " New England " coinage, nearly blank silver roundels punched with an ornate "NE" and the denomination ("III", "VI" or "XII" pence). Easily counterfeited, they were , and replaced by the full-die "Willow Tree" coinage 1653-60 (all being very rare today). In turn, the "Oak Tree" coins appeared during the period 1660-67, the limbs of the tree being a snarl of scraggly branches; 2-, 3-, 6- and 12d denominations were struck. The last to appear (1667-82) was the "Pine Tree" coinage with a tree greatly resembling a very dried-out Christmas tree. There were two sub-varieties of the "Pines": "large planchet" 3-, 6- and 12d (1667-74) as well as "small planchet" shillings only (1675-82) where the former 30mm diameter was reduced to about 25, although the coin made thicker.
Catalogues today show values of all the denominations of the "Oak Tree" and "Pine Tree" coinages as being roughly equal. Superficially, this might indicate that they were struck in equal quantities; they were not. Shillings formed by far the greater part of the original mintages. In the first place, there are only a limited number of varieties for the 3d and 6d pieces but a great many for the shillings. This alone is good circumstantial proof. And it would also be logical since mintmasters John Hull and Robert Sanderson were paid their fees according to each £1 worth of coin produced and there was much less work in striking twenty shillings than forty 6d or eighty 3d pieces. We may be sure that insofar as possible, they would have concentrated on shillings. The Feversham hoard bears this out; practically none but "Tree" shillings were in it. Even at the time, this would have been no hardship to the general populace since they readily sheared the shillings in two for 6d pieces and in quarters for 3d. In the hoard were also a certain number of pie-shaped one-sixth shilling pieces, indicating their use as 2d coins. Until the Feversham cut pieces were recovered, their existence was presumed but not proven. In The Intelligencer of 2 December, 1728 there was the report ".. the people enjoy the liberty of cutting the little money among them into halves and quarters, for the convenience of small traffic" but since by this date the rather thin Spanish 2-reales - called the "pistareen" - was certainly being so cut, it was not known if the "Trees" were included. A number of cut pieces existed in collections but in no case did they have an indisputable pedigree stretching back to colonial times. Collectors were only too aware that an "operator" could cut a rather common, worn "Tree" shilling to make two or more "rarities". For this reason, the existing cut pieces were treated with suspicion and tended to be considered as "unprovens". But the Feversham pieces all had pedigrees and proved that such pieces did exist.
" Willow Tree" shilling as 6d "Pine Tree" shilling bisected with two cuts
Then, too, it was wondered during what period such cutting was done. The Feversham coins also answered this: included were pieces where the cuts showed little or no wear, indicating that it had been done not long before 1711, the date of its loss (that on the right is such a piece); yet others (such as that on the left) had the cut rounded with wear, indicating it had been done years before. From this we can reasonably conclude that the cutting had started very early and continued as long as the "Trees" were circulating.
The Feversham tragedy has proven to be of tremendous help for research today.
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July 2007Proposed Issue for the Occupation of Russia : WWII
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