Captured ship: San Francisco Xavier alias La Perla , Don Josef Perez Muente master...

Captured ship: San Francisco Xavieralias La Perla, Don Josef Perez Muente master (José Pérez de Muente) (former master Don Melchor de Alarcón).

Details: Spanish register ship carrying cargo of silver, gold, copper, wool, cocoa and cascarilla, on voyage from Callao near Lima, Peru, to Cadiz, captured off the Azores by the British privateers Sprightly, James Bett commander, and Shark, William Waring commander, on 29 October 1779.

Documents: nos. 351 to 750: c400 personal and business letters (mostly in Spanish) from Lima for onward delivery to Cadiz, Madrid and other destinations, including a receipt for official correspondence (no. 461).

Note: the letters and papers captured from La Perlaare in pieces HCA 30/275 and 276, and 311 to 316, and have been re-ordered, as far as practicable, in one continuous sequence using the original numbers given them by the Prize Court in 1779 (nos. 1 to 1993). The sequence has been extended to no. [2111] for papers which either were never numbered or which have lost their association with an original number through damage or separation.

This re-ordering supersedes the previous bundle numbers used as references in Xabier Lamikiz Trade and Trust in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World(2010). References from that work can be traced using the number of the letter, where given, ignoring the piece and bundle numbers. Refer to the catalogue to find in which piece a particular numbered paper is now located.

See the description of piece HCA 30/275 for a list of items which are known to be somewhere among the papers of La Perlabut it is not known in which piece.

The letters and papers of La Perlaas a whole are written in Spanish, with a few in French, Italian, Latin, English, Portuguese, Catalan and Basque