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DICKINSON, Jonathan; and Caleb DICKINSON. Autograp

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Jamaica: 17 September 1706. 2? pp., folded sheet with integral address leaf (242 x 187 mm). Written in Jonathan Dickinson's hand, and signed by each on the third page. Address panel and docketing on the final page. Condition: some slight losses along folds, browned. evidence of william penn's search for shipwrecks and caribbean treasure. "One of the most interesting of social phenomena was the mania for treasure-hunting in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. While search for treasure trove is scorned by our staid industrial society as an enterprise fit only for eccentrics and incurable adventurers the English people of that late period were hardly so incredulous. It was a generation that linked business with adventure and men poured their capital into the most fantastic of get-rich quick schemes" (Karraker, "The Fairfax Treasure Project" in WMQ, second series, vol. 13, no. 1). In William Penn's case, his motivation was not adventure, but serious financial trouble. Penn's desire to search for shipwrecks in the West Indies was not as far-fetched as it sounds. In 1687 Captain William Phips discovered the wreck of the Almiranta and its famed Hispaniola treasure worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. This led Thomas Lord Fairfax to petition Queen Anne to permit him to "fish" for wrecks in the West Indies between the 6th and 36th degree of latitude north. William Penn, whose financial and legal problems with the widow and heirs of his steward Phillip Ford were about to put him in debtor's prison, was involved in that scheme (see Papers of William Penn IV:127). Penn first contacted Jonathan and Caleb Dickinson in Jamaica in late 1705 or early 1705/6 to ask them to act for him and his partners. Jonathan Dickinson, the famous survivor of his own shipwreck and subsequent Indian captivity recorded and published as God's Protecting Providence, was known to Penn having met him in Pennsylvania in 1699. The present letter is written in response to Penn's letter of 6 March in which he instructed the Dickinsons to pay £300 on his account to any honest ship's captain who would agree to search for shipwrecks off Jamaica and salvage their treasure. In the present letter, the Dickinson brothers discuss the cost of the enterprise in some detail: "To buy a Vessel we are Certain that sum cannot, there being not vessels Enough to answer the Trade of the Island. To hire a vessel to Search Such difficult places (is what we doubt), She must be well manned & provided wth Naval & victualling Stores, all which runs high. We are full intended to seek for a little small Sloop which will require a Small charge, and Endeavor to get some Divers; if we can accomplish this, he may go seek for the Wreck which if he finds, may Encourage a further progress." In his 14 February letter, Penn had written also of his hopes for the enterprise: "We have heard that your Bro Gom [Ezekiel Gomersall, the Dickinson's brother-in-law] gave Capt Smyth great encouragenit [sic] that there was such a wreck & that it been actually begun to be Fisht, & that some thousands of Pieces of 8, had been taken up, & brought into that Island; & that he had seen some of them" (op.cit.). In the present letter, the Dickinsons dampen Penn's enthusiasm with a warning that "what Capt Smith Enformes me of Capt Braholt, makes me doubt his Informacion, for as I remember Capt Braholt was upon the quest of a wreck & meeting with disappointments became a Pirate. And Captain Smith seemed Surprised at the Sum, he depend it had been greater when I first acquainted him that I doubted the Sum would not answer the Intentions of Search." However, the Dickinsons reassure Penn that "As to the mans [Captain Smith's] Character so far as I can learn from others, he seems to be both sober & solid & very Intent upon this Adventure." The letter ends with other more minor personal and business news. Letters by Jonathan Dickinson are virtually unknown outside of holdings at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. A version of this letter from a retained copy appears in the Correspondence between William Penn and James Logan (Philadelphia: 1872) and is from that source published in the Papers of William Penn IV: 132.

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