James Madison Letter Signed as Secretary of State Regarding an American Vessel Captured by the French in the Caribbean in 1799

Saybrook, Connecticut merchant Jonathan Warner was active in trade with the West Indies. He and his co-owner Gideon Leet claimed damages of $18,818.10 in the seizure of the Brig Matilda at St. Bartholomew in 1799 by French ships.

The brig Matilda was bound for St. Bartholomew in 1799, carrying beef, pork, flour, stock, corn, meal, lumber, lard, beans, and cheese when bad weather forced it into the British island of Anguilla for repair. It was captured near Saint Barthélemy by two French privateers and brought to St. Martin where the ship and cargo were condemned and its contents sold. From 1809 to 1826 Warner heard nothing about this claim. But in 1836 he and co-owner Gideon Leet received $23,947.33 under the 1831 U.S. claims treaty with France, which was designed to make good American losses from the Quasi-war with France.

The Swedish colony of Saint Barthélemy existed for nearly a century. In 1784, one of Louis XVI’s ministers ceded the French Caribbean island to Sweden in exchange for trading rights in the Swedish port of Gothenburg. Swedish rule lasted until 1878 when the French repurchased the island.

Letter Signed as Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, Washington, Jan. 9, 1806 to Jonathan Warner regarding the captured ship. “As your claim respecting the Brig Matilda did not appear to make progress under the intervention of the Consul of Sweden, the Minister of the United States at London was charged to lay it before the Swedish Minister there and from information received some months ago, it appears it has been referred by the latter gentleman to his government with assurances that justice would be done so far as the case was found to embrace it.”

Obviously the efforts of the Swedes were unavailing, as recompense for the Americans was decades away.