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The Esther - $990,000 (Williamsburg)
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Captain Joshua Trumpf commands a patriotic tobacco ship straight into the waiting hands of the British Fleet.
SYNOPSIS:
Hidden along the muddy slow moving Blackwater River, in the forests and swamps of 18th Century Virginia, was the port of South Quay. Thomas Jefferson described it as hard for the British to get at.
In February of 1778, while the British Man of Wars were blockading the Eastern seaboard, Joseph Mount and the fifty ton sloop Esther attempted to break free into the Atlantic with her load of tobacco for the French Province of Martinique. Mount was very familiar with the route, he had made this journey many times before.
There is a log book describing Esther's fateful journey. It describes the tense moments as Esther heads out to the Atlantic Ocean and attempts to avoid the British Warships. The first mate describes Esther's capture and deliverance to the British prison ship Jersey known as Hell by its prisoners.
The log book and accompanying records are part of the Virginia Colonial Records Project. It was established by organizations including Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in order to restore some of the records of Virginia's colonial history destroyed by war or fire.
The agent that copied the log and records indicated that the log is in usual form beginning with the taking of the provisions at South Quay and going on to the incidents of the voyage. It starts on February 12th 1778 and ends on March 17th.