Letters sent to captured sailors 260 years ago found in Britain
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A cache of forgotten letters sent to captured French sailors more than 260 years ago has been discovered in British naval archives. This is reported by Guardian.
According to media reports, the cache was accidentally discovered in the National Archives by Cambridge University professor Kew Renaud Maurier. More than 100 letters revealed intimate details of 18th-century marriage and family life.
The letters contain messages to sailors captured in 1758 aboard a French warship during the Seven Years’ War. They were intended for the crew of the ship Galatea, which was sailing from Bordeaux to Quebec.
It is known that the French postal administration tried for several months to deliver letters to the ship. However, when the Galatea was captured, it was transferred to the Admiralty in London. British authorities considered that the correspondence did not contain anything valuable. The letters were placed in storage, where they were forgotten for centuries.
A Cambridge University professor told the media that the messages contained intimate details, quarrels between lovers and rare information about family relationships during the war.
For example, the mother of one of the sailors, Nicolas Quesnel, complained that he wrote more to his fiancée than to her. The daughter-in-law, in another letter, asked the sailor not to put her in an awkward position.
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