PRINT SOURCE: Thomas Raddall Fonds, Correspondence. From Thomas Raddall to Admiral Pullen, 27 April 1963. MS-2-202 46.59.
Subject HeadingsT. H. Raddall shares information about the building of privateers in Liverpool, N. S. with retired naval officer and War of 1812 historian, Hugh F. Pullen. He concludes by referring Pullen to his young adult novel, The Rover, which he had based on the adventures of a Liverpool privateer manned by his wife's ancestors.
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April 27, 1963 Dear Admiral Pullen, I have been able to discover nothing about the dimensions of the "Rover", other than that she was "less than one hundred tons". Measurement in those days on the Nova Scotia coast was a sketchy business, as Perkins' diary reveals,1 and I am inclined to think the "Rover" must have been larger. Her full armament as a privateer was sixteen guns, and although these were only 4-pounders they made up a heavy deck weight and also took up a considerable amount of room. She was built in the winter and spring of 1798-99 for Snow Parker, a former sea captain and a successful merchant in the West Indies trade.2 Parker probably had the chief hand in her design, from his own experience in the Caribbean. Before she was equipped he sold shares in her to other Liverpool merchants and captains in the custom of the time. The exact spot where she was built I do not know. Parker built many vessels in his long lifetime, usually on Shipyard Point, in what was then the heart of the town of Liverpool. Sometimes, however, he had them built on the other side of the Mersey est- uary at Herring Cove (now called Brooklyn) by a master ship- wright named Ichabod Darrow.3 One tradition says that Darrow built the "Rover" at Herring Cove. Other tradition says she was built at Shipyard Point, where Captain Alexander Godfrey had a house and store,4 and where he could superintend the building of a ship. (Godfrey built at least one there himself.) Possibly you have seen my book "The Rover", which was published by MacMillan, Toronto, in 1958. It contains all I have been able to discover, from documents and from Liverpool tradition handed down in the families of the privateersmen. (My wife is a descendant of Henry Godfrey, powder monkey of the "Rover", and of Samuel Freeman, a prize-master in the ill fated "Lord Spencer" and later master of the "Rover".) I'll be glad to send along my own copy for your perusal if you'd like to see it. |
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