The Network of John Blake of Ballinakill

By far the most common name to occur in the collection is John Blake, an Irish Catholic merchant originally from Ballinakill, Co. Galway and the owner of perhaps half of the cargo on the Franciscus. Blake was a longtime resident of Santa Cruz, Tenerife by 1744, where he served as a contact for European merchants seeking to trade into the Spanish Empire and the Mediterranean. Blake sent dozens of letters on the ship that were strictly business, to communicate with the many investors who funded the voyage of the Franciscus. Written in English, French, Spanish and Dutch, they show Blake’s commercial network that spanned from Tenerife to Hamburg, London, Jamaica, Martinique and South Carolina. 

A few people stand out in his correspondence and show the varied profiles of the investors in the Franciscus. His main partners were Joachim Heusch and Joachim Kähler, the ship’s owners who were both wealthy merchants in Hamburg. Blake’s links to French investors were run through a Dunkirk trader addressed as ‘the widow Benezet’, suggesting she assumed the business of her merchant husband after his death (a common practice). His London-based partners were invariably Irish merchants, especially Patrick Madan, who linked Blake to trading connections in British colonies across the Americas.

Blake was by no means unique, as Irish Catholics commonly served as commercial intermediaries in Spanish ports as early as the 1500s. Many Irish traders fled the warfare and vanishing commercial opportunities for Catholics in Ireland that followed as the English government tightened their grip on the island and some developed a niche in Spanish ports, in part because they could easily converse and trade with Northern Europeans. They were also of unquestionable Catholic descent, a significant detail in the Spanish imperial system, which often forbade those with recent Jewish, Protestant or Islamic ancestry from trade. A letter from the French trader Jean Pozlieu testified to the success of Irish merchants in the Canaries, as he claimed that by 1744 the Irish were the largest community of foreign merchants on the island, closely followed by the Dutch and the Genoese. 

The Education of Catherine Russell

John MacCarrick: Musician, Poet, Linguist

The Franciscus also had several passengers aboard when it was captured, one of whom was John MacCarrick, originally of Sligo. He was traveling to London where he was scheduled to be married and to settle there permanently, so it was perhaps fortunate form him that the ship was taken into Dover after capture, a port so close to his destination.

A handful of MacCarrick’s papers were confiscated at Dover and survived with the rest of the collection and they show the creative output of a mind bored by a long voyage at sea. The first example is a piece of paper where he was making notes and every inch of paper has been covered with text. On one side is love poetry, filled with the common chichés of this period. One verse reads: ‘away to yonder verdant field / to that delightfull grove / plantid by venus’ hand to yeild / ye shaming ards of love’. The remainder of the page consists of sentences written in both Spanish and English, where MacCarrick was practicing his handwriting. Turning over, he had compiled a list of phrases translated from English to French that he, an eighteenth century man, thought would be valuable for women. They include lines such as ‘I was agoing to your house – J’allois chez vous’ and ‘is he rich? – Est-il riche?’. 

MacCarrick was also recording snatches of music from memories and noting them down. This set of very rough music manuscript is actually an extremely rare example of how music was transmitted on a popular level, with melodies recalled from memory, noted down and transformed by individuals. They include the tune ‘T'was When the Sea was Roaring’, often attributed to George Frideric Handel and another ‘A Lovely Lass to a Friar Came’ from the Beggar’s Opera by John Gay. The manuscript brings to mind MacCarrick singing or playing the fiddle on deck and recording the music from memory.