“I could spend the night writing to you … I am your forever-faithful wife. Good night, my dear friend. It is midnight. I think it is time for me to rest.” Marie Dubosc wrote these lines in 1758. They were addressed to her husband, Louis Chambrelan, a lieutenant on the Galatée, a French warship. But the letter never reached its destination; her husband’s ship had been captured by the British and Marie was never to see him again. She died the following year in Le Havre, before Louis Chambrelan was released from captivity.
During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), in which France and Great Britain, among others, fought for supremacy in North America and India, the French had some of the best ships in the world, but they lacked experienced sailors. London knew how to take advantage of this lack of personnel: the British imprisoned as many French sailors as possible for the duration of the war. As early as 1758, a good third of the 60,137 French sailors were imprisoned in Great Britain. In total, the British captured 64,373 French sailors during the Seven Years’ War.
Opened for the First Time
Some of the men died of illness and malnutrition, but most were eventually released. In the meantime, their families waited at home and repeatedly tried to contact them and exchange messages. But the Admiralty in London kept the letters sealed. Now, for the first time since they were written in 1757 and 1758, over 100 letters sent by fiancés, wives, parents, and siblings to the French sailors but never delivered have been opened and examined.
“I cannot wait to possess you,” wrote Anne Le Cerf in one of them to her husband, Jean Topsent, who also served as a non-commissioned officer on the Galatée. What she meant by “possess” is not entirely clear; perhaps she meant “embrace“. However, the word could also be an expression of the desire for sexual closeness. Anne signed the letter “Your obedient wife Nanette“, an affectionate nickname.
Emotional Moment
Renaud Morieux from the Department of History at the University of Cambridge and Pembroke College spent months deciphering this and 102 other letters from the British National Archives in Kew, London. It was not only the often illegible writing itself, with which relatives and lovers sometimes filled the then-expensive paper to the last square centimeter, that made the undertaking difficult. The adventurous spelling and the lack of any punctuation or capitalization also plagued the scientist. He has now published his findings in the journal “Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales“.
“I ordered the box just out of curiosity,” said Morieux. “There were three piles of letters held together by ribbon. The letters were very small and sealed, so I asked the archivist if they could be opened and he did.” The staff at the National Archives complied, much to the delight of the researcher. “I realized I was the first person to read these very personal messages since they were written,” says Morieux. “Their intended recipients didn’t get that chance. It was very emotional.“
The letters are about universal human experiences, as the scientist explained: “They reveal how we all cope with major life challenges. When we are separated from loved ones by events beyond our control like the pandemic or wars, we have to work out how to stay in touch, how to reassure, care for people and keep the passion alive. Today we have Zoom and WhatsApp. In the 18th century, people only had letters, but what they wrote about feels very familiar.”
Difficult Correspondence
In the 18th century, it was extremely difficult to send letters from France to a ship that was constantly on the move. Sometimes several copies of letters were sent to different ports in the hope of reaching the addressee somewhere with a lot of luck. Relatives also asked the families of crew members to enclose messages to their loved ones with their letters. Morieux found numerous examples of these strategies in the letters to sailors on the Galatée.
When the British warship Essex captured and transported the Galatée to Portsmouth in 1758, it was en route from Bordeaux to Quebec. The crew were taken prisoner and the ship was sold. The French postal administration had previously tried to deliver the letters to the ship by sending them to several ports in France, unfortunately in vain, as they always arrived too late. When the postal administration learned that the Galatée had been captured, it forwarded the letters to England, where they were handed over to the Admiralty in London.
Morieux believes that the British officials only opened and read two letters to see if they contained information of military value. When they realized that they were only dealing with “family stuff”, they probably gave up and stored the rest of the letters unopened. During his investigations, the researcher identified every member of the 181-strong crew of the Galatée, from ordinary sailors to carpenters and senior officers. Letters were addressed to a quarter of them.
Tensions and Quarrels
The content of the letters bears witness to romantic love but also provides rare insights into family tensions and disputes at a time of war and long absences. Some of the most remarkable letters were sent to the young sailor Nicolas Quesnel from Normandy on January 27, 1758. The sender was his 61-year-old mother, Marguerite. She was most likely illiterate, which is why an unknown person probably wrote the lines.
Marguerite reprimands her son: “On the first day of the year [i.e. January 1st] you have written to your fiancée… I think more about you than you about me…In any case I wish you a happy new year filled with blessings of the Lord. I think I am for the tomb, I have been ill for three weeks. Give my compliments to Varin [a shipmate], it is only his wife who gives me your news.” A few weeks later, Nicolas’ fiancée Marianne wrote to urge him to be a good son and finally write to his mother.
Unloved Stepfather
It seems that Marguerite blamed Marianne, her future daughter-in-law, for Nicolas’ silence. At first, everything seemed to have cleared up, as Marianne wrote: “The black cloud has gone, a letter that your mother has received from you, lightens the atmosphere.” But on March 7, 1758, Mother Marguerite wrote to Nicolas and complained again: “In your letters you never mention your father. This hurts me greatly. Next time you write to me, please do not forget your father.”
Morieux’s investigations revealed that this man was apparently Nicolas Quesnel’s stepfather. His biological father had died and his mother had remarried. “Here is a son who clearly doesn’t like or acknowledge this man as his father” said Morieux. “But if your mother remarries, her new husband automatically becomes your father. Without saying it explicitly, Marguerite reminds her son to respect this.” Nicolas Quesnel ultimately survived his captivity in England and, as Morieux discovered, joined the crew of a transatlantic slave trading ship in the 1760s—perhaps to escape his unloved stepfather.
