“The Prize Papers of the American War” Workshop, 8 Oct.

On Friday, 8 October, the Prize Papers Project at Britain’s National Archives will host an international symposium on “The Prize Papers of the American War of Independence.”

Online registration to this event is available, but folks should know that it will take place in London. The discourse will start at 4:30 A.M., Boston time.

The workshop description says:

Bringing together specialists on prize law, the American War of Independence and the Prize Papers, the workshop approaches the collection as a transnational archive of wartime capture and its afterlives. The workshop creates a forum for sustained international exchange and collaboration.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of both the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in July and the opening of the British Vice-Admiralty Court in newly-captured New York City in September 1776. Although exceptionally rich, the prize papers of this court have been largely inaccessible. The newly catalogued papers of the New York court (and its mother-court in London) provide new perspectives on the War of Independence at sea, and on lived experiences of the time, through the intercepted papers and letters found by the British on merchant and fighting ships.

Maritime warfare was central to the War of Independence. Controlling, disrupting, and capturing shipping was crucial to the war on both sides. America started privateering early, in 1775, and sought new (previously forbidden) trading partners. From 1778, French naval and privateering activity expanded the war against Britain, followed by Spain and the Netherlands. British naval forces and loyalist privateers sought to stop American and allied shipping, enforce their imperial authority, and weaken the Continental cause. The conflict eventually extended far beyond the North American seaboard.

An initial group of papers from 150 captured ships, American or supporting America, will be published online on 8 October in the Prize Papers Portal, the open-access online database of the Prize Papers Project. . . . Major bodies of captured material from American, French, Spanish, Dutch and recaptured British vessels will be published in the coming months and years…

Presentations schduled for 8 October include:

• Amanda Bevan & Luan Cakolli: “A Voyage of Discovery and Delivery … and what we’re learning along the way”
• Suzanne Foxley: “American Experience of British Prize Law”
• Séverine Angers: “Write to me by different ships as the English capture many”
• Randolph Cock: “Piecing Together Clues from the U.S.S. Lexington, 1777: A Whodunnit”
• Rebekah Harbord: “Behind the Scenes: Preparing documents from the Prize Papers for digitisation”
• Bethany Groff Dorau: “‘Taken by 64 Guns’: A Case Study of Dalton Marine Captain Offin Boardman”
• Christopher Minty: “‘False & Colourable’: The Brigantine Adventure and the Paper War of the American Revolution”
• Abby Mullen: “Mutiny or Loyalty?: Revolt from the Enemy in American Prizes”
• Graham Moore: “Revolution 250: Exhibiting the Prize Papers at The National Archives”
• John Beiner & Lucas Haasis: “History at the Helm: The Prize Papers and the Making of the Videogame Ahoy”

The keynote address to close out Friday will be delivered by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, author of The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It (Basic Books, 2024).

The Prize Papers Project is run by the National Archives, U.K., and the University of Oldenburg, Germany. Other organizers of this event are the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven and the German Historical Institute London. The workshop will be hosted by Nele Popp, Amanda Bevan, Oliver Finnegan, and Lucas Haasis.

This symposium occurs alongside an exhibit at the National Archives in Kew titled “Revolution 250: America's Independence Story 1763–1783,” which will run through 29 November.