A routine cataloguing task at the UK's National Archives has yielded an extraordinary find: one of only 11 surviving copies of an early American printing of the Declaration of Independence, and the sole known copy outside the United States.
Michael Scurr, working as a volunteer at the National Archives in Kew, west London, made the discovery in late May while sorting through 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence. Opening a volume of old documents, he encountered the unmistakable opening: "In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America..." He called over his supervisor, recognizing immediately that something extraordinary had turned up on what he described as an ordinary Thursday morning.
The document is an Exeter printing, produced in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and 19, 1776, just days after the declaration was signed in Philadelphia. These printed versions, known as broadsides, were rushed into production and distributed widely to spread news of American independence as rapidly as possible.
What makes this particular copy remarkable is not just its rarity, but the specific and traceable journey that brought it to the British archives. The declaration was found among papers seized from the American privateer ship Dalton after it was captured by a British warship off the coast of Spain in December 1776. The ship's captain, Eleazer Johnson, had likely purchased the broadside in nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the vessel briefly stopped to recruit additional crew members before venturing out to attack British merchant vessels.
Johnson was a committed believer in the cause. After his capture, he declared before a court in Plymouth that he was a citizen of the United States of America, a statement the British crown still considered treasonous. The Dalton itself holds the distinction of being the first American privateer vessel captured in European waters.
The document lay buried in the naval archives for more than two centuries, recorded only as another item from the captured ship's collection. Admiralty officials preserved other significant papers from the Dalton, including the ship's commission personally signed by Continental Congress president John Hancock. But the declaration slipped through the cracks of institutional attention, catalogued vaguely and subsequently forgotten.
Graham Moore, a records specialist at the National Archives, emphasized the historical significance of the discovery. He noted the "amazingly complete story" preserved through surviving documents and records, which illuminates how news of independence spread and what the revolutionary moment meant to ordinary sailors.
The Dalton's crew of 120 men came from diverse backgrounds: English, Irish, Scottish, French, and Danish sailors mixed with those declaring themselves American citizens. Among them was Daniel Cottle, identified in the ship's muster book as a black man. Moore noted that free black people served on both sides during the Revolutionary War, and Cottle's presence on a privateer vessel suggests he was likely a free man in 1776, possibly from Newburyport, Massachusetts, where most of the crew originated. After capture, Cottle was transferred to a guard ship and eventually imprisoned at the Old Mill in Plymouth. Beyond that point, his trail disappears from the historical record.
The published diary of sailor Charles Herbert, preserved online, provides additional detail about the crew's experiences following their capture and imprisonment in England. These overlapping historical documents create a rich narrative around this single printed declaration.
Saul Nassé, chief executive of the National Archives and keeper of public records, called the discovery a powerful reminder that the American Revolution was fundamentally a transatlantic event. He stressed that the document's value rests as much on its provenance as on its rarity: from a New Hampshire print shop to a ship at sea, through military capture, and finally into Britain's state archives. That combination of extreme scarcity and documented historical journey is exceptionally rare in itself.
Author James Rodriguez: "A volunteer stumbling onto one of the world's rarest documents buried in Navy files is the kind of story that reminds us how much history still waits to be discovered in plain sight."
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