1851 – A puzzling consular certificate from Singapore regarding four sailors from the Ship Minstrel that was signed by a prominent British national as the “Acting U. S. Consul”

Item Details

Singapore, 1851, Unbound

Very Good

This manuscript certificate measures 8” x 12” and is datelined “Consulate of the United States of America / Singapore, 10^th January 1851.” It is signed by Acting U. S. Consul Edward Boustead, the most prominent member of the Singapore business community and a British citizen. It is also countersigned and certified as a “True Copy” by W. W. Shaw as the Acting U. S. Consul. It bears a red ”Consulate of the United States / Singapore” handstamp.

Another certificate from the Collector of the Boston Custom House is attached that reads “the shipping articles, hereto attached” are “inconformity with the ‘Act . . . regulating the shipment and discharge of Seamen. . ..”

The consular document reads in part:

“I, Edward Boustead, Acting Consul of the United States at Singapore, hereby Certivy that the following [four] seamen were lawfully discharged from the ship “Minstrel” of Boston, G. F. Bassett, Master. . .. and that the following [five seamen] shipped on board said ship for the voyage from Singapore to Port or Ports to the Eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, and at from thence to a port of discharge in the United States. . ..”

Strangely, Edward Boustead, the most important merchant in Singapore, was a British citizen and one would thing unable to hold the office of Acting U. S. Consul anywhere. However, a consular specialist informed me that while uncommon, this did occur when there was a gap in replacing consuls.

W. Shaw, who countersigned the document, had been serving as the Acting U. S. Consul at Singapore since the first-ever and long-serving consul, Joseph B. Balestier, departed the job due to ill health earlier that year. Shaw had been a strong proponent of Singapore within the American maritime community and wrote Secretary of State Daniel Webster that the city was “not surpassed by any on this side of the Cape of Good Hope.” Its repair facilities were better and cheaper than any port in India, the Philippines, or China. American ships came in great numbers, including some whalers, which took advantage of the abundance of merchant vessels to ship their oil cheaply to England and the United States.

The Ship Minstrel, owned by Samuel Elwell Sawyer, was built in 1847 and made regular voyages between Boston and the far east, including Batavia, Java, and the Dutch East Indies.

(For more information, see Ahmat’s American Trade with Singapore: 1819-1865 and “Joseph B. Balestier: The First American Consul in Singapore” in the December 1966 issue of the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and the online Diaries & Expense Accounts of Samuel Elwell Sawyer.)

A scarce U. S. consular certificate from mid-19th-century Singapore. At the time of listing, nothing similar is for sale in the trade, the Rare Book Hub shows no similar certificates have ever appeared at auction, and OCLC shows none are held in institutional collections.

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