Nelson & His World

In 1802 Captain Mansfield of the Dryad, which had been on the Irish station, was seeking assurances from the Admiralty that there would be no repetition of a fraud that had affected others, in the payment of his own seamen. This followed a complaint by Captain Lee of the Assistance through Admiral Rowley, of frauds committed in Clonmell through the payment of remittances to families using Irish money rather than sterling.

Does anyone have any ideas on what this fraud might have been, or can anyone point me to a likely source of information?

Hi Tony, A possible start at the National Archives, Kew may shed light on something.

Stephen

Tony

I don't have any information relating specifically to this stuation - but I've just be trying to reason what was most likely going on here.

I can't recall the exact date, but I believe it was after the 1797 mutinies, that seamen were allowed to have part of their pay remitted regularly and directly to their family/dependents. They then received the balance at the end of their "tour of duty".

I just looked over on Wikipedia and under Irish currency it tells us that:



So lets say £10 of a seaman's pay was being remitted to his family in Ireland. (or to the nearest Post Office is how I think it worked)

If that was paid as 10 Irish pounds (rather than sterling) it would only have cost £9 4s 7d. Potentially somebody could then have "creamed off" the difference. The books would have balanced and it would certainly have taken some time before anyone "blew the whistle". With the various parties involved, different currencies, different languages, and long time lags there is the possibility it would never even have come to light - but obviously it did!!

If this was indeed a fraud I guess it would have to have been perpetrated by somebody in the Admiralty.

But there must remain the possibility that it was down to simple error i.e. a pay clerk or whatever told to remit x pounds for families/dependents in Ireland and assuming there was parity between British pounds and Irish pounds.

Sorry if I got this completely and horribly wrong - but it's just a few thoughts straight off the top of my head.

MB

OR . . . . . was the correct equivalent amount transferred to the "Post Office" in Clonmell and it was there that the Irish amount rather than the sterling amount was paid out and the differential creamed off.

I imagine that by far the majority of recipients would have been illiterate so the temptation to try and perpetrate a fraud would have been quite high.

Something along those lines now seems far more likely to me . . but happy to eat humble pie if somebody can come up with a more plausible suggestion.

MB

Thanks Mark, your last suggestion sounds very plausible, especially as the snippet described the frauds as committed in Clonmel.

A trawl at the National Archives may throw up more either in correspondence or in ships' pay books, thanks Stephen, but unfortunately my next visit is postponed for a while.