1776 General Gazetteer with 1779–1827 Manuscript Notes of a Massachusetts Revolutionary War Privateer, Ship Master, and Selectman, Including Service Aboard the Pilgrim Under Famed Captain Hugh Hill

On offer is an extraordinary Revolutionary War and early American maritime artifact: the personal copy of The General Gazetteer: or, Compendious Geographical Dictionary, fourth edition, 1776, owned and annotated with phenomenal Revolutionary War content by John Prince (1762-1848) of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Prince was a Revolutionary War privateer, ship master, selectman, and Justice of the Peace.

Across the blank front and rear endpapers and pastedowns, Prince filled eight manuscript pages with notes spanning roughly 48 years, from 1779 to at least 1827. The book itself is significant to the manuscript content. The General Gazetteer was a practical eighteenth-century reference work identifying countries, ports, cities, rivers, harbors, distances, political divisions, and historical facts. This content would have been useful to a young mariner, and Prince used the blank leaves to record his work, memory, education, and thought.

These notes are not casual marginalia, but personal working record that fills in a large gap in the existing knowledge of Prince and the famed Revolutionary ship the Pilgrim, captained by Hugh Hill (1740-1828). 

The most important entry is Prince’s firsthand retrospective account of his first voyage to sea during the American Revolution. On one page he writes, “1779 Pilgrim Sail’d April the 13 1779,” and signs the book in Latinized form, “Johannes Prince Ejus Liber July the 9 1779” [“John Prince, his book.”]. In the surrounding manuscript he gives a narrative of this voyage, beginning, “The first of my going to Sea was in the Pilgrim,” identifying the famous Beverly privateer as “a ship of 16 9 pounders 140 Men” under “Hugh Hill, Commd’r.”

This is an exceptional Revolutionary War naval passage. Prince records that during this cruise they took eleven British prizes, including a bark from Liverpool, England, armed with fourteen guns. He describes the vessel as a Letter of Marque loaded with goods, taken by boarding after a tense encounter in fog. The opposing vessel flew American colors, claimed to be from Charlestown, and then hauled down the American colors and raised British. Prince records that the British captain and sailing master were killed and that several men were wounded. He further notes that prisoners were landed on the coast of Ireland.

The language is unusually vivid and unusually reflective. Prince does not simply glorify the action. Writing from the perspective of one who had been only seventeen years old, he adds: “War is a Calamity — privateering & Pirateering are about the Same.” He then explains the practical necessity of his choice: “At this period Æ 17 I so thought, but with me it was of necessity there was no other Employ,” adding that he did not have his father’s approval.

This passage gives the manuscript unusual emotional and historical force: a Revolutionary War privateer looking back on the violence and moral ambiguity of privateering, while also explaining the economic pressure that drove a Marblehead teenager to sea.

The entry is important in relation to Prince’s later documented Revolutionary War statement. In June 1839, Prince swore that he had taken an active part in the Revolution, had served in Rhode Island in 1778 under Col. William R. Lee, and had gone on nine cruises during the war aboard privateers and Letters of Marque. He also stated that he had been one of the prisoners aboard the British sloop of war Lively, and the “leader and adviser” of the prisoners who rose up in November 1782, captured the vessel, carried her safely into Havana, and sold her for $22,000 (Lindsey, 1915).

That affidavit gives the broad outline of Prince’s Revolutionary service, but this manuscript appears to preserve something different and rarer: Prince’s earliest known firsthand account of his first voyage as a seventeen-year-old privateer.

 According to the Peabody Essex Museum finding aid, the institutional holdings of the John Prince Papers begin with Prince’s writing in 1784, while earlier papers in that archive relate to Joseph Hooper and family. If so, the 1779 material contained within this book fills a significant gap in the surviving documentary record of Prince’s early wartime life, while also providing rich firsthand content about the Revolutionary wartime activities of the famed privateer ship Pilgrim.

The manuscript also documents Prince’s development from teenage privateer to experienced ship master. A later entry refers to the schooner Philanthropist and reads in part: “Philanthropist. John Prince Commander in Bilboa. Wrote & copied by Mr John Cross - Mate - 1795.” This corroborates published Marblehead maritime records identifying Prince with the schooner Philanthropist in 1795 and the brigantine Philanthropist in 1800, strengthening the chain of identity between the manuscript writer, the Revolutionary War privateer, and the later Marblehead ship master. The note is also valuable because it names his mate and situates Prince within the postwar Atlantic maritime world.

Another manuscript page preserves navigational mathematics, including longitude and latitude calculations, conversions into minutes, logarithmic values, and what appears to be a calculation involving meridional miles. These calculations help show that this gazetteer was a working maritime object, not simply a household book. Prince was using its blank leaves for the kinds of geographical and mathematical work directly connected to navigation and transatlantic travel.

The remaining manuscript notes reveal Prince’s intellectual world over many decades. He copied or composed historical notes on Sigismund, the Council of Constance, John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague, Martin Luther, the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Trent, the Synod of Dort, Sir Walter Raleigh, Masaniello and the Insurrection at Naples, the Cinque Ports, Oxford and Cambridge, and the lack of parliamentary representation for Manchester in 1827. These notes show a sustained interest in geography, institutions, religious reform, rebellion, representation, and the relationship between authority and resistance.

That pattern matters. In the same book that preserves his account of privateering during the American Revolution, Prince was also curating a personal history of reform, conscience, insurrection, and civic rights. The manuscript therefore has a much broader significance than a naval memorandum alone. It preserves the lifelong working mind of a New England ship master whose experiences moved from Revolutionary privateering to Atlantic trade, civic office, and historical reflection.

There is also a visible large cursive name, “Nancy Prince,” written vertically through one of the manuscript pages and later smudged or obscured, but still visible. This is likely Anna Nancy Prince (1766–1841), John Prince’s younger sister, adding to the evidence of family provenance.

Biographical Notes:

John Prince was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on January 4, 1762. Published Marblehead records identify him as a seaman and ship master associated with the ship St. Helena, the schooners Hope, Catherine, Betsy, and Philanthropist, and the brigantine Philanthropist. He later served Marblehead as selectman during multiple terms between 1803 and 1825, and was also a Justice of the Peace. He married Elizabeth Wendall in 1787 and they had at least one child. He died on January 29, 1848.

Hugh Hill (August 1, 1740 – February 17, 1829) was an Irish-born Massachusetts sea captain and Revolutionary War privateer commander. After coming to Massachusetts, he first settled in Marblehead before making his home in Beverly. During the Revolution, he became one of Beverly’s best-known privateering figures, commanding the ship Pilgrim and later the privateering vessel Cicero. His appearance in Prince’s manuscript gives the account a direct connection to one of the major maritime figures of Revolutionary Beverly.

This is a highly desirable manuscript-bearing volume for an institution collecting in early American maritime history, Revolutionary War privateering, Marblehead and Essex County history, Atlantic world studies, the history of navigation, or the intellectual life of early American seamen. It is both a Revolutionary War naval document and a rare material witness to the lifelong working mind of a documented Massachusetts captain.

Condition:

1776 printed volume with manuscript notes to the front and rear endpapers and pastedowns. The manuscript pages show age toning, wear, smudging, scattered staining, edge wear, and some losses or tears affecting portions of text. Some writing is faint, crossed out, or partially obscured. The printed book should be considered a working eighteenth-century volume rather than a fine copy. The binding is structurally fragile, with a pronounced split along the spine. The text block remains tenuously attached by only a small amount of surviving sewing, and further separation may occur with handling or transit despite careful packing. Careful shipping will be ensured, but the binding should be treated as vulnerable and at risk of further detachment. The manuscript content remains substantial, legible in important passages, and historically significant.

References:

Ancestry.com. (n.d.). Ancestry. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Retrieved June 15, 2026, from https://www.ancestry.com

Colonial Society of Massachusetts. (1922). January meeting, 1922. https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/370

Lindsey, B. J. (1915). Old Marblehead sea captains and the ships in which they sailed. Published for the Benefit of the Marblehead Historical Society.

Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum. (n.d.). John Prince papers [Archival collection]. Peabody Essex Museum ArchivesSpace. Repository 2, resource 415.

Scully, T. F. (n.d.). Interesting burials in Beverly cemeteries. City of Beverly. https://www.beverlyma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/718/Interesting-Burials-in-Beverly-PDF

Three Decks. (n.d.). American privateer ship “Pilgrim” (1778). Retrieved June 15, 2026, from https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=12492