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The Concordia: A Global Microhistory of a Bremen Ship 

‘To the seventh interrogatory this deponent saith that . . . the said ship or vessell Concordia was bound to Cork in Ireland and from thence to Saint Eustatius aforesaid in the West Indies and from thence to Amsterdam in Holland and to no other port or places in her voyage and that . . . she carried from Bremen a cargo of linnen and pipe staves and delivered the same at Cadix in Spain from where she sailed in ballast to Saint Lucar in Spain and carried from thence a cargo of Lemons and Oranges and delivered the same in London aforesaid from whence she sailed in Ballast to Cork aforesaid and carried from thence a cargo of beef butter salmon candles soap and other goods . . . and delivered the same to Saint Eustatius aforesaid from whence she carried her present Cargo of Coffee and Cotton and no other goods.’1

This was the route and cargo of the Bremen three-master Concordia before its voyage came to an abrupt end in April 1758. On that day, the Concordia was captured by the John and Stephen, an English privateer ship, off the south coast of England at Beachy Head, which in those days was a notorious hotspot for privateering. The words quoted are excerpts from a witness statement by the Concordia’s captain, Arendt Buck, who was suspected of transporting French goods or even contraband—that is, military equipment—for the enemy. The ship had come from Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean, which was known for such goods at the time. In this period, France and England were bitter enemies, fighting against one another in the Seven Years War and the French and Indian War, which meant that almost every ship sailing by the coast of England at this time was captured. Privateering was a legitimate means of tactical warfare at sea in the early modern period, with the only condition being that the captured ship had to be an enemy vessel. This legitimacy was tested in court, with documents taken from the captured ships as evidence. If conclusive proof was found that the ship belonged to the enemy, it was declared a ‘prize’—legitimate booty—and was put up for auction with its cargo.

The Case of the Concordia

Arendt Buck, as captain of a ship that was flying not the French but the Bremen flag, considered himself wrongly accused and challenged the legality of the capture in court. During the incident, he had resisted the seizure of his ship and had greeted the English privateers ‘with a pair of pistols and a hanger beside him’. In theory, Buck had good reason to object. The Hanseatic city of Bremen maintained neutrality at this time. Ships flying a neutral flag could generally sail without incident and independently of any armed conflict. However, neutrality was invalidated if a ship was transporting goods from hostile parties during war. That was the crux of maritime neutrality at the time and was also Arendt Buck’s undoing: he and the owners of his ship ultimately failed in their appeal. The trial lasted several years. During this time, the British authorities did everything they could to cast doubt on the neutrality of the Concordia and its cargo, bringing more and more evidence from the ship to the trial. In the end, almost all the documents from on board the Concordia were confiscated as evidence in order to ultimately prove that the owners and the captain were in cahoots with the French. As official evidence, The Concordia’s documents were not destroyed after the trial, but are still stored in their entirety in the UK National Archives in London as part of the Prize Papers collection, the prize records of the former High Court of Admiralty.

The court documents of the Concordia still take up several cubic metres today. The material not only bears witness to the eventful history of the ship before its capture (for example, the fact that the ship’s previous captain, Johann Biesewick, had died shortly before its departure from Sint Eustatius), but also to efforts by the captain, shipowners, insurers, and the municipal authorities in Bremen to exert a positive influence on the decision of the Court of Admiralty during the trial and to turn the proverbial tide. The crew and the one other person on board—who was presumed to be a passenger, but this turned out not to be the case—also had an interest in a favourable outcome to the proceedings, not only so that they could continue their journey, but also because a sizeable number of their personal belongings, including many documents, had also been confiscated by the British. Love letters to wives, poems, books, drawings, songs, debt registers, and even the cook’s shopping lists are among the documents that have survived. One of the highlights of the Concordia’s archives is certainly the letters the ship was carrying in mailbags in her hold at the time, some of which remain sealed to this day.

Fig. 2 Working on documents from the Concordia. Photo by Lucas Haasis.

The Bigger Picture

The Concordia’s archives make it possible to construct the broader narrative of flows of goods, sea routes, maritime law and international justice, shipbuilding, colonial trade, and postal services, thereby tying in with current debates in maritime history.2 But they also allow more personal stories to be told, such as those of the sailors on board: seamen like Johann Pohl, who learned to write below deck on the Concordia in a specially purchased exercise book.3 The Concordia gives us an insight into the life-world of an eighteenth-century merchant ship, as well as the communication boom in that period. Through this dense and multifaceted archive, we can bring countless different voices, places, stories, and memories to life; hear the echoes of fleeting, long-lived, sad, or cheerful experiences; feel the ‘living breath’4 of this time, which has been extinguished for so long and yet seems quite close to us when we leaf through the many different documents, testimonies, and letters. The Concordia archive allows us to piece together a colourful, lively picture of this time, in which countless stories ultimately create a ‘wall-sized culturescape’5 of this era. The Concordia makes it possible to write a global microhistory of the eighteenth century.6

Hidden Stories

I used my research visit to London, which was funded by a one-month scholarship from the German Historical Institute, to examine in particular the surviving private archives from the Concordia—that is, the personal papers confiscated from the crew, the captain, and the passenger on board—and to catalogue them for my research. In addition, I scrutinized the 155 letters that were on board as mail in transit—with some surprising finds, such as letters in Yiddish and Ladino. The passenger’s personal archive had been confiscated in its entirety and had not previously been studied. It contained, for example, passports and letters, which I used to uncover his background. Henry Balthazar Duprat was no ordinary passenger, as the ship’s documents would have us believe, but a prisoner of war who was being transported to Amsterdam in secret.  Several logbooks from his previous voyages have been preserved that show he was a ship’s captain for the hostile French power—which is ultimately why the British Court declared the Concordia a legitimate prize.

Presenting my project at the GHIL research colloquium gave me new inspiration in terms of content and methodology, and this is feeding into my projects and an upcoming exhibition at the German Maritime Museum (DSM) in Bremerhaven.

I would like to thank the staff at the GHIL and the National Archives in London for their cooperation and for an exciting and rewarding research trip.

Translation by Marielle Sutherland


Fig. 1 (feature image): Dreimast Galiot gegen den Wind. Illustration: Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum, etching, unknown artist. Courtesy of the Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum.

  1. Examination of Arendt Buck, master of the ship Concordia, 8 April, 1758, TNA, HCA 32/176. []
  2. Richard Blakemore and James Davey (eds.), The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain (Amsterdam, 2020). []
  3. Lucas Haasis, ‘The Writing Seamen: Learning to Write and Dictating Letters on Board the Bremen Ship “Concordia”’, in Peter Burschel and Sünne Jüterczenka (eds.), Das Meer: Maritime Welten in der Frühen Neuzeit / The Sea: Maritime Worlds in the Early Modern Period (Cologne, 2020), 297–310; Lucas Haasis, ‘Lebenszeichen’, Hoffnung handeln—L‘espérance en action, 17 Dec. 2021. []
  4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werkausgabe, vol. i: Philosophische Untersuchungen (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), sect. 432. All translations are my own. []
  5. Clifford Geertz,‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 3–32, at 21. []
  6. See Miles Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550–1800 (Cambridge, 2008); Lucas Haasis and Annika Raapke, ‘Global Microhistory: Great Expectations?’, H-Soz-Kult, 27 Nov. 2018; Francesca Trivellato, ‘Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?’, California Italian Studies, 2/1 (2011); and John-Paul A. Ghobrial, ‘Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian’, Past & Present, 242, Supplement 14 (2019), 1–22. []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Lucas Haasis (May 23, 2025). The Concordia: A Global Microhistory of a Bremen Ship . German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved June 15, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/1403p


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Lucas Haasis

Dr Lucas Haasis is a historian and senior researcher at the German Maritime Museum / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History in Bremerhaven, Germany. He previously served as a lecturer in Early Modern History and Games in Oldenburg, and as research coordinator and PR manager for the German-British Prize Papers Project. Haasis is currently pursuing projects on the global history of an 18th century merchant ship from Bremen and on convict letters using digital methods. In the field of public history, Haasis runs the Gamelab in the Villa Geistreich.

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