Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/336



The licence to sail from port to port, for example, contained the following clause: "The vessel shall be allowed to proceed, notwithstanding all the documents which accompany the ship and cargo may represent the same to be destined to any neutral or hostile port, or to whomsoever such property may belong." With this licence, the ship which carried it, foreign or British, was enabled to pass through the British fleet; every vessel thus authorized being permitted to take on board another set of papers, which were, in point of fact, a forgery from beginning to end. Should the vessel be overhauled by English cruisers, she nevertheless continued her voyage unmolested. If, for example, she had actually cleared out from London, it was stated in the simulated papers that she had cleared out from Rotterdam. With this view, the proper description was made out as nearly as possible in the handwriting of the Custom-house officer at Rotterdam; and, if it were necessary that the signature of the French minister of state should be affixed, as in the case of Holland, this was skilfully forged, and even the fantastic signature of Napoleon himself was sometimes attached to these forged documents! These forgeries were not done perfunctorily or by halves, for not only were the names forged, but the seal was admirably engraved, and the wax closely imitated. Indeed a regular set of letters were frequently also forged, containing a good deal of fictitious private anecdote, with a mixture of such news from Rotterdam as might be supposed to be interesting to mercantile people, together with an