A volunteer archivist made a remarkable discovery last May while sorting through old naval documents at Britain’s National Archives — a rare early copy of America’s Declaration of Independence, tucked away for centuries among the papers of a Royal Navy captain.
Michael Scurr, a retired insurance executive who has spent the past 11 years volunteering at the National Archives every Thursday morning, was carefully working through correspondence when he came across a document attached to a report about the capture of an American privateer ship called the Dalton on Christmas Eve 1776. The enclosure was labeled simply as “another paper.”
When Scurr unfolded it and saw the word “Declaration” at the top, he knew immediately what he had found.
“I thought, oh, right, OK, this is definitely a Declaration of Independence,” he told The Associated Press. “How exciting is this?”
Researchers at the National Archives have since confirmed that the document is a rare early printing of America’s founding document, produced just days after the original was signed on July 4, 1776, as a way to spread word that 13 American colonies had broken from British rule. This particular version was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and 19, 1776.
It is one of only 11 known surviving copies of what is called the Exeter printing — and the only one ever identified outside the United States. The National Archives announced the find Thursday, just ahead of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
What makes the discovery especially significant, historians say, is not just its age. The document was aboard a ship operating under the authority of the newly formed Continental Congress, carrying orders signed by its president, John Hancock. Amanda Bevan, who leads the National Archives’ project to catalog Royal Navy captain correspondence from the American Revolution, explained that the public knows a great deal about hardships faced by the Continental Army on land, but far less attention has been paid to Americans who took to the seas to challenge British naval power and disrupt trade.
Finding the declaration on board a ship also sheds light on how such documents may have been used in practice, Bevan said. She believes the Dalton’s captain would have read both his orders and the declaration aloud to his crew, as was common custom at the time.
“They know why they’re fighting, but this puts it in a language which makes it greater than them,” Bevan said. “They’re not fighting because they’re aggrieved in particular. They’re fighting for an ideal. And I think that just to find the declaration in a theater of war where people are committing themselves to fight for their country on the wide ocean is really something special.”
The Dalton was an 18-gun privateer — a privately owned vessel authorized by the Continental Congress to fight on behalf of the new nation and bolster its small navy. Captain Thomas Fitzherbert, commanding the 64-gun HMS Raisonnable, pursued the Dalton for seven hours on Christmas Eve before capturing the vessel off the coast of Portugal. The ship’s 120-man crew was then imprisoned in Plymouth, England, under brutal conditions.
One crew member, Charles Hebert, was only 19 years old when he was taken captive. He recorded his more than two years of imprisonment in personal journals, describing starvation, sickness, and repeated punishment before finally being freed through a prisoner exchange. Despite the harsh treatment, many of the crew members survived.
American historians are equally excited about the find. Matthew Skic, director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, said the document offers a direct physical link to the Dalton’s captain, who carried word of American independence across the ocean.
“It’s not just a document, it’s an artifact,” Skic said. “It’s a tangible connection to the past, because holding that piece of paper in the archivist’s hand today is a way to transport us back to 1776. The baton being passed, in a way.”
Skic added that the discovery is a reminder that history still has secrets left to reveal.
“Even though 250 years has gone by, we still do not know everything about the American Revolution, and there are still finds left to be discovered.”
