[1837 Manuscript Deposition Signed by Charles Tyng (1801–1879), Author of the Seafaring Literature Classic, Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833].

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Charles Tyng (1801–1879), a wealthy Boston merchant and ship captain is best known for his classic memoir Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833, first published in 1999, detailing his numerous adventures on the high seas. Maritime scholar Thomas Philbrick, who wrote the afterword, described Tyng’s tale as a “memoir of a nearly forgotten frontier” offering an “authenticity that neither [C.S.] Forester nor [Patrick] O’Brian, however skillful, can simulate.”

Here in 1837, self-identifying as a Newburyport, Massachusetts resident, Tyng gives a deposition regarding a dispute he is having with and/or involving the individuals or firms of Richard D. Tucker and Son, Parrish & Company of Hamburg, George Parish, Charles Parish, and others. Tyng describes three shipping adventures per the barque Bashaw, between 1834 to 1836, involving sugar and coffee and the mechanics of the voyages, partnerships, and the economics of same.

A 1-page added document reveals debts and receivables of the Ship Bashaw in which Tyng was captain and stakeholder, and notes, among other things, its cargo of sugar and stops at Havana and other ports.

A recent thesis has described Tyng as a New England trader in enslaved persons, a “supposed hero [and] a predatory capitalist ignoring ethics for financial gain.” (Paul J. Michaels New England Slave Trader: The Case of Charles Tyng.)

Tyng autographs his name at the conclusion of his statement which is written out in a clerical hand.

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