Cloth Seal, Company, 1711 - 1853, South Seas & Fisheries

Cloth Seal, Company, 1711 - 1853, South Seas & Fisheries, Image by StuE & Found by Bart Kucharski.
Found near Christleton, Chester, 37mm, 30.8g.

Missing // arms of United Kingdom HONI SOIT QUI MALY PENSE on garter DIEU ET MON DROIT on ribbon with, lion & unicorn supporters // arms of South Seas & Fisheries company, FAR... BRITANNICA // fragment of small rove disc remains

Inner discs from a four disc cloth seal for the South Seas & Fisheries Company.

The United Kingdom arms show that this seal was from the last 16 years of this company's existance 1837 - 1853.

See Geoff Egan, M.12 Fig.48 'Lead cloth seals and related items in the B.M.' (B.M.occ.papers 93), "The company was founded in 1711 to trade with Spanish America. Although it sold off most of its trading rights in 1750 the Company lasted until 1853.... The London finds are presumably accidental losses from cloths being dyed at the side of the Thames for the Company prior to export .... Other seals for this Company have been found in Texas and Tierra del Fuego..."

See also figure 2.11 Egan, G., 1991, Industry and Economics on the Medieval and later London Waterfront. In G.L. Good et al. (eds.), Waterfront Archaeology, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Waterfront Archaeology held at Bristol 23-26 September 1988 (Council for British Archaeology Research Report 74), 9-18.

Michel Royer has shown that the initials are often SS&EC rather than SS&FC possibly standing for the 'Encouragement of fishing' as in the official title of the company. See Euro-Plombs.

This seal is now in my possession and available for study.

See 1612 p.347 vol.1 and p.475 vol II in Loden zegels en verzegelingen by Raf Van Laere, 2019 for another example.