Charles Drake & Co. (Havana Merchant House)

Havana-New York Trade Manifest [Havana, Cuba: Privately Printed / Charles Drake & Co., 1836.]

Original single-sheet bill of lading. Measuring 10.75 x 5.75 inches. Partially printed document completed in a secretarial ink hand. Signed by the shipping representative.

Preserves a clear, unrecorded transactional record of the early nineteenth-century maritime trade triangle between Cuba and New York City. The manifest records the shipment of two hundred kegs of paint via the ship Norma, captained by Master Barton, valued at a freight cost of sixteen dollars and eighty cents. It offers primary evidence of the merchant networks operating out of Havana during a period of intense Cuban-American economic interdependence.

KEY FEATURES
+++ Visuals: Features bold, crisp letterpress typography at the head and within the text body, displaying the prominent corporate imprint of Charles Drake & Co. of Havana. 
+++ Media: Executed on light, flexible rag-content bond paper typical of period maritime stationery. +++ Content: Fully completed in manuscript ink with specific cargo marks, tracking tallies, dating, and local currency notations. 
+++ Specs: Single sheet; oblong formatting; measures 10.75 x 5.75 inches.

THE RULE OF DISTINCTION
+++ Transcription Anchor: Completed on March 23, 1836, tracking an shipment delivered unto Order, itemizing the cargo split in the left margin via hand-inked merchant tracking monograms: C G 125 and C Y 75 over a total line of 200.
+++ Specific Lineage: Documents transaction parameters for Charles Drake & Co., an influential Havana-based merchant house whose expansive trade operations in sugar, coffee, and bullion formed the backbone of nineteenth-century American-Cuban commercial reliance.

CONDITION: Very Good, Clean, crisp, and bright throughout. Displays a couple of tiny, neat stitch holes to the far left blank margin from contemporary merchant filing, completely clear of the printed or written text. The ink remains dark, rich, and highly legible, with no evidence of foxing, damp-staining, or structural paper loss.

Historical Significance —
This document serves as an exceptional primary artifact of the Old Cuba Trade, capturing the highly systematized mercantile pipeline connecting Havana to Manhattan ports in the decades preceding the American Civil War. While historical narratives often focus exclusively on the Caribbean transit of raw agricultural commodities like sugar, tobacco, and coffee, this bill of lading exposes the secondary industrial goods moving through these same corporate networks.

Charles Drake & Co. operated as an economic powerhouse in Havana, facilitating not only bulk agricultural exports but also handling currency exchange, specie, and refined trade goods. By preserving the exact vessel name (the Norma), the master's name (Barton), the specific split-tally cargo markings, and the audited freight costs, this sheet transforms from a simple piece of ephemera into a firm quantitative data point for researchers mapping early American merchant shipping networks, maritime law, and the material history of transatlantic trade.

SUBJECTS: Caribbean Commerce, Maritime Trade History, Nineteenth-Century Economics, Cuba-U.S. Relations, Paper Ephemera.
GENRES: Bills of Lading, Legal Forms, Maritime Documents, Financial Ledgers.

Item #22080

Price: $100.00