Rare Exeter Printing of Declaration of Independence Found at UK National Archives

A volunteer cataloging 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence at Britain’s National Archives found a rare early copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in late May. The single sheet is a copy of the Exeter printing produced in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and July 19, 1776.

It is one of 11 known surviving copies and the only one located outside the United States. The National Archives announced the discovery on July 2. The document had remained recorded only as “another paper” after it was seized from the American privateer Dalton.

The vessel was captured on December 24, 1776, off the coast of Portugal by the 64-gun HMS Raisonnable following a seven-hour chase. The Dalton was an 18-gun privately owned ship commissioned by the Continental Congress and carried orders signed by Congress president John Hancock.

Its 120-man crew, drawn from England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Denmark and men declaring themselves American citizens, was imprisoned in Plymouth, England.

One crew member, Daniel Cottle, is listed in the muster book as a black man and is described as likely a free black man from Newburyport, Massachusetts. Michael Scurr, who has volunteered at the archives for 11 years, made the find while working on Thursday mornings. “I thought, oh, right, OK, this is definitely a Declaration of Independence,” he told The Associated Press.

Amanda Bevan, head of the archives’ project cataloging Royal Navy captains’ correspondence from the American Revolution, said the document’s presence on the ship indicates how news of independence reached sailors at sea. Matthew Skic, director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, said the copy provides a direct link to the Dalton’s captain, who carried news of American independence to the world.

The Dalton was the first American privateer captured in European waters.