Note 1 — THE SALAMANDER.

Suffolk Court Files, no. 2031, paper 1. The story of the Salamander is curiously interwoven with the early history of the Prussian navy, on which something has been said in note 1 to document 43. The facts may be made out by a comparison of documents 48 and 49 with data found in R. Schück, Brandenburg-Preussens Kolonial-Politik (Leipzig, 1889), I. 113-118, and in a monograph on "Brandenburg-Preussen auf der Westküste von Afrika, 1681 bis 1721", in Heft 6 of the Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften of the German General Staff (Berlin, 1885), pp. 102-105. In the First Brandenburg-Prussian fleet that ever sailed out of the Baltic (August, 1680), one of the six frigates was the Churprintz (Kurprinz, Electoral Prince), 32 guns, Capt. Cornelius Reers, and there was a fire-ship, the Salamander, 2 guns, Capt. Marsilius (or Marcellus) Cock; the captains were probably all Dutch. The chief exploit of the squadron was to capture, in time of peace, a ship of the Spanish royal navy, which thus became the first of the elector's ships actually owned by him. Then Reers and a squadron of four frigates and the Salamander sailed to the West Indies, and spent the winter of 1680-1681 in cruising against Spanish shipping, though with little success. If Samuel Button's story is true (document 48), it would seem that the original Salamander must have been lost, and the William and Anne substituted in its place and renamed. The squadron got back to Prussia in May, 1681.