Autograph Letter Signed ('Selkirk') to unnamed male recipient.

12mo bifolium: 4 pp. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged paper. Begins: 'I am sorry to say that I have to place our affairs in your hands such as I never did before and I hope never to have to do again.' As the recipient may know, 'a vessel was built for me last year by the Messrs Hall in Aberdeen and was built under the inspection of Lloyds surveyor according to a certain specification & contract.' Selkirk 'had so much confidence in the character of the Messrs Hall' that he thought himself 'quite safe with the supervision of the Lloyds surveyor but finding the vessel leaky I had her inspected by the Dockyard people at Malta and they discovered on removing certain planks that the construction of the vessel was essentially defective and not according to the specification & contract'. Selkirk alleges that he has been 'abominably defrauded & sent to sea in a vessel postively unsafe' as a result of 'gross carelessness or [...] collusion between Messrs Hall & the surveyor'. He spent £300 on repairs in Malta, but he cannot keep the vessel '[i]n any shape' and feels that 'Messrs. Hall ought to take her off my hands & give me back my money with such reasonable deduction as might be considered fair for the deterioration by wear & tear for a year - I being allowed also for the Malta dockyard bill as a set off against that'. He does not know how the case stands in 'strict law', but 'considering the awful exposure that an action for fraud would bring about' feels that the shipwrights 'would be anxious to compound at any rate'. Asks the recipient to try and 'privately find out in what mind they are about', and communicate the information to Eden Colville, Fenchurch Buildings, London. 'If they defy us and are in the mind to defend the action we will have to consider how to proceed.' Hall & Co were active between 1790 and 1957. According to one authority 'Alexander Hall died in 1849 leaving his two sons, James and William, to run the business. The brothers were responsible for many famous clippers.'