Author:
William Pitt Amherst (1773-1857), 1st Earl Amherst, British diplomat and colonial administrator (sometime Ambassador Extraordinary to China) [Captain Sir Robert Barrie (1774-1841) of HMS Pomone]
On rectangle of paper, 11 x 5.5 cm, cut from front frank. Aged and spotted, with closed tear at head repaired on reverse with archival tape. The whole in Amherst's hand, with his signature (as usual on frank) in bottom left-hand corner between two horizontal lines. Launched in 1805, the Pomone was a 38-gun Leda-class fifth rate Royal Navy ship, built by Josiah and Thomas Brindley at Frindsbury. She saw action during the Napoleonic Wars, primarily in the Mediterranean, and was wrecked off the Needles in 1811.