Letters confiscated by Britain's Royal Navy before they reached French sailors during the Seven Years' War [(1756–1763)] have been opened for the first time.
The messages were seized by Britain's Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, taken to the Admiralty in London and never opened. The collection is now held at the National Archives in Kew.
"I only ordered the box out of curiosity," Morieux said. "There were three piles of letters held together by ribbon. The letters were very small and were sealed so I asked the archivist if they could be opened and he did.
So in the National Archive in Kew (UK) they found a box of letters sent during the seven years' war between France and the UK. Long lost correspondence.
Perhaps it's not that they are lost for 250ish years that is the interesting part. But how little things change. People still communicate about more or less the same things then as now, it's just the way we communicate that change for technological reasons.
Nothing in there though if they tracked down the offspring, relatives etc of the letters and returned them to them. Guess that isn't a service offered.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67341309
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/french-love-letters-confiscated-by-britain-read-after-265-years
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Friday November 10 2023, @12:15PM (3 children)
Luckily, the GDPR doesn't apply to deceased data subjects.
"Recital 27 of the GDPR clarifies that the regulation does not apply to the personal data of deceased persons and indicates that Member States may provide for rules regarding the processing of personal data of deceased persons."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday November 10 2023, @12:25PM (2 children)
If it were in the USA (which it is not) then 62 years after someone's discharged anyone can request their military records, mostly for genealogy and research purposes, and I suppose these letters could be considered wartime documents of historical importance, maybe.
Some WWII vets in the USA are still alive, which could make it weird, but they chose 62 years after discharge for whatever reasons.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Friday November 10 2023, @03:06PM
Interesting.
I will add that it's also 'lucky' that they are not still under copyright, which in some jurisdictions is now 'life of the author plus 90 years'.
Let's say someone who participated in the Seven Year's War was 16 in 1763, and died at 90 (which is unlikely, but not impossible). They would have died in 1837. Add 90 years. Copyright extends to 1927.
I still think we should roll back to the Statute of Anne [wikipedia.org] for copyright. 14 years after first publication.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday November 10 2023, @03:23PM
Most WWII vets are dead or pretty much there. A new enlistee (we'll assume 18 years old, some younger people lied though) in WWII at the close of the war in 1945 would now be 96 years old.
Interestingly enough, there's a list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_surviving_World_War_II_veterans [wikipedia.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday November 10 2023, @12:57PM (5 children)
Did any of the letters provide clues to find other letters containing pictures of Goatse or a RickRoll?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday November 10 2023, @02:13PM (2 children)
>> Did any of the letters provide ...
I guess we don't know what the wife looked like. Perhaps a 1700 French version of Goatse? It would have been a real pain tho since it would have taken a long time to paint the picture so there would have been a long time posing. So maybe? Lets not think to much about that.
Still I do find it interesting that the archive in Kew have only been there for about 45 years. So these letters have been floating around inside the system for another 200ish years between the Admiralty, Department of Defense, some warehouse(es) etc. Unopened. They only ordered the box out of curiosity and found them still unopened. Then got permission to open them.
One would have thought that the Admiralty, or military intelligence, would have opened them during the war to see if there was any juicy French intelligence in there. But turns out it was mostly letters from wives longing for, or wanting to be possessed by, their husbands. The 1700:s version of sexting.
Do they have one of them Indiana Jones type warehouses where boxes just go to collect dust?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Friday November 10 2023, @03:26PM
Probably not just one warehouse.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 11 2023, @09:28PM
Pornbox.com? :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday November 10 2023, @07:04PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by janrinok on Friday November 10 2023, @07:20PM
More likely a Nigerian princess seeking someone to help her get her money out of the country.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2023, @01:51PM
Had the questionable "pleasure" of cleaning out a family friend's hoarder house, after she died at age 95. Her mother worked for the Post Office (USA) and had also collected some postcards from late 1800s...when a postcard including postage was a penny.
Most of the ones we saw had short messages along the lines of "What's up?"
A little research showed that in that period before phone service was available, there were two mail deliveries per day, at least in some cities. Back then friends and relatives used the postcards the same way that we now check in with a short text.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday November 10 2023, @02:12PM
Do any genealogy, and you will soon enough run into skeletons in the closets.
Say they find the great-great-great-great-great grandchildren Jones of Mr. Davy Jones who went to sea, and the letter turns out to be a "Dear John" letter from his missus with the info that their last name should've been something else all along, like Dawson. Oops. Letters from circa 1760 would mean someone born no later than the 1740s, in which case even 7 generations back is unlikely to be quite far enough.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Friday November 10 2023, @02:13PM (3 children)
250 years... that's about 12 generations. Those people have something on the order of 4000 descendents each.
No way you're going to be able to track down those relatives to just a few people, even.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2023, @02:24PM (1 child)
> ...that's about 12 generations
I agree, roughly 20 years per generation, on average.
But in my family (father's side) they weren't in much of a hurry...and the average generation is about 40 years. I'm 70 and my grandmother & grandfather were born in 1877. Just saying that there is a lot of variation in "a generation."
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday November 10 2023, @07:06PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday November 10 2023, @03:34PM
It could be possible, just run things through ChatGPT and see what you get. And so it has come to this. What's the worst that could happen?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday November 10 2023, @02:23PM (3 children)
> The Seven Years' War was a battle mainly between Britain and France about control of North America and India.
Well, no, it was a war mainly between France/Austria/Spain and Britain/Prussia about control of Silesia. The colonies were a side-show. One of the big things was the turnover of Austria to side with France against Britain and Prussia (in the last couple of wars, it had been Austria//England against France/Spain/Prussia). It marked the rise of Britain and Prussia as major European powers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Friday November 10 2023, @10:30PM (2 children)
I have seen comments from historians that the Seven Years War should be considered WW1, the Napoleonic Wars being WW2. You know 3 and 4.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2023, @06:54PM
My take (I am not a historian!) It took fossil fuel engines & telegraph/radio to make it qualify for a World War.
With technology limited to sail boats, horses & carrier pigeons, everything moved at a slower pace.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 11 2023, @09:31PM
KHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNN!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --