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Letter to Granville Sharpe from Charles Spalding, 1782 (D3549/13/1/S22)

Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) is well known for being one of the first British campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade.  He also involved himself in trying to correct other social injustices and was the driving force behind the plan to establish the Province of Freedom, and later on Freetown, Sierra Leone, for freed slaves.  Less well known however, is that he was keenly interested in diving bells, especially the work of Charles Spalding.  A confectioner by trade, Spalding was also an amateur engineer and his is interest in diving bells came about after the loss of the ship Peggy, which he had a financial interest in.  Spalding began working on making improvements to Edmund Halley’s original diving bell and it was during this time that he came to the attention of Sharpe.  The men exchanged much correspondence in which Sharpe, having seen Spalding’s design, proposed certain enhancements to Spalding's design.  These concentrated on the storage of rope inside the bell (so that it balanced the rope’s weight evenly) and also a windlass system for fine tuning the raising and lowering of the bell.  This page is part of a letter written by Spalding to Sharp, describing salvage operations on the wreck of HMS Royal George on 10th September 1782.