Numismatic discoveries are a not infrequent occurrence at Spink. Only a cursory flick through decades of our global auction catalogues and printed periodicals testifies to the breadth and depth of Spink’s unparalleled contribution to this most passionate pastime. As we embrace the second quarter of the 21st Century, and evolve as a business and indeed an institution to forthcoming opportunities and challenges, imagine our delight when a trade client reported to us another ‘first’ for the record books!
Back in November 2024, mutterings of a newly-discovered “Holey Dollar” came to us via industry-regular Adrian Bond. Having personally appraised the General Strickland specimen back in 2017, such a find was not totally alien from an English estate, but was nevertheless a most pleasant surprise and change from the more regular submissions that come across our desks. It was only when seen in hand, that one could appreciate this coin’s true significance.
On 1st July 1813, Governor-General Lachlan Macquarie decreed that a new coinage of ‘Government Dollars’ and ‘Dumps’ were to become current in the Penal Colony of New South Wales. Since 1792, merchants had brought goods, services and a range of British, Indian, Dutch and Spanish specie to this fledgling territory. However most simply returned with the traders, leaving locals constantly in want of money. In 1800, then Governor Philip Gidney King oversaw the arrival of a shipment of four tonnes of Cartwheel Pennies from Matthew Boulton’s Soho Mint, forever after popularising this hopelessly inconvenient two-ounce copper coins amongst coin collectors ‘down under’. For the next decade, Guineas, Pagodas, Ducats and ‘Pieces of 8’ officially circulated amongst residents. Even with the constant implementation of exchange controls, specie remained extremely scarce, as evidenced in this contemporary account:
“By the arrival of the Brig Eagle, early in the last week, from New South Wales, we have letters from the colony of so late a date as the 8th of December [1812]. Their report of the state of the markets at Sydney continues no means encouraging. The place was glutted Indian produce; and the extreme scarcity of specie cramped every commercial operation”
Government Gazette (India), 1st April 1813
Necessity being the mother of invention prompted the concurrent circulation of scrip notes and even alcohol as forms of payment. Famously the construction of Sydney Hospital in November 1810 was paid in lieu of subsequent taxation; namely by the exemption of import duty on 60,000 gallons of spirits for Garnham Blaxcell, Alexander Riley and, D’Arcy Wentworth. It is hardly surprising to see It garner a colloquial nickname – ‘the Rum Hospital’. So difficult did it prove to eradicate the largely unregulated trade of liquor among transported prisoners that a Rebellion toppled Macquarie’s predecessor William Bligh. If that name feels familiar for any reason, Bligh had a nasty habit of attracting disobedience during his career. Today he is rather more famously known for his starring role in ‘The Mutiny on the Bounty’ on 28th April 1789.
In learning from these false starts, Macquarie was determined to cultivate a reliable economy and a regular currency supply. Back in Downing Street, Spencer Perceval’s fateful ministry instructed the Admiralty to the Navy Board:
‘…to purchase Dollars at Madras for the service of New South Wales…[and] instruct the Officer Commanding His Majesty’s Ships of War in those seas to send the Dollars that may be so procured to New South Wales consigned to Governor Macquarie.’
Robert Peel, then Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies, Thursday, 6th February 1812
Although the corresponding Admiralty Order was authorised only eleven days later on 17th February 1812, it would not be until late Summer that the Vice Admiralty Court at Madras was actually able to fulfil this instruction. Preserved at the National Archives in Kew, is the very order given by Vice Admiral of the Blue aboard HMS Illustrious:
“You are hereby required and directed to complete the provisions onboard His Majesty’s Sloop under your Command to as great a proportion as she can store with security, and having received onboard a sum of money Commissioner Puget is directed to send to New South Wales, you will proceed to Sidney [sic] in that Colony according to its destination, having first acquired duplicate detailed Certificates agreeable to the Admiralty Order of the 17th February 1812, and having delivered the same to the Governor and received any dispatch he may have for India, you will return without loss of time to this anchorage.”
Sir Samuel Hood to Captain William Case (HMS Samarang), Monday 24th August 1812
Captain Case continues the tale at the completion of his arduous journey.
“I have to request you will be pleased to acquaint their Lordships that in pursuance of Orders from Vice Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, I proceeded in His Majesty’s Sloop under my command from Madras on a passage to this place and did not pass this Bass Straits until the 18 November 1812 in consequence of contrary winds and bad weather and was not able to get into the Latitude of Port Jackson until the 25th of the same month by reason of Northerly winds and strong southerly Currents setting from 20 to 30 miles [….], we then being in the Pacific Ocean.
His Majesty’s Sloop Samarang, Sidney Cove, Port Jackson, Monday, 30th November 1812
At 8 O’clock on Wednesday Evening, supposed ourselves nearly in the Latitude of Port Jackson which Cove from the Ship due west distance 20 or 25 Leagues shortened….Their Lordships must be well aware of the dangers of approaching the shore without any observation. 8:30, I observed a heavy cloud which we supposed to be a square rising in the South East quarter but which terminated in a violent gale attended with a tremendous sever and heavy rains suddenly were occasionally as the wind varied in order to keep her head off shore not knowing how long the gale might continue and the Ship making from 20 to 25 inches water per hour, which kept two pumps constantly going but scarcely kept her fires [?] and with respect to the sailing quantities of the Ship she did all that was possible to be done by any other in a similar situation.
11-5/Am got a sight of the sun with several others before noon and found by observation that we were 13 miles to the northward of Port Jackson. Sounded but no bottom with 8o feet of line. 12-30, the gale still continuing but showing up, we saw the land bearing due west, distant 6 or 7 Leagues here up understood for Port Jackson where I have the inexpressible pleasure of informing their Lordships we anchored in Sidney Cove with safety on the 26th but in rather shattered condition occasioned by the heavy Gales we fell in with on over passage…”
Within days, Samarang’s cargo of 40,000 Spanish silver Dollars had been unloaded for delivery at ‘The Factory’, a connected wing of the newly-built hospital already utilised by Government printer George Howe near the corner of Bridge and Loftus Street. Fortunately a mint-master was not difficult to source, for within the transported prisoners was master coin forger William Henshall, whose aptitude in counterfeiting Spanish Dollars back in Birmingham in 1804 had earned him his seven-year ticket to Botany Bay.
Evidently over-confident in his own talents, the conversion of 40,000 coins by punching out a central plug known as a ‘dump’ was expected to take Henshall three months from 1st July 1813. In reality, technical malfunctions in the experimental drop-hammer press throttled output to as little as a few thousand ‘Ring Dollar’ pieces a month. The first shipments arrived with the Deputy Commissioner-General David Allen on 25th February 1814, and the final batch was received by August 1814. The final issue was therefore for two coins, a Five Shilling Dollar and a Fifteen Pence ‘Dump’. The practical implications of this method was two-fold. Not only was it visually distinguishable from other Spanish dollars, reducing the likelihood of its export, but the number of coins available was effectively doubled with every single hammer blow. The seignorage was an equally lucrative 25% from bullion value to new face value. Henshall was evidently proud of his achievement, for he is known to have signed the coins with his initial (probably illicitly) tucked within the floral sprays of the design. His talent is testified by the estimated wastage of just 90 Dollars, from a total output of 39,910 ‘Government’ or ‘Ring’ Dollars and an equivalent number of Dump Fifteen Pences.
Continuing the work of Hunt Deacon, Chitty and Hyman et al. before him, Philip Spalding published pioneering analysis of Henshall’s coinage for his 1973 thesis. He has identified two obverse and two reverse dies, but only three possible die pairings. This would place the projected output of obverse dies as low as 12,000 coins and as high as 28,000, with the two reverse dies accounting for between 15,000 and 25,000 emissions each. Interestingly forged dies also exist for the coinage, either omitting the first I from SHILLINGS or reversing the 1813 date. It is entirely probable that Henshall was responsible for these too, for he was later cashiered for breaking into Government property amongst other misdemeanours. He subsequently disappears from the written record around 1817, likely on account of his return to England. Some further mystery surrounds a T Knight, who is known to have counterpunched several Holey Dollars, probably in operations as a local bullion dealer when Holey Dollars began to be withdrawn from circulation in July 1822, with official demonetisation occurring in 1829.
Much like the addition of edge lettering by Castaing machine to modern machine-pressed specie, the pairing of obverse or reverse countermark with host coin obverse and reverse appears almost entirely random. As too does the source of the Silver Dollars used to create the coinage. It has long been accepted that the 40,000 Spanish coins were acquired by the East India Company at Madras prior to dispatch to General Macquarie. As such their make-up is understandably and equally random, being a simple reflection of the available coinage then in general circulation. Prior to this most recent discovery, the known date range of Spanish Dollars ranged from 1757 to 1810, with the heaviest tally of host coinage post-dating 1788.
Intriguingly, no example was previously known between 1758 and 1772, with 1774-1776 equally wanting. As such the discovery of a 1758-dated Holey Dollar is of the greatest significance, not least in doubling the known tally for the reign of Ferdinand VI ‘el Prudente’ – the true ‘Grandfather’ of the Australasian discipline. Immediately elevated to ‘the finest known’ ‘Pillar-Holey’ Dollar, its treatment by Henshall is notably reverential. The NEW SOUTH WALES countermark has been deliberately aligned to read below ‘FERDND’s titles. Unbeknownst to Henshall, 1758 would be one of crisis for the great European throne on account of his Royal melancholia. Across the Spanish-governed world, 1758-1759 would become known as ‘The Year Without a King’. In the absence of an effigy on Spanish ‘Pieces of 8’ prior to 1773, and the already celebrated status of the ‘Hannibal Head’ Holeys of 1810, this author cannot think of a better sobriquet for the present coin.
By Gregory Edmund