Hamar’s Cup
Historic Beaufort Foundation
story by ERIN WALLACE photos by SUSAN DELOACH
Heirlooms center families. A hardwood table that is valuable because of its dings and scratches, each of them tied to a rich family story. A china set that still triggers memories of holiday dinners with your favorite grandma. A muscle car that was faithfully maintained by the hands of your diligent father. However, heirlooms not only ground families, but they also root communities in their history. Just last January, the community of Beaufort recovered a 276-year-old heirloom: Hamar’s Cup.
Captain Joseph Hamar (1712-1773) was born in Britain and quickly rose in the ranks of the British Navy. By 1741, Captain Hamar was commanding HMS Flamborough, a 20-gun ship that was patrolling the coastal waters of the British colonies of Georgia and South Carolina. King George’s War, or the War of Jenkins’ Ear (the origin of the name is worth the research!), was raging between Spain and Britain, with their North American and Caribbean colonies as the primary theater of military operations. At St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, in 1742, Hamar fought in the Battle of Bloody Marsh, rebuffing the Spanish invasion of the Georgia sea islands. This British victory deterred the Spanish from ever attempting another invasion of Georgia throughout the war. In 1746, Hamar was given command of the 40-gun HMS Adventure, and in 1747 built a careening wharf (a wharf that leaned ships on their side to perform repairs on the hull) in Port Royal Island (right next to the present-day “bluff” overlooking downtown) to refit the ship with its own kitchen. Hamar was granted two plots of land both on present-day Hamar street. One fronts on Bay Street, with the second lot directly behind the Bay Street lot (you can guess where Hamar Street and Adventure Street got their names). Upon a petition of protection from the St. Helenas and Prince William parishes, the Adventure’s port remained in Port Royal Sound until 1748. When the war ended that year, the “Gentlemen of Port Royal” commissioned a silver presentation cup and cap (lid) to be made in Britain as a gift to Captain Joseph Hamar, the man who protected the security of the Lowcountry from Spanish privateers, allowing financial expansion in the Lowcountry. Hamar would captain larger ships in the following decades, at one point even commanding a young midshipman James Cook, who would later be the renowned captain-explorer of the Pacific.
For the next two centuries, Hamar’s Cup was lost to the memories of the Lowcountry. However, in December 2022, this heirloom surfaced in Sotheby’s auction house in New York City. Libby Davis Cohen, a Beaufort native, was working at Sotheby’s in New York City at the time and heard about the cup’s upcoming auction. Immediately, she ensured Sotheby’s John Ward reached out to Cynthia Jenkins, the executive director at Historic Beaufort Foundation, in order to inform them about the cup’s sale. Once Cynthia brought this news to HBF’s Board of Directors, they realized they needed to at least attempt to purchase this cup (one of only three known sets of colonial rococo silver fashioned in that time, and an incredibly rare find to have the cap intact). Cynthia was thrilled at how the HBF community immediately devoted themselves to at least try to acquire the cup. Though the auction was only a month away, and despite the expensive and distracting Christmas and New Year’s holidays, donors gave the Historic Beaufort Foundation enough money to be serious contenders for the auction. The day of the auction arrived, and though another tenacious bidder seemed unflappable, the Historic Beaufort Foundation won the bid at $56,700. After special shipping and insurance, Hamer’s Cup made it to Beaufort, where it was placed in the John Mark Verdier House downtown with a special security system. The Historic Beaufort Foundation had succeeded in tying our history once more to our community’s ancestors.
However, the cup’s story is not over. Hamar’s Cup has driven many local historians to make new discoveries that better fill out the picture of where we’ve come from as a community. Cynthia’s hope with this cup is that people are made aware that “there is so much more to learn about our heritage.” The cup poses just as many questions as it does answers. For example, though many are quite confident to assert that Adventure and Hamar streets are tied to Hamar’s stint here with HMS Adventure, we are still trying to determine who “The Gentlemen of Port Royal” were. Though there is speculation (Edmund Bellinger, William Bull, and Nathaniel Barnwell, for three), we haven’t yet found enough supporting evidence to verify these hypotheses. With the advent of Hamar’s Cup, Cynthia has already seen a consistent uptick in research like this into the lives of these colonial people, and always welcomes more aspiring genealogists, historians, scholars, etc., to donate their time to this venture. Whenever you have a moment when you are in downtown Beaufort, you should drop by the Verdier House to see this incredible Beaufort heirloom!
Hamar’s Cup has not only deepened this community’s understanding of our roots, it has drawn so many community members together in the present day. It is not too difficult to find parallels in this story to our present day. The 1740s colonists were grateful to a naval presence that protected them; we are grateful to the Marines for their protection of our freedom. A good heirloom is one that teaches us from all the memories tethered to it, regardless if the memories are good or bad. The good memories inspire us, and the bad memories warn us of the consequences of wrongdoing. Our country has had an incredibe human history: both good moments and bad moments. The beauty is thinking about how far we have come as a nation in 276 years. The freedoms for our people have broadened, the fear of military invasion has shrunk, and yet one constant remains: We are all humans, striving with our communities to create a better future. Thank the Lord for heirlooms that remind us of this resonant truth.
