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Hi all,

Here is another Captain's spoon which I recently received. The maker is Carl (Heinrich Ludwig) Zimmermann and will probably date to circa 1830 or so.

The name on the terminal , does anyone recognise? Is it the Ship's chandler/agent?

Thanks in advance.

Your Captain's Spoon was made for the ship's agent Friedrich Schnell in Pillau.

Pillau was the port near Königsberg in East Prussia where the vessels with a deeper draught had to make fast and unload if they couldn't reach directly Königsberg, now Baltiysk in the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia.

The importance of Pillau declined from 1901, when a shipping canal was opened linking the Vistula Lagoon near Zimmerbude (now Svetly) to Königsberg. Pillau's economy was heavily based on large shipping vessels being forced to dock in the town due to the shallow depth of the lagoon near Königsberg, and the goods would then be transported from Pillau to Königsberg by other means. The canal allowed vessels of a 21 feet (6.4 m) draught to moor alongside the city or to sail directly to Königsberg without stopping at Pillau, causing a serious decline to the town's economy.

Once again Scotrab many thanks.

As ever, very much appreciated.