Letters confiscated by Britain’s Royal Navy before they reached French sailors during the Seven Years’ War have been opened for the first time, the BBC reports.
Written in 1757-8, they were sent by loved ones for crew onboard a French warship, but never reached them.
Prof Renaud Morieux, who discovered the letters, said they were about “universal human experiences”.
The Seven Years’ War was a battle mainly between Britain and France about control of North America and India.
It ended with the Treaty of Paris, which gave the UK considerable gains.
Prof Morieux, a University of Cambridge academic, unearthed the collection of 104 letters from the National Archives in Kew, and said it was “agonising how close they got” to reaching their intended recipients onboard the Galatee.
The French postal administration took them to multiple ports in France to attempt delivery, but were unsuccessful.
The Galatee was captured by the British on its way from Bordeaux to Quebec in 1758.
Upon learning the ship was in British hands, French authorities forwarded the letters to England, where they were handed to the navy and ended up in storage.
British Admiralty officials deemed the letters had no military significance.
Prof Morieux said he only asked to look at the box in the archives “out of curiosity” before discovering them.
“I realised I was the first person to read these very personal messages since they were written,” he said.
“Their intended recipients didn’t get that chance. It was very emotional,” said Prof Morieux, whose findings were published in the journal “Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales”.