You will need to refer to Thames Tide Tables before attempting this cache.
Odessa Wharf, 1937
Odessa Wharf is an early 19th Century warehouse located on the south bank of the River Thames at Rotherhithe, London. The warehouse has since been converted into apartments and townhouses. One of the original lintels at Odessa Wharf is inscribed with the date 1810, which makes it one of the oldest surviving buildings on the Rotherhithe peninsula.
Randall Rents is the only remaining example of many similar passages which connected the dockers' homes with their dockland workplaces. It was originally named Wet Dock Lane when it was laid out by local shipwright John Wells in 1698. The name was later changed to commemorate John Randall, who owned the houses around Odessa Wharf that he rented to the workers at his yard.
Seventeenth century maps show that the site had been part of a shipyard from at least 1660. In 1760, John Randall leased the land from the 4th Duke of Bedford and some of the largest warships of the time were built in this construction yard including HMS Serapis in 1778, HMS Ganges in 1780 and HMS Culloden in 1782. Maps of the yard from 1813 show a building in the present location of Odessa Wharf.
In 1779, HMS Serapis, which was built in Odessa Wharf, was captured by the American warship USS Bonhomme Richard under the command of Captain John Paul Jones. It was then sailed to the neutral United Provinces (now the Netherlands) but problems arose as the United States was not yet recognised by the Dutch authorities. An ensign was quickly created and secretly added retrospectively to Dutch records to avoid charges of piracy against Jones. This rare version of the US flag is also known as the John Paul Jones flag or the Franklin flag.
The Serapis Flag
Congrats to Moody von trapps and RubyShoos for joint FTF and nchs20 for STF (but first to freeclimb!)
Huge thanks to heartstones1 for moving one of his existing caches to allow this listing to meet saturation requirements.