Abstract :
It has long been suspected that James Weddell was born in Ostend, Belgium. However, no record of his birth was found during earlier searches in the Belgian archives. New searches in the parish registers of Ostend reveal that he was born in that town on 24 August 1787. The Weddell family is recorded in these archives under the name of Waddle, and it was as such that father Waddle signed documents. The parish registers of Ostend are in Latin and James’s name was Latinised to Jacobus. The first record of James Weddell thus refers to Jacobus Waddle. In the parish registers are two other documents relating to the Weddell family: the birth of a brother Charles in 1782 and the death of another brother who was also called Jacobus in 1787. Therefore, the family lived in Ostend at least from 1782 to 1787.
