A volunteer at the UK National Archives in Kew, west London, has discovered a rare early copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence within an 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence collection. Michael Scurr was cataloguing documents from the British national collection when he came across a document that begins with the text “In Congress, July 4, 1776.” Multiple outlets describe the find as “vanishingly rare,” noting that only 11 copies of this particular “Exeter printing” are known to exist worldwide. BBC and other reports add that just one known copy is outside the United States. The document is reported to be linked to a report describing the capture of an American privateer (named by some reports as the Dalton) on Christmas Eve, 1776. News coverage also highlights that the discovery is timely as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary. The National Archives has not been described as making any claims beyond the identification and rarity of the document; the reporting centers on how the item was found during routine archival work and the historical context of the naval papers in which it was kept.