The anchor coinage was a series of four denominations of
silver coin
Silver coins are considered the oldest mass-produced form of coinage. Silver has been used as a coinage metal since the times of the Greeks; their silver drachmas were popular trade coins. The ancient Persians used silver coins between 612–330 ...
s issued for use in some British colonies in 1820 and 1822. The name comes from the crowned
anchor
An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...
that appears on the obverse of the coins. The denominations were sixteenth, eighth, quarter and half dollars, indicated by the Roman numerals XVI, VIII, IV and II on each side of the anchor. The reverse design was the royal coat of arms.
According to Krause & Mishler's ''Standard Catalog of World Coins,''
the coins were issued for use in
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...
and other Indian Ocean colonies, then later circulated in the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...
.
See also
*
Mauritian dollar
In 1820, in response to a request from the British colony of Mauritius, the imperial government in London struck silver coins in the denominations of , , and dollars. The dollar unit in question was equivalent to the Spanish dollar and these frac ...
References
Currencies of Africa
Currencies of the British Empire
Currencies of Mauritius
Modern obsolete currencies
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