Board Thread:Series general discussion/@comment-32713779-20170729065610/@comment-2112031-20170802234745

I'm not sure whether the War Letters can really be used to argue one or the other regarding the number of boxes. John Harrison's letter was clearly talking about a box that, as far as he knew, had been in the Chinese Brotherhood's possession for a up to a century after Shao Jun's death and may have been secretly sent by them to Acapulco.

This description doesn't really match Shay's box, which had been stolen from the Templars by Adéwalé in 1735, seven years before Harrison wrote the letter. Harrison was clearly talking about a box that hadn't been in the Templar's possession and whose potential whereabouts in the West Indies were uncertain at best.

It's possible that Ezio's box was retrieved by the Chinese Brotherhood sometime shortly after the death of Zhang Yong and eventually ended up in Francis Cotton's possession by 1839.

Harrison's letter present a challenge to the interpretation that there is only one box. Because, if that was the case, Harrison would certainly have mentioned how the Templars had the box in their possession and then lost it to the Assassins only seven years before he wrote his letter.