G'day Jo Taylor,

The description is pretty vague, but it might be a, 1850s French Accordion or a Flautina/Flutina. These two designs were more or less offshoots of the German/Austrian Button Accordion design, meant to be played flat on the lap. They sometimes had "automatic" major chord accompaniment on the left side or simple control valves (not too different from simple melodions of basic button accordions).

I must admit that the 'fouled anchors' logo sounds more German than French (at least, I have seen variants on German instruments).

A picture would be worth a few thousand of these words!

Regards,

Bob Bolton