The Slave Ship

by Marcus Rediker

  18 Mathew Strong to Captain Richard Smyth, January 19, 1771, Tuohy papers, 380 TUO (4/4). It seems that relatively few captains actually owned shares of their vessels or cargo. Of forty-one captains (on forty-five ships) to whom letters of instruction were written, we know the investors and shipowners in thirty-nine cases. Only four of the thirty-nine captains owned shares: Williams Speers was listed as the “third owner” of the Ranger in 1767. David Tuohy was the “fourth owner” of the Sally in the same year. Thomas Baker and Henry Moore were the seventh and sixth owners, respectively, of their vessels in 1776 and 1782; TSTD, #91273, #91327, #17886, #80578. See also Madge Dresser, Slavery Obscured: The Social History of the Slave Trade in an English Provincial Port (London and New York: Continuum, 2001), 29 ; Behrendt, “Captains in the British Slave Trade,” 107; Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle, 49-50.

  19 Instructions to Captain Pollipus Hammond, Newport, January 7, 1746, Donnan III, 138.

  20 Letter of Instruction from James Clemens to Captain William Speers of the ship Ranger, 3 June 1767, Tuohy papers, (4/2). For Clemens’s voyages, see TSTD, #90408, #90613, and #90684.

  21 Leyland to Kneal, 21 May 1802, 387 MD 42, Leyland & Co., ships’ accounts; Henry Wafford to Captain Alexander Speers of the Brig Nelly, September 28, 1772, Tuohy papers, 380 TUO (4/6).

  22 James Clemens, Folliott Powell, Henry Hardware, and Mathew Strong to Captain David Tuohy of the ship Sally, 3 June 1767, Tuohy papers, 380 TUO (4/2). See also Robert Bostock to Captain Peter Bowie of the Jemmy, July 2, 1787, Robert Bostock Letter-books, 1779-1790 and 1789-1792, 387 MD 54-55, LRO. For a discussion of sailors’ mutiny, see chapter 8.

  23 Hobhouse, Ruddock, and Baker to Barry, October 7, 1725, in Donnan II, 327-28; Humphry Morice to Jeremiah Pearce, March 17, 1730, “Book Containing Orders & Instructions for Jere[miah] Pearce Commander of the Judith Snow for the Coast of Africa with an Invoice of his Cargoe and Journal of Trade &c. on the said Coast. 7th Voyage. Anno 1730,” Morice Papers; Unnamed Owner to Captain William Ellery, January 14, 1759, in Donnan III, 69.

  24 Humphry Morice to Stephen Bull, October 30, 1722, “Book Containing Orders & Instructions for Stephen Bull Commander of the Sarah for the Coast of Africa with an Invoice of his Cargoe and Journal of Trade &c. on the said Coast. 2d Voyage. Anno 1722,” Morice Papers; Memoirs of Crow, 22.

  25 John Chilcott, John Anderson, T. Lucas, and James Rogers to Captain George Merrick, Bristol, 13th October 1774, Account Book of the Africa, 1774-1776, BCL; Boyd to Connolly, July 24, 1807, in Donnan IV, 568.

  26 Robert Bostock to Captain James Fryer of the Bess, no date (but 1791), Bostock Letter-books, 387 MD 54-55. See TSTD, #80502. I have come across no other such threat in merchants’ letters of instruction.

  27 Chilcott et al. to Merrick, October 13, 1774, Account Book of the Africa, 1774-1776, BCL; Stephen D. Behrendt, “Crew Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century,” Slavery and Abolition 18 (1997), 49-71.

  28 Ibid. See also K. G. Davies, “The Living and the Dead: White Mortality in West Africa, 1684-1732,” in Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese, eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 83-98.

  29 Starke to Westmore, in Donnan IV, 76; Joseph and Joshua Grafton to Captain ——, November 12, 1785, in Donnan III, 78- 79; Chilcott et al. to Merrick, October 13, 1774, Account Book of the Africa; Robert Bostock to Captain Samuel Gamble, November 16, 1790, Bostock Letter-books 387 MD 54-55; Chilcott et al. to Baker, August 1, 1776, Account Book of the Africa.

  30 Joseph and Joshua Grafton to Captain——, November 12, 1785, in Donnan III, 80. William Snelgrave to Humphry Morice, Jaqueen, April 16, 1727, Morice Papers.

  31 Thomas Boulton, The Sailor’s Farewell; Or, the Guinea Outfit, a Comedy in Three Acts (Liverpool, 1768); Newport Mercury, July 9, 1770. When Boulton later wrote The Voyage, a Poem in Seven Parts (Boston, 1773), he erased what must have been a painful memory (if he was writing about the same voyage). He did not mention the slaves or their uprising. See TSTD, #91564.

  32 An Account of the Life, 19 ; Three Years Adventures, 6. Boulton failed to mention one of the most important means of recruitment: the crimp, a labor agent who used all kinds of nefarious means to get sailors aboard the slavers.

  33 For a good and thorough example of how a slave ship was prepared to sail, see Account Book of the Africa, 1774-1776, BCL.

  34 Joseph Hawkins, A History of a Voyage to the Coast of Africa, and Travels into the Interior of that Country; containing Particular Descriptions of the Climate and Inhabitants, particulars concerning the Slave Trade (Troy, N.Y.: Luther Pratt, 2nd edition, 1797), 150.

  35 “Dicky Sam,” Liverpool and Slavery: An Historical Account of the Liverpool-African Slave Trade (Liverpool: A. Bowker & Son, 1884), 21-22.

  36 Interview of Mr. Thompson in Substance, 24; Testimony of James Towne, in 1791, in HCSP, 82: 27.

  37 See, for example, Times, January 12, 1808; Newport Mercury, June 15, 1767; An Account of the Life, 26; Enquirer, September 12, 1806. See also the printed broadside Unparalleled Cruelty in a Guinea Captain (H. Forshaw, printer, no place, no date, but c. 1805), Holt and Gregson Papers, 942 HOL 10, LRO.

  38 Connecticut Courant, August 10, 1789. See also American Minerva, May 15, 1794. For a case in which a slave-ship captain punched and kicked a member of his crew but whose treatment of him might still be called “very mild,” see Macnamera and Worsdale v. Barry, August 26, 1729, Records of the South Carolina Court of Admiralty, 1716-1732, f. 729, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  39 Anecdote XI (about the Othello, Captain James McGauley), in Substance, 134; TSTD, #82978. For instances of captains commanding slaves to lash or abuse sailors, see Seamen v. John Ebsworthy (1738), “Minutes of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Charles Town, South Carolina,” 1716-1763, Manuscripts Department, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Robert Barker, The Unfortunate Shipwright, or, Cruel Captain, being a Faithful Narrative of the Unparalleled Sufferings of Robert Barker, Late Carpenter on board the Thetis Snow of Bristol; on a Voyage from thence to the Coast of Guinea and Antigua (orig. publ. 1760; new edition, London, “printed for the SUFFERER for his own Benefit; and by no one else,” 1775), 26.

  40 Macnamera and Worsdale v. Barry, South Carolina Admiralty, ff. 713, 729. On the use of the gun barrel, see Testimony of James Towne, 1791, HCSP, 82:29.

  41 Wage Books for the Swift (1775-76), Dreadnought (1776), Dalrymple (1776), Hawk (1780-81), Hawk (1781-82), Essex (1783-84), Essex (1785-86), all in the William Davenport Archives, D/DAV/3/1-6, MMM. See TSTD, #91793, #91839, #91988, #81753, #81754, # 81311, #81312. On the African Galley Captain James Westmore made more money selling items to the crew (£89.1.3) than he did through his wages of £6 per month. See “Accompts submitted by the Plaintiff in the Court of Chancery suit Capt. James Westmore, commander, v. Thomas Starke, owner of the slaver ‘Affrican Galley’ concerning expenses incurred by Westmore on a voyage from London to Virginia via St. Thomas’ Island, Gulf of Guinea, and back, 20 Apr. 1701-4 Dec. 1702,” Add. Ms. 45123, BL.

  42 Testimony of Henry Ellison, 1790, HCSP, 73:371; Law Report, Tarlton v. McGawley, Times, December 24, 1793. For other examples of threatened or actual force, see Captain Baillie to the Owners of the Carter, Bonny, January 31, 1757, Donnan II, 512; Thomas Starke to James Westmore, no date, in Donnan IV, 80; Testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, 1790, HCSP, 72:321.

  43 “Account Book of the Molly, Snow, Slave Ship, dated 1759-1760,” Manuscripts Department, MSS/76/027.0, NMM. I have identified the voyage as TSTD, #17741, even though there is a discrepancy in the date. The Molly left Bristol on December 4, 1758, sold its slaves in Virginia on July 15, 1759, and arrived back in Bristol on November 22, 1759, but the account book of the Molly is dated 1759-60. (The account book could not have belonged to the vessel’s next voyage, which began in Bristol on April 4, 1760, because the sale of slaves in this instance took place not in Virginia, as the account book states, but in Jamaica.
) Other evidence supporting this identification includes the number of slaves delivered. The slave-trade database, based on other sources, shows that the vessel sold 238 slaves and imputes that it would have gathered an original number of 292. The actual number listed in the account book is 286 purchased. The notation of 1760 is apparently based on a final approval of the account book, on April 14, 1760, by someone with the initials PFW, perhaps a merchant or a clerk but not the owner of the vessel, who was Henry Bright. For other, less detailed trade books, see “Slave Trader’s Accompt Book, compiled on board the schooner ‘Mongovo George’ of Liverpool, 1785-1787,” Add. Ms. 43841, BL; George A. Plimpton, ed., “The Journal of an African Slaver, 1789-1792,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 39 (1929), 379-465 .

  44 For an analysis of how African demand shaped the trade, see David Richardson, “West African Consumption Patterns and their Influence on the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade,” in Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 303-30.

  45 For the nature of trade in nearby Old Calabar in this period, see Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, “Trust Pawnship, and Atlantic History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade,” American Historical Review 104 (1999), 333-55. Captain Jenkins did indeed return to Bonny, on six more voyages between 1760 and 1769. See TSTD, #17493, #17531, #17599, #17626, #17635, #17722. For a shorter but comparable list of Windward Coast traders with whom Captain Paul Cross did business, see Trade book, 1773, Paul Cross Papers, 1768-1803, South Caroliniana Library, Columbia.

  46 William Smith, A New Voyage to Guinea: Describing the Customs, Manners, Soil, Climate, Habits, Buildings, Education, Manual Arts, Agriculture, Trade, Employments, Languages, Ranks of Distinction, Habitations, Diversions, Marriages, and whatever else is memorable among the Inhabitants (London, 1744; rpt. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1967), 34; [John Wells], “Journal of a Voyage to the Coast of Guinea, 1802,” Add. Ms. 3,871, f. 10, Cambridge University Library; Captain Thomas Earle to Mrs. Anne Winstanley, Calabar, August 30, 1751, Earle Family Papers, MMM.

  47 City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, December 10, 1807. For the Hind and Byam, see TSTD, #81862, #80722.

  48 Three Years Adventures, 27.

  49 For examples of captains denouncing their surgeons, see Viscountess Knutsford, ed., Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay (London: Edward Arnold, 1900), 86; Captain Japhet Bird to ?, Montserrat, February 24, 1723, in Donnan II, 298;“Barque Eliza’s Journal, Robert Hall, Commander, from Liverpool to Cruize 31 Days & then to Africa & to Demarary; mounts 14 Nine & Six Pounders, with 31 Men & boys,” T70/1220, NA.

  50 Testimony of Thomas Trotter, 1790, HCSP, 73:88-89.

  51 Captain William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734; rpt. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1971), 181-85; Memoirs of Crow, 148-49.

  52 Bruce Mouser writes, “A special camaraderie existed among the European captains who visited the coast.” See Bruce Mouser, ed., A Slaving Voyage to Africa and Jamaica: The Log of the Sandown, 1793-1794 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 78.

  53 Snelgrave, A New Account, 185-91. Robert Norris explained to a parliamentary committee in 1789 that he did not go belowdecks into the slave apartments because it was not his duty. See his Testimony of Robert Norris, HCSP, 68:8. For a captain who was extremely attentive to the mood of the enslaved, see Log of the Brig Ranger, Captain John Corran, Master, 1789-1790, 387 MD 56, LRO.

  54 Testimony of George Malcolm, 1799, in HLSP, 3:219.

  55 T. Aubrey, The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum. In which is laid down, The Method of curing such Diseases as usually happen Abroad, especially on the Coast of Guinea: with the best way of treating Negroes, both in Health and in Sickness. Written for the Use of young Sea Surgeons (London, 1729), 129-30.

  56 Snelgrave, A New Account, 103-6.

  57 Providence Gazette; and Country Journal, December 27, 1766; see also An Account of the Life, 26; Testimony of Zachary Macaulay, 1799, in HLSP, 3:339; Three Years Adventures, 85, Boulton, The Voyage, 27. Boulton himself may have had an amorous interest in Dizia, for it was she, he writes, “who did my peace of mind destroy.”

  58 Crow, Memoirs, 102; Snelgrave, A New Account, 165-68.

  59 Connecticut Journal, January 1, 1768.

  60 Evening Post, March 16, 1809.

  61 Newton to Phillips, in Mary Phillips, Memoir of the Life of Richard Phillips, 29-31.

  62 This section is based on the archival and primary sources cited in chapter 6, notes 1, 2, and 3.

  63 Interview of Captain Bowen, Substance, 47. For a comment about the captain of a West India ship who had taken command of a slaver and had not yet been socialized into the customary brutality, see Interview of Mr. Thompson, ibid., 208-9.

  64 Three Years Adventures, 41; An Account of the Life, 84; Africanus, Remarks on the Slave Trade, 47-48.

  Chapter 8: The Sailor’s Vast Machine

  1 “Anonymous Account of the Society and Trade of the Canary Islands and West Africa, with Observations on the Slave Trade” (n.d., but 1779-84), Add. Ms. 59777B, BL. The author treated illness on the voyage, which suggests that he was a physician.

  2 The recruiting is dated by the author’s comment that it took place “about the commencement of the late disturbances,” which would have been late summer 1775 (rather than April as he noted some years later when he actually wrote the account). See R. Barrie Rose, “A Liverpool Sailors’ Strike in the Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 68 (1958), 85-92 ; “Extract of a Letter from Liverpool, September 1, 1775,” Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, September 5, 1775, republished in Richard Brooke, Liverpool as it was during the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century, 1775-1800 (Liverpool, 1853), 332.

  3 I would like to emphasize my indebtedness throughout this chapter to Emma Christopher’s excellent study, Slave Trade Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  4 “Anonymous Account of the Society and Trade of the Canary Islands and West Africa, with Observations on the Slave Trade” (n.d., but 1779-84), Add. Ms. 59777A, 3-5, BL. That sailors disliked the slave trade is a primary conclusion of Christopher, Slave Trade Sailors, 26-27.

  5 Three Years Adventures, 6-10. Isaac Parker explained, “I had taken a fancy to go upon the coast of Guinea,” while Nicholas Owen added, “I was one who had a desire to see what I had never seen before.” See Testimony of Isaac Parker, 1790, HCSP, 73:137; Nicholas Owen, Journal of a Slave-Dealer: A View of Some Remarkable Axedents in the Life of Nics. Owen on the Coast of Africa and America from the Year 1746 to the Year 1757, ed. Eveline Martin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 43.

  6 Colonel Spencer Childers, ed., A Mariner of England: An Account of the Career of William Richardson from Cabin Boy in the Merchant Service to Warrant Officer in the Royal Navy [1780 to 1819] as Told by Himself (Greenwich: Conway Maritime Press, 1970), 41-42. On the voyage of the Spy, see TSTD, #83598.

  7 Robert Barker, The Unfortunate Shipwright & Cruel Captain (London, 1756); Robert Barker, The Unfortunate Shipwright, or, Cruel Captain, being a Faithful Narrative of the Unparalleled Sufferings of Robert Barker, Late Carpenter on boar the Thetis Snow of Bristol; on a Voyage from thence to the Coast of Guinea and Antigua (orig. publ. 1760; new edition, London, “printed for the SUFFERER for his own Benefit; and by no one else,” 1775), 5-6, 8. Richardson would later be promoted to third mate before being busted back for mutiny. He died during the voyage.

  8 An Account of the Life, 2-3, 10, 19. See TSTD, #16490. Nicholas Owen also went to sea on a slaver after a spendthrift father squandered a family fortune. See Owen, Journal of a Slave-Dealer, 1.

  9 Interview of Mr. Thompson, in Substance, 24. For an account of an entire crew, out of Boston, deceived about a slave ship’s destination, see Commercial Advertiser, September 24, 1799.


  10 Ibid. Aboard the Benson in 1787, thirteen of the seamen were there because they had fallen into debt in port. See Anecdote X, Substance, 133.

  11 Interview of Henry Ellison, Substance, 38.

  12 John Newton Letter-book (“A Series of Letters from Mr.——to Dr. J——[Dr. David Jennings],” 1750-1760, 920 MD 409, LRO. Common sailors ranked low in the class structure of eighteenth-century Britain, as the political arithmetic of Gregory King (1688), Joseph Massie (1760), and Patrick Colquhoun (1803) made clear; see Peter Mathias, “The Social Structure in the Eighteenth Century: A Calculation by Joseph Massie,” Economic History Review, New Series, 10 (1957), 30-45. On seamen in eighteenth-century America, see Billy G. Smith, “The Vicissitudes of Fortune: The Careers of Laboring Men in Philadelphia, 1750-1800,” in Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 221-51.

  13 Memoirs of Crow, 169.

  14 Testimony of James Penny, 1789, HCSP, 69:118.

  15 [Robert Norris], A Short Account of the African Slave Trade, Collected from Local Knowledge (Liverpool, 1788), 14; Testimony of John Knox, 1789, HCSP, 68:150; Testimony of Thomas King, 1789, ibid., 68:321. Lord Sheffield suggested that two-thirds were landsmen. See his Observations on the Project for Abolishing the Slave Trade, and on the Reasonableness of attempting some Practicable Mode of Relieving the Negroes (orig. publ. London, 1790; 2nd edition, London, 1791), 18.