9 Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (orig. publ. 1976; Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). A small sample of the creative and rapidly expanding work on cultural connections between Africa and the Americas would include John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 ; 2nd edition, 1998); Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); Linda M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Cultu re, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs, eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); José C. Curto and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil During the Era of Slavery (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2005); James Lorand Matory, Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
10 TSTD, #15123, #20211.
11 Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1962), 71, 73; D. P. Lamb, “Volume and Tonnage of the Liverpool Slave Trade, 1772-1807,” in Roger Anstey and P. E. H. Hair, eds., Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition (Chippenham, England: Antony Rowe for the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1976, rpt. 1989), 98-99. The continuities in the operation of the slave ship make it possible to explore its history in topical and thematic ways in the pages that follow.
12 For exceptions to this neglect, see George Francis Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (Salem, Mass.: Marine Research Society, 1927), a combination of narrative and primary sources; Patrick Villiers, Traite des noirs et navires negriers au XVIII siècle (Grenoble: Éditions des 4 Seigneurs, 1982), a useful although limited exploration; and Jean Boudriot, Traite et Navire Negrier (self-published, 1984), a study of a single ship, L’Aurore. A recent addition is Gail Swanson, Slave Ship Guerrero (West Conshohocken, P.A.: Infinity Publishing, 2005).
13 Philip D. Curtin, The African Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Miller, Way of Death; Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the African Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999); Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Eltis, et al., TSTD. Other important works are W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade in the United States of America, 1638-1870 (orig. publ. 1896; Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970); Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961); Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518-1865 (London: Longmans, 1963); James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981); and more recently Anne C. Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005).
14 Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (New York: Plume, 1991); Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993); Fred D’Aguiar, Feeding the Ghosts (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997); Caryl Phillips, The Atlantic Sound (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000); Manu Herbstein, Ama: A Novel of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Capetown: Picador Africa, 2005).
15 Much of what is new is coming from younger scholars, to whose work I am much indebted: Emma Christopher, Slave Trade Sailors and their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006); Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006); Vincent Brown, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming); Alexander Xavier Byrd, “Captives and Voyagers: Black Migrants Across the Eighteenth-Century World of Olaudah Equiano,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 2001; Maurice Jackson, “ ‘Ethiopia shall soon stretch her hands unto God’: Anthony Benezet and the Atlantic Antislavery Revolution,” Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 2001.
16 Seymour Drescher, “Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the Ending of the British Slave Trade,” Past & Present 143 (1994), 136-66.
17 Unsworth, Sacred Hunger, 353. I am indebted to Gesa Mackenthun, “Body Counts: Violence and Its Occlusion in Writing the Atlantic Slave Trade,” paper presented to the Francis Barker Memorial Conference, 2001.
18 Derek Sayer, The Violence of Abstraction: The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
Chapter 1: Life, Death, and Terror in the Slave Trade
1 John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West Indies; In His Majesty’s Ships, the Swallow and Weymouth (London, 1735; rpt. London: Frank Cass, 1970), 41-42, 72-73.
2 TSTD, #16303.
3 Testimony of Henry Ellison, 1790, HCSP, 73:376. See TSTD, #17707.
4 Testimony of Thomas Trotter, 1790, HCSP, 73:83, 88, 92 ; Testimony of Clement Noble, 1790, in ibid., 111, 114-15. Trotter noted in his study Observations on the Scurvy, with a Review of the Theories lately advanced on that Disease; and the Theories of Dr. Milman refuted from Practice (London, 1785; Philadelphia, 1793) 23, that Fante and “Dunco” (i.e., Chamba) were the main two groups on the ship. The Fante were coastal and more likely to speak English than were the Chamba.
5 Three Years Adventures, 80-81, 108-9, 111-12.
6 TSTD, # 81890.
7 Samuel Robinson, A Sailor Boy’s Experience Aboard a Slave Ship in the Beginning of the Present Century (orig. publ. Hamilton, Scotland: William Naismith, 1867; rpt. Wigtown, Scotland: G.C. Book Publishers Ltd., 1996); TSTD, #88216 (Lady Neilson or Nelson ), #80928 (Crescent).
8 Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (London, 1724, 1728; rpt. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 194-287; TSTD, #76602; Robert Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahádee, King of Dahomy, an Inland Country of Guiney, to which are added the Author’s Journey to Abomey, the Capital, and a Short Account of the African Slave Trade (orig. publ. London, 1789 ; rpt. London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1968), 67-68. For background on Roberts’s generation of pirates, see Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).
9 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). One of Owen’s voyages was on the Prince Shurborough, Captain William Brown, TSTD, #36152.
10 Captain William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734; rpt. London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1971), introduction; TSTD, #25657.
11 Interview of Henry Ellison, Substance, 224-25; TSTD, #17686.
12 Testimony of James Fraser, 1790, HCSP, 71:5-58; Testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, 1790, HCSP, 72 :293-344. The quote by Burges is in Clarkson, History, vol. I, 318.
13 In Fraser’s early voyages, he did not retain crew members in significant numbers from one voyage to the next, but by the late 1780s as many as two-thirds of his men, an extraordinary number, signed on again after a previous voyage. See “A Muster Roll for the Ship Alexander, James Fraser Master from Bristol to Africa and America,” 1777-78; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Valiant, James Fraser Master from Africa and Jamaica,” 1777-78; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Tartar, James Fraser Master from Bristol to Africa and America,” 1780-81; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Emilia, James Fraser Master from Dominica,” 1783-
84; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Emilia, James Fraser Master from Jamaica,” 1784-85; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Emilia, James Fraser Master from Jamaica,” 1785-86; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Emilia, James Fraser Master from Africa,” 1786-87; “A Muster Roll for the Ship Emilia, James Fraser Master from Africa,” 1787-88; Muster Rolls, 1754-94, vols. 8 and 9, Society of Merchant Venturers Archives, Bristol Record Office; TSTD, #17888, #17895, #17902, #17920, #17933, #17952, #17967, #17990.
14 Anonymous, A Short Account of the African Slave Trade, Collected from Local Knowledge (Liverpool, 1788); Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahádee, v; Testimony of Robert Norris, 1788, HCSP, 68:3-19; Testimony of Robert Norris, 1790, HCSP, 69:118-20, 202-3 ; “The Log of the Unity, 1769-1771,” Earle Family Papers, D/ EARLE/1/4, MMM; TSTD, #91567.
15 “List of the Slaves that Dyed on Board the Katharine Galley, John Dagge Commander,” 1728, “Trading Accounts and Personal Papers of Humphry Morice,” vol. 5; Humphry Morice to William Clinch, September 13, 1722, M7/7; Humphry Morice to Captain William Boyle, May 11, 1724, M7/10. Humphry Morice Papers, Bank of England Archives, London ; TSTD, #76558. Throughout his section I am indebted to James A. Rawley, “Humphry Morice: Foremost London Slave Merchant of his Time,” in his London: Metropolis of the Slave Trade (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 40-56. See also “Humphry Morice,” Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee (London: Oxford University Press, 1921-22), 13: 941.
16 Basnett, Miller, and Mill to Humphry Morice, Kingston, November 9, 1722, f. 29-30, Correspondence of Humphry Morice, Miscellaneous Letters and Papers, Add. Ms. 48590B, BL.
17 Henry Laurens to Hinson Todd, April 14, 1769, in George C. Rogers, David R. Chesnutt, and Peggy J. Clark, eds., The Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1978), vol. 6, 438 (first quotation); see also vol. 1, 259 (second quotation). This section draws upon James A. Rawley, “Henry Laurens and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in his London: Metropolis of the Slave Trade, 82- 97, and C. James Taylor, ed., “Laurens, Henry,” American National Biography Online, February 2000, http: //www.anb.org/articles /01/01-00495.html. See also Daniel C. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Champaign-Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1981); James A. McMillan, The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783-1810 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004).
18 Of 1,382 slaving voyages that brought 264,536 slaves to the American colonies/ United States between 1701 and 1810, 761 delivered 151,647 to ports in the Carolinas, the overwhelming majority of these in Charleston. These figures represent 55 percent of voyages and 57 percent of slaves disembarked. Computations based on TSTD.
19 On sharks in the river Gambia, see Mungo Park, Travels into the Interior of Africa, Performed Under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, ed. Kate Ferguson Marsters (orig. publ. 1799 ; rpt. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 2000), 28; in Sierra Leone, see John Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone, on the Coast of Africa, containing an Account of the Trade and Productions of the Country, and of the Civil and Religious Customs and Manners of the People; in a Series of Letters to a Friend in England (London: B. White and Son, 1788), 50; in the Bonny River, see Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London, 1788), 51-52, 67; in the Kongo River, see “A Battle Between a Tiger and an Alligator; Or, wonderful instance of Providential Preservation, described in a letter from the Captain of the Davenport Guineaman,” Connecticut Herald, June 28, 1808. For a survey of African sharks, see Henry W. Fowler, “The Marine Fishes of West Africa, Based on the Collection of the American Museum Congo Expedition, 1909-1915,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1936), 70, 1:23-92. See also J. Cadenat and J. Blache, Requins de Mediterranée et d’Atlantique (plus Particulièrement de la Côte Occidentale d’Afrique) (Paris: Éditions de l’Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer, 1981). For the origins of the English word “shark” in the slaving voyages of Captain John Hawkins during the 1560s, see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Shark,” citing Ballads & Broadsides (1867) 147, BL. See also José I. Castro, “On the Origins of the Spanish Word Tiburón and the English Word ‘Shark,’ ” Environmental Biology of Fishes 65 (2002), 249-53.
20 “Natural History of the Shark, from Dr. Goldsmith and other eminent Writers,” Universal Magazine 43 (1778), 231; Robinson, A Sailor Boy’s Experience, 29-32; Memoirs of Crow, 264; 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. Ltd., 1967), 239. See also Testimony of Fraser, HCSP, 71:24.
21 An Account of the Life, 40; Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, 46. Told did not say whether the man was a slave or a sailor. It appears that it was the latter, because he told the story in the context of dangerous work performed by the crew. See also Falconbridge, Account of the Slave Trade, 67, who noted that Africans buried their dead at a “distance from the sea that the sharks cannot smell them.”
22 Falconbridge, Account of the Slave Trade, 67; Smith, New Voyage, 239. See also “Voyage to Guinea, Antego, Bay of Campeachy, Cuba, Barbadoes, &c.” (1714-23), Add. Ms. 39946, BL; [John Wells], “Journal of a Voyage to the Coast of Guinea, 1802,” Add. Ms. 3,871, Cambridge University Library; Ship’s Log, Vessel Unknown, 1777-78, Royal African Company, T70/1218, NA.
23 Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), 282. West Africans had their own extensive local knowledge of sharks and their own relationships with them. The people of New Calabar were said to consider the shark sacred, but not so the nearby people of Bonny nor the Fante, who called it samya and ate it with zeal, as, apparently, did many other seaside peoples. Supporters of the slave trade often emphasized that Africans used sharks in their own systems of social discipline: those convicted of crimes were in some areas thrown into shark-infested waters. Those who survived “trial by shark,” and some did, were deemed innocent of the criminal charges. See Captain John Adams, Sketches taken during Ten Voyages to Africa, Between the Years 1786 and 1800 ; including Observations on the Country between Cape Palmas and the River Congo; and Cursory Remarks on the Physical and Moral Character of the Inhabitants (London, 1823; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970), 67; Thomas Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, to which is added An Account of the Present State of Medicine among them (London, 1803; rpt. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1969), 256; “From a speech given by Mr. Shirley to legislature of Jamaica,” City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, December 19, 1788; Testimony of Fraser, 1790, HCSP, 71:18; Memoirs of Crow, 36, 44, 84.
24 Norwich Packet or, the Country Journal, April 14, 1785; Memoirs of Crow, 266. There are roughly 350 species of sharks in the world today, and about a quarter of these can be found in West African waters. The two most common sharks around the slave ships would have been the bull shark and the tiger shark. Both are common from Senegal to Angola, and both frequent brackish and freshwater bays, lagoons, estuaries, and rivers, moving into waters clear or muddy and shallow, a mere three feet deep, and around jetties and wharves in the harbors, close to human populations. Both have indiscriminate appetites. John Atkins wrote in 1735 of the sharks he encountered in the Sierra Leone River, “In short, their Voracity refuses nothing; Canvas, Ropeyarns, Bones, Blanketing, & c.” (Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, 46.) Once trained (in some cases over several months) to regard the ship as a source of food, bull and tiger sharks could have made transatlantic migrations. But a slave ship, as a big floating object, a “moving reef” of sorts in deep oceanic waters, also attracted deep-water species, the blue shark, silky shark, shortfin mako, and oceanic
whitefin, which are thinner, faster, and also known to eat human beings. The number of predators would have increased in American coastal waters, as the bull and tiger sharks of the western Atlantic joined the red wake. Sharks thus followed the ships both continuously and in a relay. See Leonard J. V. Compagno, comp., Sharks of the World: An Annotated and Illustrated Catalogue of Sharks Known to Date (Rome: United Nations Development Programme, 1984), part 2, 478-81, 503- 6.
25 Connecticut Gazette, January 30, 1789 ; Memoirs of Crow, 266. For an account of a shark attack in the West Indies in 1704 as recounted by a man who was at the time a sailor deserting a naval vessel, see A narrative of the wonderful deliverance of Samuel Jennings, Esq. (no place of publication, 1765).
26 “Natural History of the Shark,” 222-23, 231-33; Thomas Pennant, British Zoology (Chester: Eliza. Adams, 1768-70), vol. III, 82-83.
Chapter 2: The Evolution of the Slave Ship
1 Thomas Gordon, Principles of Naval Architecture, with Proposals for Improving the Form of Ships, to which are added, some Observations on the Structure and Carriages for the Purposes of Inland Commerce, Agriculture, &c. (London, 1784), 23. See also Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997), 376. On the transition to capitalism, see Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1964); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974); Rodney Hilton, ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1976); Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
The Slave Ship Page 40