2 Romola and R. C. Anderson, The Sailing-Ship: Six Thousand Years of History (orig. publ. 1926 ; New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 129 ; Basil Greenhill, The Evolution of the Wooden Ship (New York: Facts on File, 1988), 67-76. Fascinating work has been done recently by nautical archaeologists, who have excavated and analyzed the material culture of slave ships. See Madeleine Burnside and Rosemarie Robotham, Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), about the Henrietta Marie; Leif Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). For an overview by an author who has her own important book on the subject forthcoming, see Jane Webster, “Looking for the Material Culture of the Middle Passage,” Journal of Maritime Research (2005), available online at www.jmr.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/ConJmrArticle.209.
3 Carlo Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965).
4 Memoirs of Crow, 137. King Holiday made these remarks in 1807, angry that the slave trade was coming to an end. England’s king, because he had the big ship, could send “bad people” far away, to Botany Bay, Australia, for example, but now King Holiday could not.
5 Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch. 2.
6 C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Touissant L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (orig. publ. 1938; New York: Vintage, 1989), 85-86; Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, 350.
7 Samuel Martin, An Essay on Plantership (London, 1773).
8 Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, 515. The contribution of slavery to the rise of capitalism remains fiercely debated. Highlights and opposing perspectives include Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944); Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977); David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, “The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain,” Journal of Economic History 60 (2000), 123-44; Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660 -1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
9 For background on the “floating factory,” see Conrad Gill, Merchants and Mariners in the 18th Century (London: Edward Arnold, 1961), 91-97.
10 James Field Stanfield, Observations on a Guinea Voyage, in a Series of Letters Addressed to the Rev. Thomas Clarkson (London: James Phillips, 1788), 5. For two elaborate listings of outward-bound cargoes, see “Estimate of a Cargo for the Hungerford to New Calabar for 400 Negroes, May 1769” and “Estimate of a Cargo for 500 Negroes to Bynin, 1769,” both D.M.15, Bristol University Library.
11 Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), ch. 2; Emma Christopher, Slave Trade Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ch. 5.
12 James Field Stanfield, The Guinea Voyage, A Poem in Three Books (London: James Phillips, 1789), 26; An Apology for Slavery; or, Six Cogent Arguments against the Immediate Abolition of the Slave Trade (London, 1792), 45.
13 Malachy Postlethwayt, The African Trade, the Great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation Trade in America (London, 1745) and the same author’s The National and Private Advantages of the African Trade Considered: Being an Enquiry, How Far It concerns the Trading Interests of Great Britain, Effectually to Support and Maintain the Forts and Settlements of Africa (London, 1746).
14 For a discussion of how Postlethwayt’s views shifted in the 1750s and 1760s, emphasizing what would come to be called “legitimate commerce” over and against the slave trade and thereby providing an argument for abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, see Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 272-74.
15 K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (New York: Atheneum, 1970). For surveys of the slave-trade forts and factories later in the eighteenth century, see “Transcripts of Official Reports and Letters Relating to the State of British Settlements on the Western Coast of Africa in 1765,” King’s MS #200, BL, and “Sundry Books and Papers Relative to the Commerce to and from Africa delivered to the Secretary of State of the African and American Department by John Roberts, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, 13th December 1779,” Egerton 1162A-B, BL. See also Eveline C. Martin, The British West African Settlements, 1750-1821 (London: Longmans, 1927).
16 John Lord Sheffield, 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), 21; Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and Abolition, 1760-1810 (London, 1975) ch. 2, esp. 48, 57; David Richardson, “Profits in the Liverpool Slave Trade: The Accounts of William Davenport, 1757-1784,” 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), 60-90; Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 98-100 ; Kenneth Morgan, “James Rogers and the Bristol Slave Trade,” Historical Research 76 (2003), 189-216.
17 Joseph Manesty to John Bannister, August 2, 1745, John Bannister Letter-Book, no. 66, f. 2, Newport Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island. The letter is reproduced in Donnan III, 137. On the Chance, see TSTD, #90018.
18 We have an accounting of one of Manesty’s slave-trading voyages. The Adlington, John Perkins master, sailed from Liverpool to several locations on the African coast in 1754-55. Perkins delivered 136 slaves (50 men, 25 women, 38 boys, and 23 girls, a few of them “maugre and disordered”) to the merchant firm of Case & Southworth in Kingston, Jamaica. After paying the captain’s commission, the surgeon’s “head money,” and the agent’s fee, Manesty received a remittance of £5,047.15.6 (about $1 million in 2007), out of which he would have paid the cost of original trading cargo and the wages for the crew (both unknown). See “Sales of 136 Negroes being the Ship Adlington’s Cargoe John Perkins Master, from Africa on acct of Joseph Manesty & Co. Merchts in Liverpool,” Case & Southworth Papers, 1755, 380 MD 35, LRO.
19 Manesty to Bannister, June 14, 1747, Bannister Letter-Book, no. 66. Manesty was the primary owner of the ships Adlington, African, Anson, Bee, Chance, Duke of Argyle, June, Perfect, and Spencer. He owned smaller portions of other vessels, such as the Swan and the Fortune. Between 1745 and 1758, he would invest in nineteen voyages. See TSTD, #90018, #90136-41, #90174, #90350, #90418-9, #90493-5, #90558, #90563, #90569, #90653, #90693. According to Elizabeth Donnan, John Bannister was descended of Boston merchants and came to Newport after 1733. He was himself a merchant and an investor in privateering. It seems likely that he was a middleman who offered connections to shipbuilders rather than a shipbuilder himself. Bannister would soon order his own vessel for the slave trade. He was sole owner of the Hardman, Joseph Yowart, master, a snow that made three voyages from Liverpool to Africa and the West Indies between 1749 and 1754 (TSTD, #90150-90152).
20 Joseph Manesty to Joseph Harrison, from Liverpool, September 10, 1745, in Donnan III, 138.
21 For two other orders for likely slavers, placed by members of the leading slave-trading family of New England, the D’Wolfs of Bristol, Rhode Island, see “Agreement between William and James D’Wolf and John, Joseph and Joseph Junr Kelly of Warren,” January 8, 1797, Folder B-10, Ship’s Accounts; and “Memorandum of an Agreement between John and James D’Wolf and builder William Barton,” March 13, 1805, Folder B-3, Orozimbo, Captain Oliver Wilson; both in the James D’Wolf Papers, Bristol Historical Societ
y, Bristol, Rhode Island.
22 M. K. Stammers, “ ‘Guineamen’: Some Technical Aspects of Slave Ships,” Transatlantic Slavery: Against Human Dignity, ed. Anthony Tibbles (London: HMSO, 1994), 40. It should be noted that slavers got smaller, faster, and cheaper after abolition, to avoid detection and escape capture by naval patrols and to lessen expense if taken. Regarding the pitch and roll of a vessel, see the complaint by merchant John Guerard that many slaves “by fatigue and Tumbling about have suffered insomuch that they are now very much the worse for it.” See John Guerard to William Jolliffe, August 25, 1753, John Guerard letter book, 164-67, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston.
23 Here and throughout the book, ship tonnage refers not to weight but to carrying capacity, and this none too precisely. The “tun” in medieval times referred to a cask (roughly forty cubic feet in capacity) for the shipment of wine between France and England. A vessel that could carry a hundred “tuns” was a one-hundred-ton vessel. But over time tonnage took on other meanings and was computed in a variety of ways, from nation to nation and within nations. A transition from “registered ton” to “measured ton” was mandated in Britain by an act of Parliament in 1786. I have made no effort to standardize tonnage figures and have consistently given them as originally reported in primary sources. For a survey of the subject, see Frederick C. Lane, “Tonnages, Medieval and Modern,” Economic History Review 17 (1964), 213-33.
24 One of these vessels might have become the Anson, built in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and named for the admiral who circumnavigated the globe and captured a vessel in Spain’s treasure fleet in 1744-45, or the Swan, which was built in Swansea, Massachusetts. See TSTD, #90174, #90160-90162. For prices of other slave ships, see Ralph Inman to Peleg Clarke, Boston, May 11, 1772, in Donnan III, 257; Roderick Terry, ed., “Some Old Papers Relating to the Newport Slave Trade,” Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society 62 (1927), 12-13; Wilson v. Sandys, Accounts for the Slave Ships Barbados Packet, Meredith, Snow Juno, Saville, and Cavendish: Liverpool, St. Christophers, Grenada, 1771, Chancery (C) 109/401, NA.
25 Manesty to Harrison, in Donnan III, 138.
26 J. H. Parry, Trade and Dominion: The European Oversea Empires in the Eighteenth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 12; Anderson and Anderson, The Sailing-Ship, 178; Joseph A. Goldenberg, Shipbuilding in Colonial America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976), 32-33; Stephen D. Behrendt, “Markets, Transaction Cycles, and Profits: Merchant Decision Making in the British Slave Trade,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 58 (2001), 171-204.
27 Ronald Stewart-Brown, Liverpool Ships in the Eighteenth Century, including the King’s Ships built there with Notes on the Principal Shipwrights (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1932), 75.
28 David M. Williams, “The Shipping of the British Slave Trade in its Final Years, 1798-1807,” International Journal of Maritime History 12 (2000), 1-25.
29 This paragraph draws heavily on Goldenberg, Shipbuilding in Colonial America, 55-56, 89. On the hearth and furnace, see John Fletcher to Captain Peleg Clarke, London, October 16, 1771, Peleg Clarke Letter-Book, Newport Historical Society, no. 75 A.
30 See William Sutherland, The Shipbuilder’s Assistant (1711); idem, Britain’s Glory; or, Ship-Building Unvail’d, being a General Director for Building and Compleating the said Machines (1729); John Hardingham, The Accomplish’d Shipwright (1706); Mungo Murray, Elements of Naval Architecture (1764); Fredrik Henrik ap Chapman, Architecturia Mercatoria Navalis (1768); Marmaduke Stalkartt, Naval Architecture (1787); William Hutchinson, Treatise on Naval Architecture (1794); David Steel, The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship (London, 1794); idem, The Ship-Master’s Assistant and Owner’s Manual (London, 1803); idem, The Elements and Practice of Naval Architecture (1805); Thomas Gordon, Principles of Naval Architecture. No books on shipbuilding were published in British North America in the eighteenth century, so shipwrights used these books and followed European design. See Howard I. Chapelle, The Search for Speed Under Sail, 1700-1855 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 6-8.
31 Chapelle, Search for Speed, 412-14.
32 William Falconer, Universal Dictionary of the Marine (London: T. Cadell, 1769; revised edition, 1784), s.v., “architecture (naval)”; Rules and Orders of the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture (London, 1791); An Address to the Public, from the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture (London, 1791); Catalogue of Books on Naval Architecture (London, 1791); An Address to the Public, from the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture (London, 1792); Report of the Committee for Conducting the Experiments of the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture (London, 1799), 1 (quotation).
33 “An Account of Men Belonging to the Snow Peggy the 13th of August 1748,” Anthony Fox, Master, 1748-1749, Muster Rolls, vol. I (1748-1751), Society of Merchant Venturers Archives, BRO. See TSTD, #77579. For background see Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1962), chs. 6-7; Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, ch.2; Peter Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen, 1650-1775 (London: Methuen, 1998).
34 Barnaby Slush, The Navy Royal: or a Sea-Cook Turn’d Projector (London, 1709), viii. For a typical wage scheme for all members of a ship’s crew, see “A List of the Seamen on board Ship Christopher Ent’d 19 June 1791,” in “Ship Christopher’s Book, 4th Voyage,” Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, Duke University.
35 W.S. (William Snelgrave), “Instructions for a First Mate When in the Road at Whydah,” n.d., Humphrey Morice Papers, Bank of England Archive, London.
36 Rhode Island mate Thomas Eldred testified that it was “the common Practice, in Ships trading from America to Africa, to have no Surgeon on board.” Rather, they administered medicine “by a Book of Directions which they had on Board.” See Testimony of Thomas Eldred, 1789, HCSP, 69:166.
37 The quotations in this and the following paragraph come from Clarkson, History, 1:327-30. One of the small vessels may have been the Fly, a twenty-seven-ton vessel commanded by Captain James Walker, which departed Bristol on August 7, 1787, for Sierra Leone, where it would pick up thirty-five captives and take them to Tortola. See TSTD, #17783. For information on the larger London vessel with the same name, see TSTD, #81477.
38 On how much space captives had belowdecks, see Charles Garland and Herbert S. Klein, “The Allotment of Space for Slaves Aboard Eighteenth-Century British Slave Ships,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 42 (1985), 238-48.
39 TSTD, #90950, #3777, #4405, #36299, #36406.
40 Stewart-Brown, Liverpool Ships in the Eighteenth Century, 29, 127-29. See TSTD, #83006. For examples of other major disasters, see TSTD, #90157 (Marton, with 420 captives, reported in the Georgia Gazette, December 3, 1766); #78101 (New Britannia, with 330 captives, reported in Connecticut Journal, August 20, 1773); #82704 (Mercury, with 245 captives, reported in Enquirer, September 26, 1804); #25648 (Independence, with 200 captives, reported in the American Mercury, August 20, 1807).
41 Hayley and Hopkins to Aaron Lopez, London, July 20, 1774, in Donnan III, 291; Walter Minchinton, “Characteristics of British Slaving Vessels, 1698-1775,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 20 (1989), 53-81. According to data in the TSTD, Dutch slave ships tended to be the eighteenth century’s largest, at an average of 300 tons, followed by French slavers at 247 tons. The average vessel sailing out of North America was about 100 tons. Stephen D. Behrendt makes an important point: “In general, merchants sent small Guineamen to politically decentralized coastal markets with intermittent slave supplies and larger Guineamen to ports or lagoon sites with the political centralization and commercial infrastructures to maintain large-scale slave shipments.” See his “Markets, Transaction Cycles, and Profits,” 188.
42 Newport Mercury, January 7, 1765.
43 Pennsylvania Gazette, June 21, 1753. Falconer, Universal Dictionary of the Marine, s.v., “sloop.”
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br /> 44 City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, November 28, 1796; Falconer, Universal Dictionary of the Marine, s.v., “ship.”
45 South-Carolina State Gazette and Timothy’s Daily Adviser, May 7, 1800; Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, M.D., Suggestions on the Slave Trade, for the Consideration of the Legislature of Great Britain (London: John Stockdale, 1797), 6, 17, 62. A bark was another three-masted ship, square-rigged on the fore and mainmasts but fore-and-aft-rigged on the mizzen, without a mizzen topsail. It was much less common than the ship.
46 Reverend John Riland, Memoirs of a West-India Planter, Published from an Original MS. With a Preface and Additional Details (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1827). Riland was born in Jamaica in 1778 and sent by his father to England for schooling when he was a young boy.
47 I have discovered two vessels named the Liberty on which Riland might have sailed, although neither comports with his timeline. He might have crossed the Atlantic on a vessel listed at 138 tons, which in 1795-96 sailed probably from London to an unidentified port in Africa and from there to Barbados. Alternatively, he might have sailed on a different vessel (160 tons), which went from Liverpool to Angola to St. Kitts in 1806-7. For information about each, see TSTD, #82252, #82254.
48 When Riland sailed on the slaver, he was a person of mixed allegiances. He had some sympathy for the antislavery cause, but he was at the same time someone who had a strong vested family and personal interest in the slave system, and this he readily acknowledged. Indeed he was surprised at how quickly, once aboard the ship, he began to feel that his “fortunes [were] identified with the commercial prosperity of the colonies,” which of course included the slave trade. He was also conscious that his voyage “was a very favorable specimen of such adventures.”
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