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.
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.
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.
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).
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 Society, 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.