CHAPTER VII
THE SLAVERS' PROFIT
Nine Hundred Pounds on One Voyage of the Newport Slaver Sanderson, a Vessel that was Offered for Sale at £450 with No Buyers — One Voyage of the Liverpool Slaver Enterprise that Paid £24,430 — Details of Expenses and Receipts on a Voyage of the Ninety-ton Schooner La Forfuna — A Baltimore Schooner's Profit of $100,000 — When the Venus Cleared $200,000 — Sums Paid to Captains and Crews — Slave Transportation Compared with Modern Passenger Traffic.
It has been repeatedly asserted in the course of this work that the slave-trade was, on the whole, enormously profitable, and it is now proposed to give ina business way some facts in verification of those assertions. There were, of course, many voyages that went awry, but that that was not the usual course of the trade is abundantly proved. Thus, the fact that Newport had one hundred and fifty vessels in the trade by the middle of the eighteenth century, shows what Newport merchants made out of the traffic. That Liverpool had but one sloop of thirty tons in the trade in 1729, while in 1751 "no fewer than fifty-three vessels, with an aggregate burthen of 5,334 tons, sailed from the Mersey for the slave-coast," shows how Liverpool slavers prospered. But something more than these general statements must prove of interest.
82
