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CHAPTER II

OLD-TIME SLAVER CAPTAINS AND THEIR SHIPS

David Lindsay as a Typical American Slaver of the Eighteenth Century — With a Rotten Ship that Showed Daylight Through Her Seams "All Round Her Bow Under Deck" He Reached the Slave Coast, Gathered His Cargo in Spite of Fevers, Deaths in the Crew, and Competition, and Finally Landed at Barbadoes with "All in Helth and Fatt" — An Astrologer's Chart for a Slaver's Voyage — Tales of the Slaver Vikings of Liverpool — Debt of Early American Commerce to the Slave Trade — John Paul Jones a Slaver.

Details of the characters of the men and of the ships that were engaged in the American slave-trade during the eighteenth century are lamentably hard to find in these days, but fortunately such as remain to us are sufficiently graphic and significant.

For a type of the Yankee slavers of the day we may very well choose Captain David Lindsay, who hailed from Newport, R. I., in the middle of the eighteenth century, when that town was one of the liveliest of American ports. His story has been preserved in a considerable number of letters and documents that were printed in the American Historical Record some years ago.

The earliest mention of Captain Lindsay's existence is found in a letter that comes literally from the sea — a letter that is dated "June ye 13 1740 at Sea Latt. 8°

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