Dutch West India Company's ship St. John, the log of which is given in O'Callagan's "Voyages of the Slavers." The troubles here were due to the parsimony of the owners—rather the directors of the company—who fitted the ship out with rotten food and water casks that leaked. To take the place of water they took on 5,000 cocoanuts and 5,000 oranges, but the slaves died as cattle on the desert do, and at last, to complete the misery of all, the ship was stranded in a gale, and then looted by pirates.
Another cause of loss to the slavers was in the mutiny, so-called, of the slaves. Although the negro was never for a moment to be compared with the North American Indian as a fighter, he did sometimes, even as a slave, rise against his oppressor. While the slaver Perfect, Captain Potter, was at Mana, on January 12, 1759, with nearly one hundred slaves on board, the captain sent the mate, the second mate, and the boatswain away for slaves that had been paid for. This expedition took more than half the Perfect's crew away from her; and while they were gone, the slaves in some way got clear of their manacles and swarmed up on deck. They killed the captain, the surgeon, the carpenter, the cooper and a boy, when six other members of the crew got into a boat and fled ashore to the mate, and thence to the slaver Spencer, Captain Daniel Cooke.
Next morning Captain Cooke took his ship near the Perfect and "fired his guns into her for about an hour," but the Perfect's mate could not persuade him to board her. In the end such of the slaves as escaped the guns of the Spencer managed to run the Perfect ashore, where they plundered and burned her.
