The American Slave Trade (Spears)/Chapter 3

by John Randolph Spears

 

CHAPTER III

WHEN VOYAGES WENT AWRY

Tales of Trouble When Lying on the Slave Coast — "We are Ready to Devour One Another, for Our Case is Desprit“ — A Second Mate's Unlucky Trip in a Long Boat — Sickness in the Hold as Well as Among the Crew — Cocoanuts and Oranges Could Not Serve in Place of Water — Story of the Mutiny on the Slaver Perfect — Risks the Underwriters Assumed — The Proportion of Disastrous Voyages.

"Anamaboe, October 27th, 1736.

"Sir: After my Respects to you, these may Inform how it is with me at pres'nt. I bless God I Injoy my health very well as yett, but am like to have a long and trublesum voyage of it, for there never was so much Rum on the Coast at one time before. Nor ye like of ye french ships was never seen before, for ye whole Coast is full of them. for my part T can give no guess when I shall get away, for I purchest but 27 slaves since I have been here, for slaves is very scarce: we have had nineteen sails of us at one time in ye Rhoad, so that those ships that used to carry pryme slaves off is now forsed to take any that comes: here is 7 sails of us Rum men that we are ready to devour one another, for our Case is Desprit. Sir, I beg that you will exist my famely in what they shall want, for Ino not when I shall get home to them myself. I have had the misfortin to Bury my chefe mate on ye 21st of Sept. and one man more, and Lost the negro man Prymus and Adam over board on my pasedge, one three weeks after another: that makes me now very weke handed for out of what it left thair is two that is good for nothing. Capt. Hamond has bin heare six months and has but 60 slaves on bord. My hearty servis to your spouse and famely. I am y'rs to com'd

"John Griffen."

Before describing fully the evils inflicted on the slave cargoes it seems but an act of justice to give here some of the ills endured by the old-time slavers. We must consider the condition of the conscientious slaver captain when there were "7 sails of us Rum men' in one port anxious to buy slaves—the slaver captain whose "Case is Desprit"—with such degree of sympathy as we can summon for his benefit, if we are to see the trade as it was. Captain Griffen was one of the Newport slavers. Very likely he was in the trade when Captain Lindsay was making fame and wealth; certainly everyone who knows the sea, and how the time drags while waiting for a cargo in an unhealthy, unattractive port, far from home, will sympathize with Captain Hammond, who had been on the slave-coast for six months and had less than half a cargo in his hold.

Another letter from the captain, George Scott, already quoted in connection with Captain Lindsay will show still more clearly how troubles came upon the slavers. The letter related to the voyage previously mentioned, and it runs as follows:

"Anamaboe, April ye 9th 1740

"Brother Daniel, this I hope will find you in good health as Tam at present, I have not been very well for five weeks past, which is made our voyage very backward, and am now very well recovered, Blessed be God. We have now five people sick and bonner so bad he will not recover. I am heartily tired of ye voyage, everything runs so cross that I undertake to make a voyage. I being not very well, kept my cheif mate aboard and sent ye second mate in ye Long boat to Leward a trading. He had not been gone above four days before he hired a canoue, sends her up with his gold taken to me for goods, without any orders from me. i sent ye canoue immediately back without goods: going down they overset the canoue, the blacks came off from ye shore and took them up, put them in irons: the blacks where ye [long] boat lay detained ye mate ashore, in which time a man slave he had bought, got out ye boat with two ounces of gold and has got clean off I was obliged to go down with ye sloop and pay thirty-two pound in ye best of goods before they would let ye mate come off. Upon the hole I've lost nigh three hundred pounds with that trip, in money, by the mate's folly. I am sure he will never be able to make satisfaction.

"I bought some slaves and Goods from a Dutchman for gold, which I thought to sell to ye french, [but] in a little time after [that] my slaves was all taken with the flucks, so that I could not sell them; lost three with it and have three more very bad: ye rest all well and good slaves. We have now aboard one hundred and no gold. I think to purchase about twenty & go off ye coast: ye time of year don't doe to tarry much longer. Everything of provisions is very dear and searce: it costs for water Tenn shilling for one day. I think to stay in this place but fourteen days more. We shall go to Shama and water our vessel and sail off ye coast with what I can purchase, which I believe will be 120 slaves cargo. We shall have left about two hundred pound sterg. in goods, which wont sell here to any profitt. Every man slave that we pay all Goods for here, costs twelve pound sterg. prime. I hope I shall be in Barbadoes, ye latter end of June, but have not concluded whither we shall go to Jamaica or Virginia; our slaves is mostly large. 60 men and men boys, 20 women, the rest boys and girls, but three under four foot high. Pray excuse all blunders and bad writing, for I have not time to coppy, the sloop being under sail."

One of the earliest of the voyages that went awry, of which a record has been preserved, was that of the 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. Of the troubles that came upon the slavers through the wars of the eighteenth century one might write a long and stirring chapter. For the slavers made good fighting, especially when it was viking blood in the slavers against Latin blood in naval ships. But of that nothing can be told here, because the losses were not an outgrowth of the slave-trade as a special branch of commerce. But something may be told of the proportion of losing to paying voyages, even though no list of slavers has been or can be made. In the old papers already mentioned in connection with Captain Lindsay, we find the charges of underwriters set forth, and no better comment on the risks of a trade can be found than an insurance policy. A paragraph from such a policy reads:

"And touching the adventures and perils which we, the assurers are content to bear, and do take upon us inthis voyage, they are of the seas, men of War, Fire, Enemies, Pyrates, Rovers, Thieves, Jettisons, Letters of Mart, and Countermart, Sarprizals, Taking at sea, Baratry of the Master, and Marines, and all the Perils, Losses, and Misfortunes that have or shall come to the hurt, Detriment or Damage of the said Goods and Merchandize, or of the said vessel, her Tackel, Apparel and Furniture, or any part thereof."

For assuming these risks the underwriters charged usually £20 in a hundred, but Mr. William Johnson got at least one policy of a hundred for £18 premium.