THE BRITISH SLAVE TRADE

Towards the end of the period of the British slave trade, at least 3 per cent of all crewmen were black mariners from Africa, the Atlantic Islands, the West Indies or America, including possibly a number from Portugal. The shortage of experienced mariners caused the merchants of the major ports great difficulty in planning slaving ventures, which were notorious for the high mortality and desertion rates of seamen. Men who had worked the African coast were something of a shrinking pool, as usually less than half of a ship's crew on any particular voyage returned to port and some of those who did subsequently chose safer employment. Many young men lacking immunity to tropical diseases met their end within eight months of departing England, with as many as one in five crewmen being lost on the West African coast. The Bristol ship's surgeon turned abolitionist, Alexander Falconbridge, remarked, ‘frequently there happens such a mortality among the crew, as not to leave a sufficient number of hands to navigate the ships to the West Indies’. This demonstrates the necessity of employing local African crewmen to fill the gaps left in ships’ crews. An examination of the records of just one slave ship, the Essex, offers a clear picture of the true horror of the Triangular Trade. During one voyage under Captain Peter Potter, from the ship's complement of 37 some ten seamen died between 29 October 1783 and 6 August 1784, including two of the officers, the second and third mates. A further five seamen were also listed as ‘runaways’ between 1 December 1783 and 20 June 1784, the overall loss more than two-fifths of the total crew.

Behrendt's figure of at least 3 per cent of British seamen being black, mentioned above, was the national statistic based on merchantmen trading out of Liverpool and Bristol, the principal ports outside London. Ships trading directly on the West African coast and in the West Indies, however, often had a far larger percentage of seafarers of African descent. An example in 1781 was Captain John Small's Hawk from Liverpool, which had seven black sailors out of a crew of 26.