^{page 37 note *} We thank Sue Mowat who, in cataloging the Scottish High Court of Admiralty documents, brought our attention to the Hannover material; Martin Collyer for helping transcribe the accounts; and Linda R. Gray, David Henige, A. J. H. Latham, and David Northrup for comments. We particularly thank Professor Latham for clarifying numerous points about Efik legend and history.

^{page 38 note 1} Horseburgh v. Bogle, AC9/1042, High Court of Admiralty of Scotland, National Archives of Scotland. Included in the bundle of documents is Horsburgh's account book of the voyage of the Hannover and letters written by Horsburgh from Old Calabar, Barbados, and St. Kitts. The letter from Horsburgh to the Glasgow syndicate dated Barbados, 1 November 1720, mentions his long Middle Passage. Horsburgh worked on at least one British slaver (probably as surgeon on a London ship) in the 1710s, since his Glasgow employers referred to him as a man “skilled in this trade.” Bogle and partners blamed Horsburgh for the financial failure of the venture. Horsburgh fought off the legal challenge in the High Court of Admiralty in Edinburgh, and later held office in the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He died in 1745. Duncan, Alexander, Memorials of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 1599-1850 (Glasgow, 1896), 91-93, 246Google Scholar; Geyer-Kordesch, Johanna and Macdonald, Fiona, Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow: The History of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, 1599-1858 (London, 1999), 26n199Google Scholar. A portrait of “Alex Horsburgh” is published in Cowan, John M., Some Yesterdays (Glasgow, 1949), 16Google Scholar.

^{page 38 note 2} Graham, Eric J., A Maritime History of Scotland, 1650-1790 (East Linton, Scotland, 2002), 174, 178, 193–94Google Scholar. In summer 1718 Bogle and Company dispatched the Loyalty to slave off the African coast. Pirates looted this ship in May 1719, however, and the Loyalty returned to Greenock.

^{page 38 note 3} The document from 1761—a letter from Liverpool merchant William Earle to Duke Abashy of Old Calabar—is reproduced in Lovejoy, Paul E. and Richardson, David, “Letters of the Old Calabar Slave Trade, 1760-1789” in Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, eds. Carretta, Vincent and Gould, Philip (Lexington, KY, 2001), 99Google Scholar. The 1769-70 trust book is discussed in Hair, P. E. H., “Antera Duke of Old Calabar: a Little More About an African Entrepreneur,” HA 17(1990), 359–65Google Scholar.

^{page 39 note 4} Latham, A. J. H., Old Calabar, 1600-1891: The Impact of the International Economy Upon a Traditional Society (Oxford, 1973), 35, 49Google Scholar.

^{page 40 note 5} Ibid., 3-8.

^{page 40 note 6} Atakpa, in broken English, was first called “New Town.” By the late eighteenth century, Efik and European traders called the village “Duke Town,” after Duke Ephraiin. We use “Duke Town” throughout this paper.

^{page 40 note 7} Ibid., 9-11. There is much debate about Efik genealogy and the dating of settlements. See, for example, Aye, E. U., “Efik Origins and Migrations Revisited: The ‘Oriental View’” in Old Calabar Revisited, eds. Jaja, S. O., Erim, E. O., and Andah, B. W. (Enugu, 1990), 5–10Google Scholar; Akak, E. O., Efiks of Old Calabar (4 vols.: Calabar, 1981–1983), 4:436Google Scholar.

^{page 41 note 8} Simmons, D., “An Ethnographic Sketch of the Efik People” in Efik Traders of Old Calabar, ed. Forde, Daryll (London, 1956), 1Google Scholar; Nair, Kannan K., The Origins and Development of Efik Settlements in Southeastern Nigeria (Athens OH, 1975), 8Google Scholar.

^{page 41 note 9} The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM, eds. Eltis, David, Behrendt, Stephen D., Richardson, David, and Klein, Herbert S. (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar. The Portuguese slaver Candelaria, which disembarked 114 enslaved Africans from “Calabar” in Veracruz on 25 June 1625, is the first recorded European slaving vessel in the Cross River region. “Calabar” likely refers to the general coastline rather than to “Old Calabar.” David Eltis discovered recently an additional London voyage in 1645 at “Calabar” (that of the slaver John) in the HCA documents at the Public Record Office. This venture will be included in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Revised and Enlarged Database, eels. David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Manolo Florentine, forthcoming.

^{page 41 note 10} And thus a Dutch map ca. 1650 records the river “Rio Real d'calabar” and villages “Calabari” and “Out Calabar” (Simmons, , “Ethnographic Sketch,” 4Google Scholar).

^{page 41 note 11} Ernst van den Boogaart Dutch slave trade dataset, which will be incorporated in Eltis et. al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Revised and Enlarged Database. We thank Professor van den Boogaart for making his new data readily available, and Jelmer Vos for his work on the enlarged slave trade database. Most of the new data are contained in the documents of the Old West India Company housed in the Nationaal Archicf, The Hague. These Dutch ventures also may have purchased ivory at Calabar, as did the London slaving vessel Swan in 1651-52: Appleby, John C., “‘A Business of Much Difficulty’: A London Slaving Venture, 1651-1654,” Mariner's Mirror 81(1995), 3–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

^{page 42 note 12} Latham, writing in 1973, noted that the first documented slaving vessel at Old Calabar arrived in 1668. He pointed to Dutchman Arnout Leers' 1665 edition of Leo Africanus, which states that a great reef blocked access to the Old Calabar River (Latham, , Old Calabar, 17Google Scholar). Ardener, who cited Leers' source, commented that the reef reference was a “surprising statement:” Ardener, Edwin, “Documentary and Linguistic Evidence for the Rise of the Trading Politics between Rio del Rey and Cameroons, 1500-1650” in History and Social Anthropology, ed. Lewis, I. M. (London, 1968), 106Google Scholar. Barbot, referring most likely to a 1698 voyage, mentioned that one of the entrances to the Old Calabar River had a bar “extending from Salt-town to very near the west point of Parrot's Island, leaving only a narrow passage close to that island, six or seven fathoms deep:” Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712, eds. Hair, P. E. H., Jones, Adam and Law, Robin (2 vols.: London, 1992), 2:677Google Scholar. Perhaps Leo Africanus' “reef” was Barbot's “bar.” Unfortunately, sources documenting these pre-1660 Portuguese, Dutch, and English voyages to the Cross River estuary do not specify the trading site “Old Calabar.”

^{page 42 note 13} Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. For cargo details on the ship Blackamore, see Inikori, Joseph E., Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002), 220CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

^{page 43 note 14} Latham, A. J. H., “The Pre-Colonial Economy: The Lower Cross Region” in A History of the Cross River Region of Nigeria, ed. Abasiattai, Monday B. (Enugu, 1990), 72Google Scholar.

^{page 43 note 15} Barbot on Guinea, 2:680–81, 705n27Google Scholar. We capitalized “duke,” “king,” “captain,” and “old.” Possibly King Oyo, if at an advanced age, was Eyo Ema, one of the oldest of five founding fathers who settled Creek Town in the early 1600s (Lantham, , Old Calabar, 10Google Scholar).

^{page 43 note 16} Most scholars agree that the European use of the term “Egbosherry” refers to Ibibioland: Jones, G. I., “Introduction to the Second Edition” in Waddell, Hope Masterton, Twenty-Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa: A Review of Missionary Work and Adventure, 1829-1858 (London, 1970), xviii–xixGoogle Scholar; Latham, , Old Calabar, 50Google Scholar; Nair, , Origins and Development, 6Google Scholar. For the view that William King Agbisherea and Robin King Agbisherea were Efik leaders from Old Town, see Akak, Eyo Okon, A Critique of Old Calabar History (Calabar, 1981), 29–30Google Scholar, and Akak, , Efiks of Old Calabar, 4:432Google Scholar.

^{page 43 note 17} Latham, , “Pre-Colonial Economy,” 72Google Scholar.

^{page 44 note 18} Voyage account of the ship Florida, Captain Samuel Paine, 1714-16, Add 39946, British Library. Possibly King Ambo, if elderly, was Oku Atai, one of the five founding fathers who settled Creek Town in the early 1600s (Latham, , Old Calabar, 10Google Scholar).

^{page 44 note 19} Based on analysis of Old Calabar ventures documented in Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, assuming voyage times of 81 days from Kurope to the Bight of Biafra, and 81 days from the Bight of Biafra to the Americas, and a Middle Passage mortality loss of 20 percent.

^{page 44 note 20} Cited by Northrup, David, Trade without Rulers: Pre-Colonial Economic Development in Southeastern Nigeria (Oxford, 1978), 53Google Scholar.

^{page 44 note 21} See, for example, Barbot's discussion of assortments of goods for the Old Calabar market in the late seventeenth century: Barbot on Guinea, 2:677-78, 680Google Scholar. For details on assortments of goods for regional African markets in 1702, see Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, ed. Donnan, Elizabeth (4 vols.: Washington, 1930–1935), 4:73–75Google Scholar.

^{page 45 note 22} Thus it is inaccurate Co sny that European traders paid comey, “essentially a custom's duty based on the ship's tonnage, to the king of the town with which they planned to trade:” Sparks, Randy J., “Two Princes of Calabar: An Atlantic Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom,” William and Mary Quarterly 3/59(2002), 560CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Captains paid comey to various Calabar merchants, and there is no evidence that tonnage measurements were a criterion.

^{page 45 note 23} Horsburgh's account book is a double-entry bookkeeping ledger in which he balanced each transaction period's debits with corresponding credits. On the debit side of his trading ledger, Horsburgh separated individual comey transactions, listing the name of the recipient and the amount of comcy, and differentiating between traders and non-traders (marked X). His accounts usually group a few days together. The credit side of his account book lists quantities and types of European and Asian-produced trading goods, valued in copper bars. For example, during his transactions of 21-22 May he valued “7 fine Cutlasses at 4 barrs each” (thus 28 copper bars) and “16 yds Cushtees at 1 barr p yd” (thus 16 coppers).

^{page 46 note 24} Latham, , Old Calabar, 9–12Google Scholar.

^{page 46 note 25} Ibid., 49-50; Barbot on Guinea, 2:705n27. King John is mentioned in Antera Duke's diary (Forde, , Efik Traders, 57Google Scholar, entry of 7 June 1787). Nicholls, who visited Calabar in 1805, mentioned a “king John of Guinea Company,” referring to the head of a group of Efik villages situated on the banks of the Calabar River, 20 to 30 miles north of Town, Duke: Records of the African Association, 1788-1831, ed. Hallett, Robin (London, 1964), 204Google Scholar. We assume that this man is a different King John. In 1765 English sailor Isaac Parker visited Dick Ebro's house in Town, Duke (House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century [145 vols.: Wilmington, 1975], 73:126)Google Scholar. “Ward” refers to lineage groups residing in territorially distinct sections of villages: Jones, , “Political Organization” in Forde, , Efik Traders, 122Google Scholar.

^{page 46 note 26} Efik authorities disagree about the genealogy of Eyo Willy Honesty (ca. 1740s-1820), thus suggesting that his family came from non-Efik origins: Latham, , Old Calabar, 46-47, 115–20Google Scholar. The name “Honesty” is associated with Willy Honesty (Eyo Nsa), a renowned Efik warrior and Creek Town leader ca. 1760s-1810s, and his son King Eyo Honesty II, one of the most powerful Efik merchants in the 1840s and early 1850s. One contemporary source maintained that Eyo Nsa obtained his trade name through his honest dealings with Europeans, a remark cited by several authors, e.g., Simmons, D., “Notes on the Diary of Antera Duke” in Forde, , Efik Traders, 67Google Scholar; Clinton, J. V., “King Eyo Honesty II of Creek Town,” Nigeria Magazine 69(August 1961), 182Google Scholar; Aye, Efiong U., Old Calabar Through the Centuries (Calabar, 1967), 45Google Scholar; Nair, , Origins and Development, 27Google Scholar. Willy Honesty likely appropriated his title from Robin Honestie, an anglicized trading name documented now in 1720.

^{page 46 note 27} “Fanshaw,” though similar to “Henshaw,” has an “F” and first “a” distinctly different from the script for the capitalized “H” and lower-case “e” in Horsburgh's accounts.

^{page 47 note 28} Horsburgh reckoned 1 1/2 shillings per copper bar.

^{page 47 note 29} Ransom payments totaled ar least 15 per cent of his expenditures at Old Calabar, costing Horsburgh a quantity of trading goods that he could have bartered for 15 slaves and 2,000 yams. Comey payments comprised an additional ten percent of his financial outlay.

^{page 47 note 30} The Barbot account actually states prices of 38 copper bars for male slaves; his editors believe this total is a misprint for 48 coppers: Barbot on Guinea 2:678, 704n22Google Scholar.

^{page 48 note 31} Richardson, David, “Prices of Slaves in West and West-Central Africa: Toward an Annual Series, 1698-1807,” Bulletin of Economic Research 43(1991), 33, 34, 42, 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

^{page 48 note 32} Regarding seasons of trade in the Bight of Biafra sec Bchrendt, Stephen D., “Markets, Transaction Cycles, and Profits: Merchant Decision Making in the British Slave Trade,” William and Mary Quarterly 3/58(2001), 182–86Google Scholar. Six Bristol-Calabar slaving vessels arc documented in Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The seventh vessel, the Cormvall, is recorded in the slave trade database and Horsburgh to Gentlemen [Bogle & Co.], Old Callabar, 9 June 1720.

^{page 48 note 33} Horsburgh purchased 75 slaves and large quantities of provisions at Old Calabar, although he did not list names of dealers per transaction. Between 21 May and 2 July he paid 4,451 copper bars for the enslaved Africans (£333 16s) and 669 coppers for provisions (£50 3s). He purchased 11,400 yams—22 yams costing, on average, trading goods valued at one copper—and also loaded small quantities of dried and fresh fish, plantains, red pepper, greens, and palm oil.

^{page 49 note 34} Latham, , Old Calabar, 10Google Scholar, states that the Efik “had to pay tribute to the Qua for the privilege of living on their land, until at least the early nineteenth century.”

^{page 49 note 35} Writing in 1773, Lace stated that he “knew old Robin John the Father of Grandy Ep[hrai]m:” Williams, Gomer, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London, 1897), 541Google Scholar.

^{page 49 note 36} In 1702 an earlier “Grande Robin” was killed at Old Calabar on board the London ship Hunter Gally, “which made his People seize imediately on with shipps boats and trading canoes that was there to the loss of some white men and goods to a considerable vallue:” T70/175, f. 23, PRO. We thank David Eltis for this reference.

^{page 50 note 37} Latham, , Old Calabar, 33Google Scholar.

^{page 51 note 38} Yellow Robin Cobham received the least amount of comey—three coppers—indicating his youth. Regarding the difficulties with identifying and analyzing names from the Cross River region, see Jones, , “Introduction,” x–xiGoogle Scholar.

^{page 51 note 39} The genealogy follows Latham, , Old Calabar, 12Google Scholar. Regarding ages of Efik notables, in 1805 Henry Nicholls, representing a British African association, met principal Efik trader Ekpenyong Ofiong (whom he referred to as Egbo Young Eyambo), and estimated his age at between sixty and seventy years of age. He then traveled to Creek Town and met Eyo Honesty, who “is a very old man, at least eighty years of age:” Hallett, , Records of the African Association, 199–200Google Scholar). Chief Asuquo's study of Efik genealogies suggests that many “primogenitors lived to become centenarians and above:” Asuquo, Ukorebi U., “The Diary of Antera Duke of Old Calabar (1785-1788),” Calabar Historical Journal 2/1(1978), 39Google Scholar.

^{page 51 note 40} If Efiom Ekpo was born later than the 1550s, and lived to an advanced age, he could be the King “E-fn-me” referred to in 1668. Legend suggests that Efiom Ekpo died in the early seventeenth century, but it is possible that there is at least a 25-50-year margin of error dating early Efik settlements.

^{page 51 note 41} Hair, , “Antera Duke,” 360–61Google Scholar; Lovejoy, /Richardson, , “Letters,” 102–03Google Scholar; Sparks, , “Two Princes of Calabar,” 567Google Scholar.

^{page 52 note 42} As Jones notes: “[a]t the beginning of the eighteenth century, the maximal lineages may very well have consisted almost exclusively of true agnates; but this was certainly not the case by the nineteenth century:” Jones, , “Political Organization,” 133Google Scholar.

^{page 52 note 43} Hair, , “Antera Duke,” 360–61Google Scholar.

^{page 52 note 44} Evidence from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries indicates that Efik denoted heads of small settlements as “Captains” and heads of districts within a community as “Dukes” (Jones, , “Introduction,” xiGoogle Scholar). Duke, though, could also refer to an anglicized trading name, as in Duke Ephraim.

^{page 52 note 45} Aye, , Old Calabar, 27Google Scholar.

^{page 53 note 46} King Ambo probably received payment on board the Hannover accompanied by other recipients. In 1704 Snelgrave noted that King Aqua came on board his vessel: Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Paris of Guinea and the Slave-Trade (London, 1734)Google Scholar, introduction. Efik trader Antera Duke noted in his diary that on 23 July 1785 he and several others “go with King” (Duke Ephraim) to collect comey on board a Liverpool slaver: Forde, , Efik Traders, 36, 87Google Scholar. It is not known whether the ordering of all comey recipients is meaningful; for example, Yellow Robin, a non-trader who received a comparatively small amount of comey (trading goods valued at 12 coppers), appears third.

^{page 53 note 47} Latham, , Old Calabar, 44Google Scholar.

^{page 53 note 48} Regarding the problem that Europeans referred frequently to African dignitaries as “kings,” see Thornton, John, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge, 1992), 83–84Google Scholar.

^{page 53 note 49} Snelgrave, New Account, introduction. Aqua's kingship may refer to the fact that he headed Qua Town, located three miles northeast of Duke Town, on the Great Qua River.

^{page 54 note 50} Jones, , “Introduction,” xiGoogle Scholar.

^{page 54 note 51} Latham, , Old Calabar, 36Google Scholar, suggests that the Ambo ward of Creek Town founded Ekpe “at the earliest about 1720,” but believes ca. 1750 is a more likely founding date.

^{page 54 note 52} Ibid., 33-34, 44, 114; Forde, , Efik Traders, 27Google Scholar.

^{page 55 note 53} Horsburgh believed that his bends, gunpowder and lend were not suited for the Calabar market, and that his iron bars were “not quite so long as the Bristoll man's.”

^{page 56 note 54} Oku, Ekei Essien, “Kings of Old Calabar” in Jaja, /Erim, /Andah, , Old Calabar Revisited, 24Google Scholar.

^{page 57 note *} men of no crade in Callabar”

^{page 57 note #} years family names documented previously

^{page 57 note 1} Jones suggests that King John was a head of either a minor Efik village (other than Creek Town, Old Town or Duke Town) or an Ibibio village (Jones, , “Introduction,” in Waddell, , Twenty-Nine Years, xix)Google Scholar. Recently, Hair, Jones, and Law note that “King John appears to have been a title later applied to the head of the Ambo ward of Creek Town” (Barbot on Guinea 2:705n27).

^{page 57 note 2} The Cobham ward moved from Creek Town to Duke Town some time after the mid-eighteenth century (Jones, , “Introduction,” in Waddell, , Twenty-Nine Years, xxGoogle Scholar).

^{page 57 note 3} The Henshaws lived at Creek Town, and some time in the late seventeenth or eighteenth century moved to Duke Town (Latham, , Old Calabar, 10, 44, 114, 124–25Google Scholar). Jones states that “Duke Town originally consisted of the three related houses of Nsa Effiom or Henshaw, Edem Okoho or Ntiero, and Okoho Effiom,” Okoho Effiom later splitting into the Duke and Eyamba wards (Jones, , “Introduction,” in Waddell, , Twenty-Nine Years, xiv)Google Scholar. Jones' reference point is Hope Waddell's mission in nineteenth century Calabar; it is not clear whether Jones places the Henshaw ward at the earliest settlement of Duke Town in the early 1600s. Aye infers that the Henshaws may have moved to Duke Town after Creek Town declined in the 1750s and 1760s. Later in the eighteenth century they founded Henshaw Town, south of Town, Duke (Aye, Old Calabar Through the Centuries, 36–38)Google Scholar.

^{page 58 note *} “men of no trade in Callabar”

^{page 58 note #} years family names documented previously

^{page 58 note 4} During Liverpool captain Ambrose Lace's voyages to Old Calabar, ca. 1747-67, he met Old Robin John of Old Town (Williams, , Liverpool Privateers, 541–42Google Scholar).

^{page 58 note 5} In 1704 William Snelgrave met a King Jabrue, a name that possibly refers to the Ebrero family (Barbot on Guinea 2:705 n27). In 1765 English sailor Isaac Parker traveled to Old Calabar on a slaving voyage. After he arrived in the Cross River he took a boat up to Dick Ebro's house in New Town (Duke Town). Dick Ebro, he claimed, “was a king's son in that place” (Commons Sessional Papers, ed. Lambert, , 73:126)Google Scholar. It is not known when the Ebrero family settled in Duke Town.