This book contains edited transcripts of 40 letters relating to Captain James Irving and his younger cousin and namesake (hereafter James Irving II) in the period between 1786 and 1791. Most are held at the Lancashire Record Office and include letters that Captain Irving wrote to his wife Mary on his slaving voyages to Africa and the Americas. The collection does not include any of the letters that Mary wrote to her husband. Also included in the Irving archive at the Lancashire Record Office are letters that Irving received from John Hutchison and James M. Matra, consular officials in Morocco, during a fourteen-month period of enslavement on the Barbary Coast. Matra's correspondence with government officials in Britain included regular reports on the progress of negotiations to free Irving and his crew, and one of these letters has been included in this edition. Transcripts of letters written by James Irving II to his parents in Scotland, and discovered in the private ownership of a descendant in Langholm, are also included. During the period that Captain Irving spent in captivity on the Barbary Coast, several friends wrote appeals on his behalf. Three such letters survive and are included here. Letters have been arranged in date order and, for the purposes of this text, have been numbered consecutively.