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Unfreedom and Slavery Under Sail: Intercolonial Trade in the British Atlantic, 1698–1766
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2024
Abstract
Using evidence from 25,250 records of vessels entering and clearing the rivers of the Chesapeake Bay, this article demonstrates that intercolonial trading captains and crews significantly reduced the number of days their vessels spent in port in Virginia between 1698 and 1766. This contraction reflected a quantifying ethos in shipping that emerged during the early age of sail as the result of mutually reinforcing legal requirements and management practices. Responding to these productivity pressures, captains embraced practices that limited sailors’ freedom and turned to enslaved sailors to guarantee their maritime labor force. Embracing unfreedom aided captains to realize the dispatch goals that helped guarantee their investors’ returns.
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- Research Article
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- © 2024 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Footnotes
I would like to thank the Copenhagen Business School’s Business History Centre Seminar, the Hagley Research Seminar, Shane Hamilton, Gregory O’Malley, Ann Daly, Franklin Sammons, Max Edelson, and Christina Lubinski for their careful and critical reading of this text and for advice during the revision process. Insightful comments from two anonymous reviewers and Walter Friedman strengthened the paper. Thanks also to the Carlsberg Foundation for their support. Scholars wishing to reproduce my results should contact me directly for access to the data.
References
1 For an examination of shipping productivity in colonial America see Douglass C. North, “Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600–1850,” Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 5 (Sep. 1968): 953–970; James F. Shepherd and Gary M. Walton, Shipping, Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, UK, 1972); Russell R. Menard, “Transport Costs and Long-Range Trade, 1300–1800: Was There a European ‘Transport Revolution’ in the Early Modern Era?,” in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge, UK, 1991); David Riggs, “Transportation Efficiency in Eighteenth-Century Merchant Vessels,” International Journal of Maritime History 33, no. 2 (May 2021): 425–434. For a recently revived and robust economic history debate on the connection between British coastal productivity change and the British industrial revolution see Simon Ville, “Total Factor Productivity in the English Shipping Industry: The North-East Coal Trade, 1700–1850,” Economic History Review 39, no. 3 (Aug. 1986): 355–370; William J. Hausman, “The English Coastal Coal Trade, 1691–1910: How Rapid Was Productivity Growth?,” The Economic History Review 40, no. 4 (1987): 588–596; John Armstrong, The Vital Spark: The British Coastal Trade, 1700–1930 (St. John’s, Newfoundland, 2009); Dan Bogart, Oliver Dunn, Eduard J. Alvarez-Palau, and Leigh Shaw-Taylor, “Speedier Delivery: Coastal Shipping Times and Speeds during the Age of Sail,” Economic History Review 74, no. 1 (2021): 87–114. For a broader European examination of shipping productivity see Jan Luiten van Zanden and Milja van Tielhof, “Roots of Growth and Productivity Change in Dutch Shipping Industry, 1500–1800,” Explorations in Economic History 46, no. 4 (1 Oct. 2009): 389–403; Jelle van Lottum and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Labour Productivity and Human Capital in the European Maritime Sector of the Eighteenth Century,” Explorations in Economic History 53 (July 2014): 83–100.
2 Scholars have increasingly used the term “unfreedom” as a framework for analyzing this spectrum or continuum. See Jared Hardesty Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in 18th-Century Boston (New York, 2016); Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore, 2009); Simon Newman, A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic (Philadelphia, 2013); and Max Grivno, Gleanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790–1860 (Urbana, 2011).
3 Seth Rockman, “The Unfree Origins of American Capitalism,” in The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives & New Directions, ed. Cathy Matson (University Park, PA, 2006), 335–361; Rockman, Scraping By.
4 Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge, MA, 2018); Caitlin Rosenthal, “Capitalism When Labor Was Capital: Slavery, Power, and Price in Antebellum America,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 1, no. 2 (2020): 296–337.
5 Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 66–68.
6 Jennifer L. Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic (Durham, NC, 2021); Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia, 2016).
7 Jack and jack tar were common popular terms for sailors in the eighteenth-century. Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, ed. Werner Sollors (New York, 2001); Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (New York, 1987); Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000); Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York, 2007); W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA, 1997); Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807 (Cambridge, UK, 2006); Michael Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade : Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680–1783 (Chapel Hill, 2010); Kevin Dawson, “The Cultural Geography of Enslaved Ship Pilots,” in The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, ed. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Matt D. Childs, and James Sidbury (Philadelphia, 2013), 163–184.
8 Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time On The Cross: The Economics Of American Negro Slavery (New York, 1989 [1974]); Robert William Fogel, Without Consent Or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989); see also Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 2021 [1944]); Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer, “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South,” Journal of Political Economy 66, no. 2 (1958): 95–130.
9 Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York, 2016); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014); Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (Philadelphia, 2016); Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA, 2013); Gavin Wright, “Slavery and Anglo-American Capitalism Revisited,” The Economic History Review 73, no. 2 (2020): 353–383; Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, “Biological Innovation and Productivity Growth in the Antebellum Cotton Economy,” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 4 (2008): 1123–1171; Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, “Cotton, Slavery, and the New History of Capitalism,” Explorations in Economic History 67 (Jan. 2018): 1–17.
10 Jeremy Adelman and Jonathan Levy, “The Fall and Rise of Economic History,” Chronicle of Higher Education 61, no. 14 (5 Dec. 2014): B9–B12; Scott Reynolds Nelson, “Who Put Their Capitalism in My Slavery?,” Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 2 (June 2015): 289; Eric Hilt, “Economic History, Historical Analysis, and the ‘New History of Capitalism,’” Journal of Economic History 77, no. 2 (June 2017): 511–536.
11 Nicholas Brown to Abraham Whipple, 18 Nov. 1763, Abraham Whipple Papers, 1763–1793, Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Jacob Wendell to John Morck, 24 Sep. 1729, Sedgewick Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), Boston, MA; Jacob Wendell to Francis Baker Sr., 25 Nov. 1723, Letterbook 1, Wendell Family Papers, MHS; Thomas Richie to John Hazelwood, 26 May 1758, Thomas Riche Records, vol. 3, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), Philadelphia.
12 Samuel Leacock to Thomas Clifford, 22 April 1760, Clifford Family Papers, HSP, Philadelphia; John Stevens to John Reynell, 14 May 1751, Incoming Correspondence Reynell Family Papers, HSP, Philadelphia.
13 Jacob Wendell to William Roby, 23 Nov. 1731, Letterbook 2, Wendell Family Papers, MHS; Orr, Dunlope & Glenholme to Capt. Beatly, 11 July 1767, Orr, Dunlope & Glenholme Letterbook, 1767–1769, HSP, Philadelphia; Jacob Wendell to Capt. George Damicott, 27 July 1752, Letterbook 3, Wendell Family Papers, MHS.
14 Orders for John Butler, 6 June 1764, Enoch Hobart to Bears & Cuthbert, 6 June 1764, Enoch Hobart Papers, Manuscripts Collection, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc., Mystic, CT.
15 Thomas Richie to Capt. Pyne, 6 Nov. 1756, Thomas Richie Letterbook, 1755–1756, HSP, Philadelphia; Nicholas Brown to Capt. Sheldon, 23 Jan. 1771, Brown Family Business Records Box 547, John Carter Brown Library, Providence; Capt. James Duncan to Metcalf Bowler & Co. 3 March 1757, Christopher Champlin Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence.
16 Menard, “Transport Costs and Long-Range Trade.”
17 Menard, “Transport Costs and Long-Range Trade.”
18 Jacob M. Price and Paul G. E. Clemens, “A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675–1775,” Journal of Economic History 47, no. 1 (1987): 1–43; Richard J. Blakemore, “Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight: Seamen’s Earnings and the Venture Economy of Early Modern Seafaring,” Economic History Review 70, no. 4 (2017): 1153–1184.
19 Peter Earle, “‘English Sailors, 1570–1775,’” in Those Emblems of Hell?: European Sailors and the Maritime Labour Market, 1570–1870, ed. Paul C. van Royen, Jaap Bruijn, and Jan Lucassen, vol. 13, Research in Maritime History (St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1997), 73–92.
20 For examples see, Jacob Wendell to Thomas Lille, 30 Dec. 1731; Jacob Wendell to Thomas Lille, 15 April 1732; Jacob Wendell to Myndert Wimpel, 20 April 1732; Jacob Wendell to Samuel White, 7 June 1732; Letterbook 2, Wendell Family Papers, MHS.
21 Gerard de Malynes, Vel Lex Mercatoria, Or The Antient Law-Merchant (London, 1622), 135–138.
22 Giles Jacob, Lex Mercatoria: Or, the Merchants’ Companion, Containing All the Laws and Statutes Relating to Merchandize (London, 1718), 107–108; Wyndham Beawes, Lex Mercatoria Rediviva or, the Merchant’s Directory Being a Complete Guide to All Men in Business, 2nd ed. (London, 1751), 98.
23 Charter party between William Carter and Phillip Smith, 31 Jan. 1735; Charter party between Stephen Sandwell and Philip Smith, 2 Dec. 1738; Charter party between Aaron Davies and William Black, 31 Jan. 1738, Deputy Notary Public Book, 1734–1743, Maryland State Archives (MSA), Annapolis, MD; Charter Party between Edward Ogle and Asher Richardson, 26 July 1747, Notary Public Book 1744-1797, MSA, Annapolis, MD.
24 Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 305.
25 Deposition of Michael Wilson, 14 April 1740, Deputy Notary Public Book, 1734–1743, MSA, Annapolis, MD; Deposition of Edward Ogle, 26 February 1747, Notary Public Book, 1744–1797, MSA, Annapolis, MD.
26 Deposition of William Hill, 25 July 1748, Notary Public Book, 1744–1797, MSA, Annapolis, MD.
27 Deposition of Daniel Dulaney, 5 December 1739, Deputy Notary Public Book, 1734–1743, MSA, Annapolis, MD.
28 Nicholas Brown to Abraham Whipple, 18 Nov. 1763, Abraham Whipple Papers, 1763–1793, Clements Library, Ann Arbor, MI.
29 Humphry Class to John Reynell, 24 July 1750, Reynell Coates Incoming Correspondence, Coates and Reynell Family Papers, Box 5, HSP, Philadelphia, PA; Richard Taylor to Gentlemen, 13 Aug. 1758, Mercantile Collection, 1726–1950, Box 5, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York.
30 Hannah Knox Tucker, “Masters of the Market: Ship Captaincy in the British Atlantic, 1680–1774” (PhD diss., Charlottesville, University of Virginia, 2021), 115–117.
31 Thomas Amory to John Whitton, 1 February 1719, Amory Family Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
32 Rosenthal has demonstrated that enslavers’ accounting practices similarly facilitated the oppression of enslaved people laboring on plantations. Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery.
33 James F. Shepherd and Gary M. Walton, Shipping, Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, UK, 1972); Menard, “Transport Costs and Long-Range Trade”; Phillip Reid, The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800: Continuity and Innovation in a Key Technology, Technology and Change in History 18 (Leiden, 2020); Riggs, “Transportation Efficiency in Eighteenth-Century Merchant Vessels.”
34 Douglass C. North, “Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600–1850,” Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 5 (Sep. 1968): 953–970; Shepherd and Walton, Shipping, Maritime Trade; T. M. Devine, The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and Their Trading Activities c. 1740 –90 (Edinburgh, 1975).
35 Tucker, “Masters of the Market”; Menard, “Transport Costs and Long-Range Trade.”
36 “Shipping Returns,” CO5/1441–1449, The National Archives (TNA), Richmond, UK. This is the number of records after dropping duplicate records. The comprehensive dataset contains 30,821 discrete records for vessel entrances and clearings. I judged 5,571 of these records to be duplicates, and after concatenating their information to populate empty fields, I dropped duplicate records.
37 Ship utilization measures do not undercut this productivity measure because captains clearing Virginia for the West Indies consistently loaded their vessels to full capacity. Because captains primarily traded high-bulk provisions like wheat, corn, wooden staves, rum, sugar, and molasses in West Indies trading, they managed their cargo space better than transatlantic vessels that loaded high-value but low-bulk manufactures on the voyage west. Ship utilization measures, especially for the West Indies, must be treated with some caution because Chesapeake shippers consistently exported living animals, simply called livestock in the shipping returns. Sources suggest one cow or horse took up five cargo tons per animal. For my shipping utilization measure, I assumed livestock meant a cow or horse, but it might mean pigs or chickens. If the term livestock referred to pigs or chickens, the livestock cargo tons assumption should be reduced, reducing the shipping utilization measure (which measured above 100 percent for some entries). However, the prevalence of neutral livestock references in the data was relatively uncommon, so this potential criticism does not significantly undermine the finding that captains trading to the West Indies utilized their vessel space well. For more on the cargo tons measurement and ship utilization measurement see, Tucker, “Masters of the Market,” 150-190.
38 Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade.
40 Devine, The Tobacco Lords.
41 Paul G. E. Clemens, The Atlantic Economy and Colonial Maryland’s Eastern Shore: From Tobacco to Grain (Ithaca, NY, 1980), 200–205.
42 Mary McKinney Schweitzer, “Economic Regulation and the Colonial Economy: The Maryland Tobacco Inspection Act of 1747,” Journal of Economic History 40, no. 3 (Sep. 1980): 551–569.
43 Paul Musselwhite, Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth: The Rise of Plantation Society in the Chesapeake (Chicago, 2018); Richard F. Dell, “The Operational Record of the Clyde Tobacco Fleet, 1747–1775,” Scottish Economic and Social History 2 (1982): 1–17; Kathryn Lasdow, “‘Spirit of Improvement’: Construction, Conflict, and Community in Early National Port Cities” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2018).
44 This argument builds on work by Rosenthal, “Capitalism When Labor Was Capital”; Rockman, “Unfree Origins of American Capitalism”; Rockman, Scraping By, 5–7.
45 Francis Nicholson, “Proclamation to Prevent Seamen from Running Away,” 8 December 1691, CO5/1306 TNA, Richmond, UK.
46 Blakemore, “Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight.”
47 Denver Brunsman, The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Charlottesville, 2013), 6, 25–27; Christopher P. Magra, Poseidon’s Curse: British Naval Impressment and Atlantic Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, UK, 2016). For the daily actions of a press gang in the 1740s, see “Letters from the Impress Service,” ADM 1/3663, TNA, Richmond, UK.
48 James Hudson to Rathbone, 30 July 1755, Rolfe and Hudson Store Accounts; James Hudson Shipping Accounts and copies of letters, 1743–1783, Hudson Collection, ca. 1647–1862, New York Public Library; Jonathan Easton, 6 Jan. 1748, “Logbook kept by Jonathan Easton on board the brig Mary Ann,” Log 386, Manuscripts Collection, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc., Mystic, CT.
49 “Proposals of the Jamaica Merchants for the better carrying on and securing the Trade of Jamaica,” 18 Sep. 1696, CO 137/4, TNA, Richmond, UK.
50 Arthur Pierce Middleton, Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Newport News, 1953); Brunsman, The Evil Necessity, 106; Governor Trelawney to the Lords of the Admiralty, 21 December 1743, CO 137/57 Part 2, TNA, Richmond, UK.
51 Governor Trelawny to the Duke of Newcastle, 29 July 1742 CO 137/57 Part 1, TNA, Richmond, UK.
52 Nicholson, “Proclamation to Prevent Seamen.”
53 Deposition of David White, 24 June 1690, HCA 13/80, TNA, Richmond, UK.
54 Arthur Browne, A Compendious View of the Civil Law, and of the Law of the Admiralty, Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures Read in the University of Dublin., vol. 2 (London, 1802), 176–178; George F. Steckley, “Freight Law in the Seventeenth-Century Admiralty Court,” Journal of Legal History 27, no. 2 (Aug. 2006): 180.
55 George F. Steckley, “Litigious Mariners: Wages Cases in the Seventeenth Century Admiralty Court,” Historical Journal 42, no. 2 (June 1999): 315–345.
56 William Craig and Lord Craig, “Answers for Andrew Ross, and others, sailors of the ship Ingram of Glasgow, to the Petition of John Glassford and Company, merchants in Glasgow,” 25 Apr. 1771, University of Virginia Law Library, Scottish Court of Session Digital Archive Project (SCOSDAP), 2015–2019, accessed 1 Feb. 2024, https://scos.law.virginia.edu/.
57 Alexander Wight, “Answers for John Glassford and company, Merchants in Glasgow, to the Petition of Andrew Ross and others, late Mariners on board the Ingram of Glasgow,” 7 Feb 1771, in SCOSDAP.
58 Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, 2004); W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA, 1997).
59 Trevor Burnard, “Reviews of Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807,” International Journal of Maritime History 19, no. 1 (June 1, 2007): 287–332; For the broader trends, see Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York, 1975); Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (Cambridge, UK, 2010), 41.
60 David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master–Slave Relations in Antigua (Durham, NC, 1985), 110; Charles R. Foy, “Eighteenth Century ‘Prize Negroes’: From Britain to America,” Slavery & Abolition 31, no. 3 (Sep. 2010): 381.
61 Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade, 132, 148–149.
62 Stephen K. Behrendt, “Human Capital in the British Slave Trade,” in Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery, ed. Anthony Tibbles, David Richardson, and Suzanne Schwarz (Liverpool, 2007), 14–42; Daniel Vickers and Vince Walsh, Young Men and the Sea: Yankee Seafarers in the Age of Sail (New Haven, 2005), 177.
63 Bolster, Black Jacks, 18–19.
64 Bolster, Black Jacks, 236.
65 Governor Trelawney to the Lords of the Admiralty, 21 December 1743, CO 137/57 Part 2, TNA, Richmond, UK.
66 Charles R. Foy, “Seeking Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1713–1783,” Early American Studies 4, no. 1 (2006): 51. For opportunities available to white colonizers in Black majority Caribbean colonies, see Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean, Early American Studies (Philadelphia, 2000); Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (Chapel Hill, 2004).
67 Jacob Wendell to John Ellery, Jan. 1723, 22 Dec. 1724, Letterbook 1, Wendell Family Papers, MHS.
68 Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 69.
69 Rosenthal, “Capitalism When Labor Was Capital.”
70 Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 70.
71 Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront; Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade; Foy, “Seeking Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1713—1783.”
72 Bolster, Black Jacks, 34–36; Charles R Foy, “The Royal Navy’s Employment of Black Mariners and Maritime Workers, 1754–1783,” International Journal of Maritime History 28, no. 1 (1 Feb. 2016): 31–35.
73 Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade, 148.
74 N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, 2nd ed. (New York, 1996), 159–161.
75 The percentage of Black sailors in the Royal Navy fell somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 5 percent between 1750 and the American Revolution, a number that falls significantly below the more anecdotal measures of 25 to 30 percent mentioned above for merchant vessels. Foy, “The Royal Navy’s Employment of Black Mariners and Maritime Workers, 1754–1783.”
76 “Ran away,” The New England Weekly Journal, 18 October 1737; “Ran away,” Boston Gazette, 17 November 1747; “Ran away,” Boston Gazette, 29 November 1773; “Ran away,” Boston Gazette, 9 May 1774; “Runaway,” The Saint Christopher Gazette, 19 November 1785, Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers and Caribbean Newspapers.
77 Simeon Griswold, 5 Dec. 1768, Logbook Two Brothers, Log 320, Manuscripts Collection, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc.