1The word ‘lure’ can be understood as far as slaving voyages were concerned, as the charm or the attraction of those expeditions. In the context of the 17th and 18th centuries, it implied that a few men from rural England, hoping to find means of subsistence in big cities such as Bristol, turned to slaving voyages. Those expeditions seemed to hold the promise of a better life. The second meaning of the word suggests that those voyages were mere baits or decoys to attract and trap men in crossings that proved to be fatal for many of them. Recruited among the poorest, sailors were the workforce that could easily be discarded. Seamen used as cheap means of production drew in more investments in the business and secured the already comfortable position of Merchant Venturers in the mercantile society of Bristol. Yet, the two brief definitions suggest that seamen contributed in some manner to the development of the slave trade. Nonetheless, out of the twenty books produced by local historians on the slave trade in Bristol, only three have chapters dedicated to poorer sailors. Most of them are about captains, surgeons and first mates. Onboard a slave ship, a part of the crew was employed at manning it. The other part was in charge of maintaining the ship itself and taking care of the crew. Carpenters, coopers, surgeons and apprentices were employed as well as people who guarded the slaves to prevent them from rebelling. This paper is an attempt to challenge the hegemonic discourse regarding a part of the history of the slave trade. The restricted access to the stories of sailors might have blurred the contribution of that group in the economic, social and political spheres. In order to measure to what extent they were key players in the slave trade in Bristol, we need to look at who they were, how they were recruited, what life was like on slave ships and what role they played in the abolition movement.

2Most sailors working in Bristol slave ships were originally born in Bristol or its surrounding areas. Historian Jonathan Press1 showed that in the 18th century, 5 % of the population worked as sailors but these figures did not take into account the fact that 13 % of them were not from Bristol. They came from Liverpool, Plymouth, Hull, and Southampton but also from Wales and Ireland. Occasionally, they were from the Netherlands and Sweden. Free Black men were also employed as sailors despite the fact that some of them were sold as slaves by unscrupulous captains. Seamen used to travel to various parts of the country to try and find work, particularly in difficult times. C.R. Boxer2 established that seamen from the Netherlands left their countries because of low wages and difficult terms of employment to work in English slave ships. It does not necessarily mean that English sailors were not ill-treated in those ships. There seems to be a controversy around the subject onboard British and French ships. British Parliamentary Reports3 emphasized the cruelty of French captains when historians specialised in the history of the slave trade showed that there was hardly any difference between life onboard French and British slave vessels. Captains and officers were most of the time following family traditions so were most sailors. Yet at times, particularly in times of war or in the 17th century during economic setbacks, captains hired people from the rural parts of the country, beggars and generally, anybody who wanted to work on slave ships. In the 18th century, Bristol slave ship captains found it hard to recruit sailors. These ships had a bad reputation. The mortality rate was 18 % in 1747. It decreased to 12 % in 1789 (Press 1976: 9). The explanation for this death rate was mainly, illness and ill-treatment. If Europeans brought measles, smallpox to Africa and America, crew members suffered from malaria and typhoid. Gastroenteritis and stomach related disorders were not rare on slave ships. Many seamen came back to the metropolis with disabilities. Vision impairment was common. A few of them were totally blind.

3 In the first part of the 18th century, the country in general and Bristol in particular was enjoying the benefit of economic stability. What we call the ripple effect of wealth of the slave trade, was tremendous. It became harder to find people willing to work on slave ships. There were still a few means of recruiting crew members. The most common one was crimping. It consisted in luring people to slave ships. Pub landowners encouraged their customers to drink and have intercourse with prostitutes. These people were presented with a bill to be immediately paid. Pub landowners knew that these people could not afford to pay off their debts. They offered them two options: they could either go to jail or join the crew of a slave ship. Once recruited, captains paid the sailor a part of his wage in advance so that he could payback the pub landowner to settle his debts. The latter also received some kind of compensation from the captain. We may think that because the method was often used, many sailors knew the trick and could avoid being trapped; they did, but a few records showed that alcoholism was widespread among seamen. Jonathan Press (Press, 1976: 2) showed that given their lifestyle, very few could escape from poverty and debts. Those who did not drink alcohol would learn during those voyages.

By the year 1780s, a large part of central Bristol was the exclusive preserve of her seafaring community, and the streets and alleys around the Backs were thronged by the many seamen who inhabited the boarding-houses of King Street, Queen Street... Bristol’s sailor’s town was emphatically not for the landsman, for it was the scene of frequent drunken brawls, and the unwary landlubber, or even the ‘outlandish’ seamen, stood a good chance of being knocked on the head and rubbed... It is of course hardly surprising that the seamen should have revelled in the wild life ashore, since they were cooped up for such long periods on board ships. Many men, particularly those in the foreign trade, preferred using their hard-earned wages for the purchase of a few weeks’ riotous living rather than to provide for their declining years, and of course the sailor quarters of major ports were always frequented by a multitude of prostitutes, brothel-keepers, slop-sellers and landlords eager to fleece the sailor of his cash.

4The other method used was called press-gang. It was particularly efficient in times of war. During the Seven Years War, men were taken from prisons to work in British ships. The Royal Navy also pressed seamen at sea and even merchantmen on shore. It meant that they had to change employers at sea to work for the Royal Navy whether they liked it or not. It happened that seamen who had just set foot on shore were immediately pressed and forced to go back to work. Ignoring the population’s resentment, press-ganging continued in the city. It even became dangerous to walk in the area around the docks known as Marsh Street or King Road, where sailors, poorer newcomers, brothel-keepers and shop-sellers lived. When seamen where recruited, they were asked to sign a contract called the Article of Agreement in which they stated that they agreed with the terms and conditions of employment. Most sailors could neither read nor write. They just needed to add a cross on the document. That meant they did not know the details of the contract. Those who could read were offered most of the time the opportunity to write their will. It entitled their relatives to ask for payment of the wages of the deceased sailor.

5The types of vessels used in the triangular trade were important points as far as the lives of seamen were concerned. Economic stakes were essential in links which were established between Europe, Africa, and America. Vessels used were as important as seamen. The size, tonnage and the type of cargoes of those slave ships varied greatly. Reverend Thomas Clarkson, who wrote a report on seamen and whose work was instrumental in the abolition of slavery in Britain, established in 1788 that ships going to Africa were generally carrying 12 men for 100 tons if the ship had 300 tons burden. For ships leaving the metropolis for the West Indies, for the same burden, they carried 7 men for 100 tons. Clarkson was suggesting that those vessels did not need to employ such a high number of people. He showed that in African voyages, 2/5th of the whole crew were what was called able seamen, in other words, professional seamen. For West Indian voyages, 4/5th of crew were able seamen. The rest of people employed in slave ships were not needed. According to Clarkson, those people died mainly because the merchants Bristol Venturers wanted to make sure that their investments were secured. The smallest slave ships weighed 27 tons but most of them weighed more that 400 tons and were able to hold up to 600 slaves. Investors had the choice to either tight pack the cargo or loose pack it. For tight packing, an important number of slaves was carried, bearing in mind that many would die during the transatlantic crossing but hoping that survivors would be sold at an interesting price not only to meet the costs but also to generate profits and finance future voyages. Loose packing was chosen by other members of the Society of Merchant Venturers. They had a less important number of slaves and these people were carefully taken care of in order to be in good condition so that they could be sold at a good price in the slave markets of the Caribbean. Practicing loose packing meant that a few shipowners invested in smaller vessels that could ship out to the Atlantic for slave trade journeys and be used for West Indian expeditions.

6 The salary of seamen varied to a great extent. Unskilled sailors were paid 25 shillings per month. Skilled seamen had 30 shillings. Within the group of those who were considered as able seamen, there were also significant differences. A carpenter for example, received 70 to 80 shillings while his apprentice only had 20 shillings. Captains had 70 to 100 shillings but in many cases in Bristol (it was different in Liverpool) captains, surgeons or first mates were granted what was called a Negro privilege. They could buy a slave with no crossing fees, sell him or her and keep the profits or, buy a slave with money provided by investors, sell him or her and keep the profits. The aim was to encourage captains to take care of the investments. Archives showed that it did not prevent some of them from mistreating slaves and therefore jeopardising sometimes the expedition or minimizing their own profits. Alcoholism was also widespread among captains. Jonathan Press using Ralph Davis’s study observed that 12 shillings should be added to the wage of each crew member to have an idea of how much it actually cost to maintain each crew member aboard slave ships. The 12 shillings are in fact related to the costs of food.

7Food played a crucial part in the death rate of sailors. Cheese, butter and bread were part of their daily meals. So was liquor. They were given a quarter to half a pint of spirits or wine every day. Beef was granted only on Sunday. Despite the introduction of lime onboard, scurvy was common. Beriberi was also widespread because of food deficiency. As part of their signing the Article of Agreement seamen consented to see food portions diminished if the captains decided to do so, be it because of the deterioration of certain types of food such as beef, pork or if food had been stolen and everyone could not be fed anymore. The decision to ration food equally or not was often determined by the relationship captains had established with crew members. The captain was the master of the ship. Instructions to Captains we studied4 showed that they were always asked to take good care of the cargo and of the crew. Bristol Merchants were also aware of the fact that most crew members were alcoholics, people who were considered to be criminals.5 Bristol captains were particularly known for their brutal treatment of crew members and slaves. John Wescott, master of the William, punished one of his crew members by beating him up severely. That night, the crew member with a few other sailors killed Wescott and his first mate, and took control of the ship. In his autobiography, Silas Told6 made a severe and moving account of captains’ treatment of his crew. Silas Told and Joseph Banfield were regularly whipped and humiliated during a few transatlantic crossings. Silas Told became later in life, a Methodist and turned against slavery. Banfield kept working on slave ships despite the fact that he was once rescued by black people on the West coast of Africa after having been left stranded on a small boat for a certain time.

8The relationship crew members had with slaves depended on captains’ orders. Studies have shown that in slave ships where captains abused, ill-treated slaves or raped slave women and children, crew members were not prevented from doing the same. Yet, the crew had to prevent slaves from killing themselves and from rebelling. We need to bear in mind that on the one hand, these young men in their early 20s were confronted with people who had lost their freedom and they had to try and maintain order, and on the other hand, they had power of life and death over the enslaved Africans. They were controlling men and women they considered to be pagans and therefore evil. From diaries, sailors accounts and Thomas Clarkson’s study,7 we know that life aboard was marked by violence, fear and terror on both sides. Nonetheless, in that context, friendship between sailors existed. They worked in teams. They had to learn to live together. Yet there are accounts of ill-treatment and humiliations between professional sailors and people from the countryside who joined slave ships. The division started with the difference in wages previously mentioned. Sailors had a different type of relationships with officers. Very often, officers would lend money with interest rates to sailors onboard, so that they could buy liquor if they wanted. Sailors also borrowed money from them to be spent in the Caribbean. Many of these sailors spent all their wages onboard or in the West Indies and came back to Bristol with no money at all.

9Before the involvement of Member of Parliament William Wilberforce in the abolition movement, Reverend Thomas Clarkson travelled across England and met surgeons, sailors, apprentices, carpenters so on and so forth, to look at their participation in the slave trade. Because fewer men were needed to man vessels, once in the West Indies captains were to discharge those who were employed at guarding the slaves. They also discharged those who were ill, blind and dying, for economic reasons. These people were then left starving and begging in the Caribbean, until they could find help or manage to be employed by someone else. Most historians established that the abolition movement really started when the population learnt about the reality of seamen’s lives in the Caribbean and in particular the poor state of a few crew members.

10For a long time, the history of the transatlantic slave trade was presented in such a way that studies focussed on the abolition movement and on a few names such as William Wilberforce in Britain and Victor Schoelcher in France. Historians such as Max Ifil8 for example, indicated that slaves were constantly rebelling against plantation owners and made it difficult for the plantocracy to carry on. As for Wilberforce, he used the trial of David Kimber to show how slaves were mistreated. The testimony of the surgeon James Arnold was presented in the House of Lords Committee and used as evidence against the slave trade. Therefore, to some extent, seamen played a role in the abolition movement. In Bristol, the powerful society of Merchant Venturers created the Hospital Funds in order to protect seamen and their families. Help was not systematic. A portion of their wages was taken to finance the Fund. Yet, when some of them asked for help, the fund administrators could refuse. There were a few law suits against the Hospital Funds as well as against a few seamen who challenged the Fund. It was harder for families to have the wage of the deceased seamen on a few occasions as it was the captain’s decision to acknowledge that the seamen died before receiving payment of his wage. Nevertheless, some sailors managed to make a fortune by settling in the West Indies. Some fought against the brutal treatment of the crew and of slaves on slave ships before ending up trading in human misery later in life. David Richardson suggested that it took 25 years for someone who was connected to the Society of Merchant Venturers to succeed in building trust and becoming a captain. There are very few examples of sailors who earned enough money to afford to pay for apprenticeship. Those men suffered and in the end very few had the opportunity to fulfil their dreams of a better life. Presenting enslaved Africans as a powerless group is as detrimental as disregarding the abuse and suffering of seamen in that sinister trade. Sailors involved in the slave trade are still a forgotten group within studies related to the history of the transatlantic slave trade.