British Shipping Research Articles

Ocean funerals: the sea and Victorian cultures of death

Maritime mortality rates were declining on passenger ships in the nineteenth century, but witnessing a death and funeral during an ocean voyage nevertheless remained a common enough experience. The article explores reactions to ocean funerals on nineteenth-century British and Irish emigrant ships and also more broadly. While shock and distress inevitably figured large, other responses, including acceptance, enthusiasm and even degrees of voyeurism, were not unusual. Moreover, in common with Victorian audiences more generally, at least some emigrants had an appetite for the sensation and spectacle of the ceremony. Broader cultural interest in the ocean funeral meant that it featured in a wide range of forms including popular journalism, narrative accounts of journeys and didactic literature. Emigrants consequently did not embark as blank slates but carried with them a well-established and familiar repertoire of ideas and images about the ocean funeral. Religious beliefs about the resurrection of the soul were likewise a source of consolation. Others found comfort by depicting the ocean as a spiritual site – likening the sea to heaven, for instance – or in the belief that an ocean burial was more natural, simple and therefore meaningful than a funeral on land. The growing significance of the sea in Victorian culture also played an important role in helping contemporaries make sense of, and come to terms with, an ocean funeral. Religious ideas about life as a spiritual journey enabled many Victorian men and women to look to the ocean as a way of thinking through bigger questions about life and death.

The Negotiations of Nigerian Seamen in the Transition from Colonialism to Independence: Smuggling to Make Ends Meet

Abstract:This article examines the economic and cultural opportunities Nigerian seamen exploited in the context of their work and travels throughout the colonial era, and the impact of decolonization on their livelihoods and self-conception. During the colonial era, Nigerian seamen resisted colonial categorizations of them as a cheap and docile source of labor for British shipping companies, and maneuvered to supplement low wages through smuggling enterprises. The processes of decolonization and the transition to independence, though initially greeted with enthusiasm, resulted in the loss of their economic independence and ultimately their vocational identities as seamen.

From Gold to Manioc: Contraband Trade in Brazil during the Golden Age, 1700–1750

In 1734, Lord Tyrawley, the long-serving British envoy to the Kingdom of Portugal, complained about the notorious practice of ‘running’ Brazilian gold in Lisbon harbor by British ships: There is no...

<i>Under Full Sail: Silent Cinema on the High Seas</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Under Full Sail: Silent Cinema on the High Seas Rielle Navitski (bio) Under Full Sail: Silent Cinema on the High Seas; DVD DISTRIBUTED BY Flicker Alley, 2009 The Flicker Alley DVD Under Full Sail: Silent Cinema on the High Seas is an eclectic assemblage of cinematic representations of "tall ships" dating from the 1920s and early 1930s. The DVD contains both documentary and fictional content, including a Fox Movietone short amid silent pieces with original accompaniments by Dennis James and Eric Beheim. Drawing on material from multiple prints found in the collections of Blackhawk Films, Lobster Films, Kevin Brownlow, and John E. Stone, author of the DVD booklet, the DVD has as its centerpiece a restored version of the 1927 DeMille production The Yankee Clipper. 1 The Yankee Clipper was planned as one of DeMille Productions' two annual specials, cost nearly a half a million dollars, and was to be directed by DeMille himself but was ultimately entrusted to Rupert Julian. 2 As the film was a box-office failure on its 1927 release, it might be argued that Flicker Alley has resurrected a curiosity rather than a masterpiece of silent [End Page 124] cinema by either historical or contemporary standards. 3 The short films portraying the voyages of clipper ships still operational at the time of production are often more fascinating than the feature, which repurposed a ship stranded in frigid Alaskan waters. 4 Under Full Sail's packaging promises viewers the "grandeur and allure of windjammers sailing open waters," and the accompanying booklet seems to be primarily targeted to sailing enthusiasts and others susceptible to the romance of the high seas, as suggested by the choice of Stone, a film collector employed as a navy engineer, to write the film annotations. The information provided about the films' production history and the technologies and practices of sailing they document or re-create is primarily factual. Stone's notes do not situate the film among other productions of the late 1920s, but they do speculate about the keen interest in representations of clipper ships at that historical moment, a phenomenon pertinent to the rerelease of The Yankee Clipper. Reissues of silent films on DVD use new technologies to capitalize on consumer nostalgia; in an analogous fashion, the films on Under Full Sail portray a mostly obsolete mode of transportation through the then-novel technology of cinema. The brand of nostalgic rhetoric that frames the DVD release is already embedded within several of the films. The 1928 Fox short Ship Ahoy, which depicts the daily routine of a vessel shipping lumber along the Atlantic coast, opens with an intertitle stating, "Almost vanished from the matter-of-fact world of today are the picturesque sailing vessels that one time bore the commerce and the romance of the high seas." The Yankee Clipper articulates a similar sentiment in explicitly nationalistic terms: "Today American ships are reappearing in the world's ports, as our Nation, humiliated by her lost prestige upon the seas, strives to regain the glory she so gallantly won in the Nineteenth Century." The Yankee Clipper returns to this historical moment to depict a sailboat race between the eponymous American vessel and the British ship The Lord of the Isles for control of the Chinese tea trade. Manifesting a longing for a mercantile age in which international trade meant adventure, The Yankee Clipper idealizes an economic system in which individual achievement is supposedly paramount, in contrast to the assembly-line commodity capitalism of the era in which the film was made and of which it was arguably a product. (It should be noted that DeMille Productions was a peripheral, short-lived player among Hollywood studios of the period, struggling to attain vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. 5 ) Paralleling the race between the British and American ships, the film (somewhat predictably) elaborates a romantic competition between The Yankee Clipper's captain, Hal Winslow (William Boyd), and the deceptive and cowardly Paul de Vigny (John Miljan), who is engaged to Lady Jocelyn (Elinor Fair), daughter of the captain of The Lord of the Isles. The men's rivalry is established in early scenes set in the port city of...

The birth and death of a ceremony

Records of the creation, generational transmission and eventual decline of an Aboriginal ritualistic Kurannup Song and Dance ceremony are presented. They are supposed to have been adapted from the Marines parade they witnessed when the British ship Investigator was anchored in King George Sound, Western Australia in 1801.

Book Review: British Shipping and World Competition

Book Review: British Shipping and World Competition

David E. Shuttleton, Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660–1820Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660–1820. David E. Shuttleton . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+265.

<i>David E. Shuttleton,</i> Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660–1820<i>Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660–1820</i>. David E. Shuttleton . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+265.

Solar Cycles in 150 Years of Global Sea Surface Temperature Data

AbstractThe purpose of the present work is to demonstrate that a solar cycle response exists in surface temperature using the longest global dataset available, which is in the form of 1854–2007 sea surface temperature (SST), with an emphasis on methods and procedures, data quality, and statistical tests and the removal of deterministic signals, such as volcano aerosol forcing and greenhouse gas warming. Using the method of composite-mean difference (CMD) projection, signals of warming during solar maximum and cooling during solar minimum years are found in the global SST over the 14 cycles, dispelling previous claims that the solar cycle response before 1920 is opposite to that of the modern era. The magnitude of the solar cycle response averaged over the oceans between 60°S and 60°N is about 0.1°C of warming for each W m−2 variation of the solar constant (but is slightly lower, at ~0.085°C, when periods of suspected bad data are averaged in, which is consistent with previous work). The signal is robust provided that the years near the Second World War are excluded, during which transitions from British ships to U.S. ships introduced warm bias in the SST, as recently pointed out by D. Thompson and his colleagues. Monte Carlo tests show that the extracted signal has less than 0.02% chance of being a random occurrence. This establishes the existence of a solar cycle response at the earth’s surface at high statistical confidence. Contamination of the signal by volcano aerosols is estimated using the multiple CMD inversion method and found to be small over this long record, although ENSO contamination varies depending on the period chosen but is also small.The multidecadal trend of response to solar forcing is found to account for no more than a quarter of the observed warming in SST during the past 150 yr, under a reasonable but unproven assumption that the climate response to secular solar forcing and to solar cycle forcing has the same spatial pattern.

British Ships in the Confederate Navy

British Ships in the Confederate Navy

Prostitution and the Captain's Wife: A Public and Notorious Scandal in Eighteenth-Century Cartagena de Indias

Prostitution and the Captain's WifeA Public and Notorious Scandal in Eighteenth-Century Cartagena de Indias Nicole von Germeten (bio) … One hears of this in private conversations and in public gossip cliques. It is spoken of without shame, frankly, as a sufficiently notorious subject… Some listen and speak, others take note, and others see. Oh God, what a formidable scandal! In this great gathering of gossip, of opinions and experiences, your grace should feel, and I share this feeling, not only the destruction of your honor through its declining value and that of your house by its viciousness but also the widespread ruin [caused] by the scandal. Your grace is judged by men, and you should not think that these men are only the corrupt, malevolent ones with little fear of God. No, Señor don Juan. Sensible, cautious, wise, zealous and god-fearing men of authority in this city are also internally consumed by the publicity of this case … [This scandal] is pestilential for the entire republic.1 In 1735, doña Luisa Llerena Polo de Aguilar, a woman of Spanish descent born and bred in Cartagena de Indias (modern-day Colombia) married don Francisco Piñero, a Spanish soldier. A year later, the Spanish crown created Cartagena's batallón fijo (permanent battalion) to defend the Caribbean coast of South America from foreign invasions and contraband trade. Don Piñero joined the battalion with the rank of ayudante mayor.2 In 1737, the governor of Cartagena rewarded Piñero's excellent service in helping organize the battalion by promoting him to captain. Eventually Piñero had command of over fifty artillerymen.3 In 1741, the batallón fijo [End Page 263] helped the city withstand an attack by 186 English ships led by Admiral Edward Vernon.4 Along with the military and geopolitical threat of England's expanding power in the Caribbean in the mid-eighteenth century, the city of Cartagena experienced the dishonor and shame of a sex scandal, at the center of which was none other than captain Piñero. Not long after this scandal unfolded, the batallón fijo, "an honorable [auténtica] military unit of the Army of the Spanish Crown," disbanded.5 Because of the actions of Piñero, doña Luisa and her alleged lover, a merchant named don Juan Arechederreta, in the 1740s and 50s, Cartagena's military, religious personnel, governor, and Spanish society as a whole could not stop talking about adultery and lenoncinio (procuring) among the Spanish elite officer class. While the main participants were never exactly caught in the act, their presumed affair, and the fact Captain Piñero allegedly both tolerated and profited from it, so disturbed the city that complaints were sent to the Council of the Indies. What most threatened and exasperated the local church, state, and military authorities was the fact that the three actors in this scandal appeared to disregard the censure and denunciations pronounced publicly by the governor, military officers, and members of both the Dominican and Jesuit orders. These witnesses observed that don Francisco and doña Luisa had certainly violated morality but their greater offense was disregarding the rules of honorable behavior: they persisted in continuing their behavior despite the acknowledged injunctions of the Hispanic honor code. Their disregard for convention shamed the local Spanish authority figures; and because this disgrace reflected poorly on the effective power of the governor, the person who represented the Spanish crown in Cartagena, the case came before the Council of the Indies in Seville. As a Spanish elite woman and a Spanish military officer, don Francisco and doña Luisa represented in theory those members of society most obliged to uphold the Mediterranean and Hispanic honor code.6 Early modern Spanish prescriptive literature, especially the often cited works of Juan Luis Vives and Fray Luis de León, placed female sexual modesty at the pinnacle of all virtues, and married it to men's obligation to commit violent acts to protect weak and susceptible women from their own sexuality.7 Case studies from secondary works such as Lyman Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera's Faces of Honor and several other archive–based studies...

The Use of Dog Sledges during the British Search for the Missing Franklin Expedition in the North American Arctic Islands, 1848–59

While the bulk of the searching parties sent out from the British ships deployed on the search for the missing Franklin expedition in the North American Arctic Islands over the period 1848–59 employed man-hauled sledges, dog sledges were also used quite extensively. The dog sledges were especially (but not exclusively) used as “couriers,” that is, for communication between the various wintering ships, where speed was the primary requirement. The total distance covered by dog sledges (excluding short hauls in the vicinity of the wintering ships) was, at a minimum, 11 576 km; this distance compares with the minimum 41 555 km covered by man-hauled sledges.

Introduction: Shakespeare, Race, and Performance

Shakespeare, race, and performance are three seemingly simple words which individually have a host of complex meanings that only become exponentially more multifaceted when placed in conjunction. Shakespeare is the man, the plays, the assumed authorial intentions, the original practices, and the cultural capital. Race is a social construct that classifies humans based on physical, cultural, and religious differences, but these constructs are historically, nationally, and performatively informed. And performance is an event, a set of specific practices, a way of making meaning, and an historical and ephemeral moment. The essays in this special edition approach the conjunction of Shakespeare, race, and performance from various angles. This special edition begins with an historical angle with essays that focus on the meaning and the ethics of reporting past performances. If a performance is a fleeting event that can never be fully recovered, how can one ascertain the meaning of race in past performances? Exploring this fundamental question, Patricia Akhimie delves into the ethics of reporting theatre history when race is involved through an examination of the Hamlet 1607 performance aboard an English ship off the coast of Sierra Leone. Adele Seeff, however, interrogates how and when a production's meaning is established when race is explicitly performed and competing discourses are employed by the actors, directors, theatre reviewers, and theatre historians. The essays then shift angles to focus on the practical with two well-known black American actors discussing their experiences with, and relationships to, Shakespeare on the page, stage, and screen. The conversation between Harry J. Lennix and Laurence Fishburne reveals them grappling with the tensions between assumed authorial intentions, performance history/conventions, and the desire for personal integrity. This conversation is followed by Peter Erickson's exploration of the implications in modern Shakespearean productions when both racial authenticity and racial harmony are the desired outcomes. Erickson applies productive pressure to the notion of casting about in Shakespeare. The final angle employed in this special edition weds practice to theory to explore how race should be performed in future Shakespearean productions. Jenna Steigerwalt discusses how practical concerns quickly become ethical ones for self-avowed original-practices companies. She asks the seminal questions: How does the performance of race fit into original practices? And how should the performance of race fit into original practices? And finally, I discuss different ways to theorize a potential return to blackface performances in contemporary Shakespearean productions. …

Listening to Leoiki: Engaging Sources in Hawaiian History

This paper challenges the perception of "silence" of Hawaiian women in the sex trade in 1820s Hawai'i by focusing on the sale of a Hawaiian woman, Leoiki—whose name means "little voice"—by a chiefess to a British whale ship captain in 1825. Working with family genealogies, depositions, American missionary correspondence, and other sources written in Hawaiian, this paper explores how the important principles of kuleana and kapu function within Leoiki's story as well as essential focal points for a Hawaiian historian's gathering and interpretation of sources. In writing this kind of history, this paper also sets out a new methodology that is interpretively consistent with traditional Hawaiian modes of remembering and perpetuating history.

Endgame 1758: The Promise, the Glory, and the Despair of Louisbourg's Last Decade (review)

Reviewed by: Endgame 1758: The Promise, the Glory, and the Despair of Louisbourg's Last Decade Peter Moogk Endgame 1758: The Promise, the Glory, and the Despair of Louisbourg's Last Decade. A.J.B. Johnston. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Pp. 382, illus. US$19.95 Endgame is the last stage of a chess match when few pieces are left on the board and a decisive move is to be expected. The penultimate move in the conquest of New France was the 1758 siege of the fortified seaport of Louisbourg on Cape Breton. Both British and French strategists saw that port as the key to France's Canadian colony. The author points out that the French government committed more munitions, ships, and men to Louisbourg's defence than were allocated to Quebec City's protection in 1759 (151–6). After the loss of Louisbourg, Quebec was open to attack, and the seizure of that town brought about the capitulation of New France in 1760. John Johnston has worked as a Parks Canada historian at Louisbourg, and that experience strengthened his conviction that the seaport's importance ought to be restated on the 150th anniversary of the final siege. He cites local archaeological evidence – a source that is still not fully exploited by most Canadian historians. Archaeology and archival research are major sources of information for Parks Canada historians, who excel at presenting military and social history to the general public. What distinguishes this account of the second siege of Louisbourg is the author's wide range of sources and his attention to the impact of events upon the colonial population and soldiery before and during the 1758 siege. He builds on his colleagues' many studies of colonial society on Ile Royale (Cape Breton). This is military history with a social context. Earlier histories treat the Seven Years' War in Atlantic Canada as a series of decisions by senior officers and administrators followed by a description of the military consequences. The 'pawns' – to use the author's chess metaphor – were removed from the board without acknowledgement of their perceptions or experiences. They were statistics. The written sources used by previous historians [End Page 164] were usually government communications and officers' journals. John Johnston draws on a wider range of material. One writer he quotes is Olaudah Equiano, an African slave on a British ship. The book is filled with well-chosen quotations from people at different social levels. One surprising statement is Ensign René Gaulthier de Varennes' ready appreciation of the Nova Scotian administrators' expulsion of the Acadians, 'a perpetual thorn in their side, whom they could at best look upon as secret domestic enemies' (87). In addition to having a broad perspective, John Johnston offers fresh insights into the 1758 siege. Both attackers and defenders applied lessons from the 1745 siege of Louisbourg by New Englanders. As a consequence of French preparations to avoid a repetition of that defeat, the British forces suffered twice as many casualties as the French. The town's situation was more precarious in 1758. The expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia had deprived the seaport of a regional source of foodstuffs. The settlement's economy was crippled by the wartime interruption of the seasonal fishery and the disruption of maritime commerce. Acadians and Micmacs (Mi'kmaqs) are described with sympathy and in considerable detail, although their role in the 1758 siege was slight. Arming and provisioning these auxiliaries drained French resources. France's Native allies were more helpful as a perceived threat, affecting plans for the British landing and for the protection of the troops who disembarked. Johnston notes that the seizure and killing of paroled Britons and Americans by Abenakis and others after the surrender of Fort William Henry in August 1757 put the British in a vengeful and unforgiving mood. Blame extended unjustly to the French troops. At Louisbourg on 26 July 1758, British commanders demanded unconditional surrender and denied the honours of war to the French garrison after a valiant defence over seven weeks. That delay prevented an expedition against Quebec in 1758. The William Henry massacre also explains the vituperative statements made by Edward Boscawen, James Wolfe, and Jeffery...

Essay] British Shipping and Seamen during Conrad’s Days

Essay] British Shipping and Seamen during Conrad’s Days

At the Far Reaches of Empire: The Life of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (review)

Reviewed by: At the Far Reaches of Empire: The Life of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra Christopher Storrs At the Far Reaches of Empire: The Life of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. By Freeman M. Tovell. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7748-1367-9. Maps. Illustrations. Appendixes. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 435. CAN $85.00. In the second half of the eighteenth century the Spanish Bourbons, alarmed at Russian and British expansion into and interest in the Pacific coast of what is now the United States and Canada, initiated a series of expeditions of exploration, discovery and delimitation – or extension - of imperial frontiers, launched from the naval department of San Blas in the viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) to [End Page 269] claim that coast for Spain, and so protect the still enormous Spanish imperial presence in the Americas. These activities culminated in the Nootka Sound incident of 1790, when war looked almost certain between Spain and Britain following the seizure of British ships and destruction of a British trading post there (on what is now Vancouver Island) by one of those many Spanish expeditions. One of those who settled the crisis for Spain was the naval officer, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, who played a leading part in this cycle of Spanish imperial expansion in North America. Born in 1744 in Lima, the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, the younger son of a merchant father who had emigrated from the Spanish Basque Country, Juan Francisco studied first in Peru before crossing the Atlantic to enter the Academy for Naval Officers (Escuela de Guardiamarinas) at Cadiz. Having graduated, he joined the navy as an officer cadet, or guardiamarina, in 1762, gradually rising through the naval hierarchy, and receiving his final promotion, as ship's captain in 1784. Bodega y Quadra's promotions – which also included an habito in the prestigious Military Order of Santiago – were due very largely to his part in the expeditions referred to above. His participation in these adventures was almost entirely fortuitous. He was not a first choice candidate for men to go on the expedition which set out from the naval department of San Blas in 1775, and on which – as commander of an inferior vessel – he took possession in the name of king Charles III of Spain of the ports of los Remedios and Bodega. This success brought various rewards, including another expedition, that of 1779. Further voyages of this sort were rendered less easy by the outbreak of war between Spain and Britain (1779-83), Bodega y Quadra passing to Havana and to Spain, but in 1789 Charles III ordered him back to the Pacific coast of New Spain, as commanding officer of San Blas naval department. There, as Spanish commissary, working with the British representative, George Vancouver, he was responsible for the implementation of the Nootka Sound convention agreed at the Escorial by the British and Spanish governments in October 1790, on his third and final expedition, that so-called " of the Limits" (1792). Bodega y Quadra died in 1794, aged 50. Clearly an important figure, unfortunately Bodega y Quadra did not leave much by way of private papers with which the historian can reconstruct his private life, such that much of the latter must remain obscure. Fortunately, however, the remarkable administrative machine that was Imperial Spain provides sufficient material to piece together his career and the expeditions he played such an important part in; so too do Bodega y Quadra's own diaries or journals of the voyages of 1775, 1779, and 1792. Freeman Tovell has drawn on these latter and the correspondence between Bodega y Quadra and his superiors in Spanish America and Spain, now housed in various repositories – including the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the Archivo Historico Nacional in Madrid, the Archivo General at Simancas, the Huntington Library and the Bancroft Library - to good effect. In doing so, Tovell outlines for an English-reading audience the biography, career and achievement of an ambitious and energetic Spanish creole naval officer who played an important [End Page 270] part in the exploration by the European states in the...

Reflections on the Bicentennial of the Abolition of the British Slave Trade

In March 2007, I visited the United Kingdom to present two conference papers on black abolitionists in the Atlantic world. Both talks drew upon my recently published book Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World (2007). I also planned to use this trip to evaluate bicentennial commemorations of the abolition of the British slave trade. This essay offers an analysis of some of the more important commemorations. Although events were also held in the major slave-trading ports of Liverpool and Bristol, this essay focuses on the capital of London.(1) I also attempt to address broader questions of historical memory and public history in this essay, which is divided into two parts: a critical examination of the commemorative events, followed by some suggestions for future commemorations. My sources consist of personal notes, published pamphlets, newspaper articles, secondary historical literature, and websites. The essay has three major objectives. The first is to provide readers of The Journal of African American History with a personal walking tour through these important commemorations, identifying various sources for further reading. The second is to make cross-national connections between slavery and abolition in the United Kingdom and the United States both past and present. The final objective is to help to explain why public history matters. EXHIBITING THE PAST The City of Westminster, a borough of London with city status, has long been home to the British political and legal establishment. Between February and November 2007, organized a series of events marking the bicentennial of the 1807 Act of Parliament outlawing slave trade participation by British citizens. The exhibit, On the Road to Abolition: Ending the British Slave Trade, 1807-2007, consisted of a trail around fifteen small and large sites presenting various aspects of the British slave trade and its abolition. Some of these sites were quite revealing. As a native Londoner, I have walked Trafalgar Square (London's equivalent of New York City's Times Square) countless times, but never noticed before a brass relief of a black crewman holding a musket at the base of the south side of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's column, a 170-foot monument to Britain's most famous sailor. This crewman was either George Ryan, a 24-year-old ordinary seaman listed as an African, or he was one of nine West Indians who served on Nelson's flagship Victory. (2) Indeed, black sailors often served on British and American ships. In the early 18th century, white sailors performed maritime labor, while most people of African descent were enslaved. This was to change, however, from the late 18th century onwards. Black men often served as cooks, officer's servants, and musicians in the British Royal Navy. Despite their menial tasks, black seamen obtained a degree of protection from kidnapping by serving on military ships. After the War of Independence, black men also served in the U.S. merchant marines. W. Jeffrey Bolster estimates that black men (mostly free) constituted nearly one-fifth of U.S. seamen by 1803; while Keletso Atkins maintained that between 40 to 50 percent of U.S. whale crews in the South Atlantic off the South African coastline were African Americans. (3) Although menial work and racism were rarely far away, this maritime experience reminds us that not all African Americans were enslaved, and that many of these traveling seamen played a vital role in establishing cross-national connections between people and ports. The exhibition Westminster and the Transatlantic Slave Trade mounted at City Archives was the 13th site listed on the trail. Through a series of twenty-five panels, the exhibit described the impact of the slave trade at the local level and particularly on the lives of black residents. One estimate puts the black population in Britain during the 1790s at between 10,000 and 15,000, with most living in and around London and working as laborers and domestics. …

"I Never Have Such a Sickly Ship Before": Diet, Disease, and Mortality in 18th-Century Atlantic Slaving Voyages

On 11 August 1750, British ship captain John Newton departed Liverpool aboard the vessel, Duke of Argyle, setting sail for the Windward Coast of Africa. After docking close a month later, he entered into business negotiations with local merchants for the procurement of various goods--both human and non-human. Much his satisfaction, the number of captives he boarded on his ship increased. However, as he traveled the waters venturing into different coastal areas, he confronted several instances of declining health among purchased bondpeople and several crew members. Following his arrival in a region referred as Rio Junque, West Africa, the unhealthy environment aboard ship appeared hinder Newton's future trading voyages and forced him declare, Having so many sick, am afraid [we] shall be able keep our boats going, presumably conclude any of his immediate slaving endeavors. (1) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As sickness continued advance, Newton chose draw upon available coastal resources in hopes of restoring the health of some of those enslaved. Prior his departure the neighboring locale of Grand Bassa, on 12 January 1751, he discharged several seamen put a boy on [shore], 27, being very bad with a (2) Three weeks after the young male's removal, his designated caretaker, Andrew Ross, shared with Newton that treatment notwithstanding, the bonded child's health deteriorated and he died. All too often, the physical and psychological traumas captives underwent during their final moments of life remain unrecorded. Despite the financial loss incurred by the boy's death, Newton intimated it was indeed what I expected. (3) Three months later, while attempting finalize slave sales in preparation for his Atlantic departure, Newton faced yet another medical episode. This concerned an enslaved girl referred as No. 92, who also became enfeebled by the flux. Similar her male shipmate, Newton sent the young female captive on shore, this time an individual named Peter Freeman. Upon her transfer, Newton concluded it was not so much in hopes of recovery (for I fear she is past it), but instead as he professed, to free the ship of a nuisance. In many respects his actions can be perceived as cold and indifferent the girl's condition. Yet, the primary concern for Newton, as with many slaving captains, rested on maximizing profits through the importation of healthy bondpeople. His financial intentions aside, on Wednesday morning, the next day following her relocation ashore, the young No. 92 died. (4) Ill health was a common aspect of the transatlantic slave trade. Thus given the wider terrain of sickness and death that claimed the lives of countless other enslaved Africans, the loss of the two above-mentioned captives is entirely unique. Ship captains carefully sought healthy Africans in their coastal negotiations. The proliferation of dangerous maladies, however, often weakened captives' valuable bodies, in some cases reducing the numbers of those transported New World ports. Regardless of race or gender, individuals traveling across the Atlantic were never granted immunity various seaborne ailments or spared from subsequent death. Even more importantly, medical complaints and treatment required for restoration played out much differently at sea than on land. In 1896 the young historian W. E. B. Du Bois distinguished himself as a leading scholar on the transatlantic slave trade through publication of his Harvard dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade the United States of America, 1638-1870. (5) Owing greatly Du Bois's early influence, a large number of studies continue emerge, further unearthing various aspects of this gruesome chapter in human history. Bicentennial anniversaries of the abolition of the slave trade by the British and the Americans have also helped revive many of these important discussions. …

A Hurricane History

CLIMATE SCIENCE One problem in assessing whether recent climate change has significantly influenced either the strength or frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms is that in general, these factors have been measured systematically only recently. Thus, establishing a reliable baseline to compare with present trends has been difficult. In the Lesser Antilles—one of the first areas settled heavily in the New World, and a focus of early trade—British ships' logs, newspaper accounts, official colonial correspondence, and other sources provide a variety of data over the past 300 years or so. Chenoweth and Divine used these sources to derive a historical record of hurricanes, tropical storms, and tropical depressions in this region, which is along the main track of storms that eventually develop and hit the United States and Mexico. The authors identified 550 tropical storms and hurricanes passing through these islands, about half of which were not previously detected, including in more recent records. Overall, there seems to be no discernable trend in activity since 1690, though the period from 1968 to 1977 had notably few storms.— BH Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst. 9 , 10.1029/2008GC002066 (2008).

‘Een extra fraai Octant in zyn kas’ uit de verzameling van een achttiende-eeuwse Amsterdamse regent

‘A very fine Octant’ from the collection of an eighteenth-century Amsterdam regent The Utrecht University Museum owns an octant made by Jonathan Sisson, an eighteenth-century London scientific instrument maker. The device was acquired in 1776 by Utrecht University at the auction sale of the instrument collection of Gerard Aernout Hasselaer, an Amsterdam regent, who held important posts at Dutch admiralties and the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East-India Company (VOC). The octant had been invented in 1731 by John Hadley, a vice-president of the Royal Society of London. Sisson made one of the first copies, which was put at the test at sea the following year. This try out proved to be a success, and octants soon replaced older instruments for measurements of the altitude of celestial bodies above the horizon at sea. The Dutch Republic was one of the first countries outside Britain where the octant was introduced. Among others, this introduction was stimulated by contacts between scientific instrument makers in both countries. In 1735 for instance, the Leiden instrument maker Jan van Musschenbroek was the first Dutchman to sell octants. It is known that he had business contacts with Sisson. In 1737 the octant was used for the first time on the Dutch vessel Teijlingen of the Amsterdam Admiralty. These developments occurred at a time that officials in the Dutch Republic became increasingly aware that the knowledge and practice of navigation on Dutch ships lay well behind those used at British ships. Dutch seamen and scholars drew up reports, pointing at the lagging of knowledge, and among others recommended the use of octants. These recommendations soon led to improvements, such as the founding of a navigational school in Amsterdam and the publication of a Dutch manual on its ships. Then these instruments were bought from Van Musschenbroek. Three years later the Company purchased octants from Benjamin Ayres, a former apprentice and brother-in- law of Sisson, working in Amsterdam since 1743. VOC governor Hasselaer played a stimulating role in this process of navigational improvements, being also the official representative of Prince William IV in three Dutch Admiralties. Hasselaer’s instrument collection reflects his interest, containing octants by both Sisson and Ayres. Sisson’s copy is particularly interesting because it has a number of technical devices, which are not found on contemporary octants. It has a brass frame with a wooden handle on the back, and two on either side for steadying the heavy instrument, a rack and pinion for slow-motion movement of the index arm, different types of adjustment for the mirrors, and a sight tube as well as a sight-vane. These devices are only found on octants by Sissons’s pupil Ayres, and on instruments made by others from the 1750s onwards. It is unlikely that Sisson’s example was intended for use at sea, for it was too heavy and probably also too expensive. Technically the instrument was well ahead of its time, suggesting that it was made specially for Hasselaer, perhaps at a time when the Company was contemplating the adoption of octants for its ships.