?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(SLAVERY.) Crew list for the voyage of a ship active in the early trans-Atlantic slave trade. Partially-printed Document Signed by Captain Samuel Underwood of the sloop Endeavor of Newport, his first mate William Joy, three sailors (all signing by mark), and a boy. One page, 15¾ x 12½ inches, completed in manuscript, with manuscript pay receipts to the sloop's co-owner Christopher Champlin on verso signed by the 5 crew members and a witness; minor wear including several small holes along folds. Newport, RI, November 1760 to January 1761
The sloop Endeavor was fitted out for the slave trade. It brought enslaved cargo from Africa to the West Indies on at least two documented voyages, one before and one after this date.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database shows that in 1755 under a different captain, the Endeavor sailed from Rhode Island to Cape Coast Castle in Africa, loaded 80 captives, and delivered 66 of them to Barbados. Jay Coughtry's book "The Notorious Triangle" also lists the 1755 voyage and records another similar slave voyage to Barbados in 1762. Christopher Champlin (1731-1805), named as one of the Endeavor's co-owners on verso of this document, was a well-known slave trader.
This particular voyage left Newport, RI for the West Indies no earlier than 15 November 1760, and returned to Newport by 6 January 1761, so they would not have had time to visit Africa and collect slaves. We don't know what cargo they did carry, but we do know the general pattern of commerce during this period, particularly from Newport. The ship may have carried provisions to sugar cane plantations in Barbados, and then loaded up with molasses to bring back to Rhode Island for conversion into rum. Rhode Island also featured one of the more active slave plantation economies in the northern colonies. The ship could have carried some enslaved people from the West Indies to Newport.
The printed form itself is interesting from an entirely different angle. It was printed in Newport by James Franklin, Jr. (1726-1762), a nephew of Benjamin Franklin who had apprenticed under his famous uncle in Philadelphia. One other example of this Franklin-printed form has been traced--a photostat at New York Public Library of an example which was used in 1758. The form is not in Evans, Alden, or ESTC.
