?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Letter to an American slave ship captain, ordering him to deliver "prime male slaves" to Havana. Autograph Letter Signed from ship owners Benjamin Homer and Benjamin Cobb Jr. to Capt. Joshua Delano. 2 pages, 13 x 8 1/4 inches, with no address panel or postal markings; toning, separations at folds, minor edge wear and staining. Boston, 27 October 1796
Joshua Delano (1769-1800) was a ship captain in Kingston, MA. He was a distant cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (we calculate them to be fourth cousins twice removed). In this letter, he is granted command of a Boston-owned slave ship, the Fairlady, and ordered to buy in St. Croix "as many prime male slaves as you can from 20 to 25 years in age old," obtain (false?) certificates that they were freshly imported from Africa, sell them in Cuba, and buy barrels of molasses with the proceeds. The participation of American ships in the international slave trade had been forbidden in 1794, but enforcement was spotty at best. The first prosecution under the 1794 act was in 1796, the same year as this voyage. In part:
"You being master of the schooner Fairlady . . . proceed directly to the towns of Bath or Washington in North Carolina. . . . When you have received your cargo on board, we would have you proceed for the island of St. Croix & their sell your cargo for cash . . . take in ballast & return to Bath or Washington. . . . The season will be so far advanced that it will not allow your going more than two voyages between St. Croix & North Carolina. We would have you purchase in the W Indies with the whole amount of our property as many prime male slaves as you can from 20 to 25 years in age old. Be very particular in your examination of them that they be young, stout, strong and hearty & not deform'd & those the latest from the coast of Guinea to be the only slaves. Observe that you obtain certificates to make known that the slaves where direct from the coast of Guinea and of the latest importation. This must be had to take with you to the Havannah, otherways you may meet with difficulty. We then desire you to proceed without loss of time to the Havannah. On your arrival their, sell your slaves and invest the neat proceeds in good mollasses. You'll observe & carry your shooks [barrel parts] with you from North Carolina. You must take a sufficiency of stout hogshead hoops. . . . By no means suffer any one article to be carried to the Havannah but your slaves."
This voyage would not qualify for inclusion in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, but two of the principals did have other documented involvement in the trade. Benjamin Homer, co-owner of the Fairlady, shows up as the owner of another ship which delivered 123 captives from Africa to St. Barthélemy in 1799. Capt. J. Delano brought 98 captives from Sierra Leone to Havana in 1797 in a different ship. Delano's gravestone in Kingston, MA shows that he died in Havana in 1800.
WITH--a customs document from this same voyage, certifying that Capt. Delano and the Fairlady were bound for St. Croix with a shipload of staves, shingles, hoops, and corn--the products Capt. Delano hoped to transform into enslaved cargo for the next leg of his journey to Havana. Washington, NC, 17 December 1796.
