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Materializing The Middle Passage A Historical Archaeology of British Slave Shipping 1680 1807 Jane Webster Full Chapter PDF
Materializing The Middle Passage A Historical Archaeology of British Slave Shipping 1680 1807 Jane Webster Full Chapter PDF
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Materializing the Middle Passage
Materializing the Middle Passage
JA N E W E B S T E R
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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© Jane Webster 2023
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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ISBN 978–0–19–921459–4
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Acknowledgements
This book has taken two decades to write, so I have many people to
thank for their support, expertise, guidance, and (not least)
patience. At the top of this list are my husband, Rob Young, and our
son, Adam. Rob has supported me in countless ways at every stage
of the research and writing process. Adam has grown up with
Materializing the Middle Passage: he was a year old when I began
the research and turned 22 as I finished the text. I am sure my boys
are mighty glad it is all done at last—but I could not have got there
without them.
I am deeply indebted to my friends, who have helped me out in
so many ways as this book has taken shape over the years: a huge
thank you to Verity Anthony, Julie Evans, Hannah Flint, Sarah
Haynes, Julian Haynes, Carsten Heldmann, Mark Jackson, Sophie
Moore, Henrik Mouritsen, Caron Newman, Richard Newman, Kirsty
Petley, David Richardson, and Debbie Richardson. Thanks also to the
allotment that I share with Sarah Haynes—it has been a much-loved
sanctuary for the pair of us for a long time, and sometimes we have
even managed to grow stuff there.
Materializing the Middle Passage began life with a 2001 Caird
Fellowship at the National Maritime Museum. I am most grateful to
the Caird Trustees, and especially to Nigel Rigby, who was, at that
time, the Director of Research at the NMM. I must thank the
museum, first, for letting me loose on their fantastic collections and
library resources and, second, for allowing me to spread a one-year
fellowship across three years. I asked about that possibility at my
interview and was granted it without hesitation; that flexibility
allowed me to focus on two works in progress at once (a book and a
small boy): I will be forever grateful. My original Caird research
project, centred entirely on the NMM’s own collection, has
snowballed over the years into something roughly the size of the
Lambert–Fischer Glacier: I do hope the Caird Trustees and the NMM
will feel it was all worth the wait.
Maritime and terrestrial archaeologists from many countries have
generously furnished information about their work and provided me
with images of their wreck sites and artefacts. I am especially
indebted to the Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave
Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora website
(http://www.slaveryimages.org), which has been a much-valued
source of inspiration, information, and images in the writing of this
book. David Moore and Corey Malcom have both shared their
expertise on the Henrietta Marie shipwreck. Special thanks are also
due here to the team at Aust Agder Museum, who curate the finds
from the Fredensborg wreck, and to Staffin von Arbin, Greg Cook,
Karlis Karklins, Michael Cottman, Museum of London Archaeology,
and Nigel Sadler. Jerome Handler went to considerable lengths to
provide original slides for me from his work at Newton Plantation: I
am most grateful to him and to my colleague Mark Jackson, who
scanned the Newton images for me. I am also indebted to Adrienne
Baron-Tacla for taking me to see Valongo Wharf and the Pretos
Novos Institute in Rio de Janeiro, and for facilitating a memorable
visit to the finds from Valango. I am grateful also to Helen
MacQuarrie, who made it possible for me to see, in Bristol, the
artefacts from the Rupert Valley cemetery on St Helena.
This book draws extensively on archive and museum collections,
and I have relied throughout on the expertise of a great many
archivists, curators, and artefact researchers. Thanks here especially
to Bertrand Guillet at the Château des ducs de Bretagne (Nantes),
the home of the unique and important images of Marie-Séraphique. I
am also indebted to Robert Blyth at the NMM, Jeremy Coote and
Ashley Coutu at Pitt Rivers, Suzanne Gott, Tony Coverdale, Vibe
Martens, Kenneth Kinkor, Liverpool Museums, and Bristol Museum
and Art Gallery. Thanks also to Karl-Eric Svardskog and Henriette
Jakobsen. Michael Graham-Stewart drew my attention to (and
provided a copy of) the entry from the log of HMS Sybille discussed
in Chapter 10. I am also very grateful to Sarah Coleman, Margarita
Gleba, and Malika Kraamer for sharing with me their ongoing work
on the cloth samples in Thomas Clarkson’s chest, curated by
Wisbech and Fenland Museum.
Over the last few years, I have been privileged to collaborate on
two digital heritage projects for the slavevoyages (Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade Database) website, alongside David Eltis (Emory),
Nicholas Radburn (Lancaster), Bertrand Guillet (Château des ducs de
Bretagne), and the brilliant creative team at the Emory Centre for
Digital Scholarship, who built the digital models of the French slave
ships Aurore and Marie-Séraphique used in the slavevoyages videos.
My own contribution to these projects has been minor, but my
understanding of the appearance and characteristic features of
slaving vessels has grown considerably through my involvement with
this work.
I have reached out to many other scholars for information about
the material world of the slave ship, including Kathleen Murphy (who
generously shared her research on the naturalist James Petiver in
advance of publication), Stephen Farrell (who in his former role as
Senior Research Fellow of the History of Parliament Trust advised me
on the workings of eighteenth-century parliamentary committees),
Lisa Lindsay (who shared her insights into Robert Norris’s time in
West Africa), Andrew Lewis (who provided invaluable advice on the
terms of the Dolben Act), Deirdre Coleman (who shared her research
on Henry Smeathman), and Katrina Keefer (who shared her work on
scarification and allowed me to use one of her reconstruction
drawings of marks on the face of an African recaptive).
I have always explored slavery from a diachronic perspective, and
discussions with colleagues who work on Roman slavery have
impacted this book in important ways. I am especially grateful here
to Jennifer Baird, Nick Cooper, Simon Corcoran, Sandra Joshel,
Franco Luciani, Henrik Mouritsen, Rebecca Redfern, and Ulrike Roth.
My academic home is the Archaeology section of the School of
History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University. Three
iterations of the UK’s RAE/REF research review system rolled by at
Newcastle without this book appearing; but, if my colleagues
harboured suspicions that Materializing the Middle Passage might
never be finished, they did not say so; on the contrary, I have
received nothing but encouragement. I would like my co-workers at
Newcastle to know that I am truly thankful to be part of such a
supportive, inspirational team. I owe a special debt to my friend and
colleague Caron Newman for the maps and other images she
produced for this book, and for taking on some of the work of
organizing image permissions. I have also learned a great deal from
former Newcastle graduate students who have shared my interest in
slavery, slave ships, West Africa, and postcolonial theory. I am
particularly grateful here to Stephanie Moat, Michael Smith, Wendy
Smith, and Tom Whitfield. Grants from the School of History, Classics
and Archaeology supported the cost of some key images, and
indexing.
Colleagues at Newcastle and elsewhere have generously made
the time to read and comment in detail on chapters or sections of
my draft text. I owe a particular debt to David Eltis and Mark Leone
here, but have also benefited from the insights of Katrina Keefer,
Lisa Lindsay, and Luis Symanski. I also want to thank Chris Fowler,
Diana Paton, Nicholas Radburn, and Rob Young for making time to
comment on various aspects and chapters of the book.
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Boxes
Abbreviations
1. Materializing the Middle Passage: An Introduction in Three
Objects
2. The British Slave Trade: A Brief Overview
3. Voices from the Sea: Documentary Narratives of Middle Passage
Voyages
4. Artefacts from the Sea: Shipwrecks and Maritime Archaeology
5. Guineamen: Materializing the Merchant Slaver
6. Witch Crafts: Slave Ships, Sailors, and African Cosmologies
7. From Ship to Shore: Some Trade Goods and Their Biographies
8. Other Cargoes: Shipping Home the Productions of Africa
9. Technologies of the Body on the Floating Pesthouse
10. Discipline and Punish: A Material History of Middle Passage
Practice
11. Surviving the Middle Passage
12. The Middle Passage Re-membered: A Conclusion in Three More
Objects
References
Index
List of Figures
1.1. Sandown in the Floating Dock. From the sea journal of Samuel Gamble
(1793–4). LOG/M/21, title page. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
London)
1.2. Elizabeth Finch Hatton and Dido Belle. Possibly by David Martin, c.1780.
(The Earl of Mansfield, Scone Palace, Perth)
1.3. Enamelled porcelain punch bowl depicting Swallow, probably painted by
William Jackson. C.58–1938. (Victoria & Albert Museum, London)
1.4. Elements of a necklace from grave B72, Newton Plantation, Barbados.
(Jerome Handler, Virginia Humanities)
2.1. The ‘Guinea’ coast, with the West and Central African countries mentioned
in Chapter 2. (Created by Michael Athanson, based on drafts prepared by
Caron Newman)
2.2. Sketch for the arms and crest granted to John Hawkins, ‘The Canton
geven by Rob[er]t Cooke Clar[enceux] King of Arms 1568’. (The College of
Arms, London)
2.3. Obverse of a 1663 Guinea coin. E1528. (British Museum Images)
2.4. The Luxborough Galley on fire, 25 June 1727. John Cleveley, 1760.
BHC.2389. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
2.5. The jack (knave) of hearts from a set of playing cards marking the
collapse of the South Sea Company. (Kress Collection (Bancroft), Baker
Library, Harvard Business School)
2.6. The proportions of the 10,480 TSTD slaving voyages undertaken by ships
from Britain originating in London, Liverpool, Bristol, and Lancaster.
(Image prepared by Caron Newman, using https://(Image prepared by
Caron Newman, using https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/mOu2kS5A
(accessed 21 March 2022))
2.7. The Southwell Frigate Trading on ye Coast of Africa, Nicolas Pocock,
c.1760. M669. (Bristol City Museums, Galleries, and Archives
UK/Bridgeman Images)
2.8. The principal zones from which British ships transported African captives.
(Created by Michael Athanson, based on drafts prepared by Caron
Newman)
2.9. Locations of the Gold Coast forts (Ghana) and other principal West African
trading sites mentioned in Chapter 2. (Created by Michael Athanson, based
on drafts prepared by Caron Newman)
2.10. Views of European forts and castles along the Gold Coast. Jan Kip, c.1704.
PAH2826. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
2.11. ‘New World’ disembarkation sites discussed in Chapter 2. (Created by
Michael Athanson, based on drafts prepared by Caron Newman)
3.1. Gold weight from the Gold Coast (height 62.5 mm). Af1949,08.2. (British
Museum Images)
3.2. Jean Barbot presents himself to the King of Sestro, 1681. Churchill and
Churchill (1732: v, plate G). (British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved/Bridgeman Images)
3.3. Lithograph of Hugh Crow (by W. Crane): frontispiece of Crow’s 1830
Memoirs. (Private Collection/Bridgeman Images)
3.4. Creamware jug (height 242 mm) bearing the transfer-printed image of a
3-masted ship. Below are the words ‘success to the brooks cap
t
. nobel’.
1994,0718.2. (British Museum Images)
3.5. Oval silver epergne by Pitty and Preedy, engraved with the arms of the
Town of Liverpool, inscribed: ‘This is one of two Pieces of Silver Plate
presented to james penny esqr by The corporation of liverpool 1792’.
1973.278. (National Museums Liverpool)
3.6. Frontispiece of Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, published in 1789.
Based on a painting thought to be the work of the miniaturist William
Denton. British Library Board. (All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)
3.7. Ignatius Sancho. Engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi, published by John
Bowyer Nichols in 1781. Based on the portrait of Sancho painted by
Thomas Gainsborough in 1768. (Michael Graham-Stewart/Bridgeman
Images)
4.1. Locations of the wreck sites discussed in Chapter 4. (Created by Michael
Athanson, based on drafts prepared by Caron Newman)
4.2. Model of Fredensborg, built by Terry Andersen. Aust-Agder Museum.
(Photo: Karl Ragnar Gjertsen, KUBEN Museum and Archive)
4.3. Underwater archaeologist on the site of Adélaïde, wrecked on the coast of
Cuba in 1714. (Photo: Christoph Gerigk. Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation)
4.4. Site plan of the Elmina wreck, showing the range of artefacts identified,
and their locations. (Gregory Cook)
4.5. Brick stack on the Havmanden wreck site. (Staffan von Arbin, Bohusläns
Museum)
4.6. Basket (143 × 165 × 165 mm) created in 2015 by artisans in Mossuril,
Mozambique. 2016.168ab. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum
of African American History and Culture. Open Access (CC0)
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/fd5c1dcaef5-0d51-4e34-8df7-27f2ee6dd95a)
4.7. Queen Anne’s Revenge site plan. (Image courtesy of the North Carolina
Department of Natural and Cultural Resources)
4.8. Plan of the James Matthews shipwreck. (Western Australia Museum)
4.9. Plan of the artefact debris field of ‘site 35F’ (full site name T7a35f-5) (Sea
Scape)
4.10. Michael Cottman at the site of the Henrietta Marie memorial. (Courtesy of
Michael Cottman)
5.1. Creamware punch bowl depicting a three-masted ship with the words
‘Success to the lord stanley Capt. Smale’. 146703. (National Museums
Liverpool)
5.2. The key structural characteristics of a frigate-built merchant slaver.
(Illustration prepared by Caron Newman)
5.3. Reconstructed preliminary lines plan of James Matthews. (B.
Hartley/Western Australian Museum)
5.4. The Practice of Sail Making with the Tools and A Sail Loft, illustrations from
Steel (1794: i, unnumbered page preceding 84). (Public domain)
5.5. Average (imputed) numbers of captives embarked graphed against TSTD
standardized vessel tonnages for British-based vessels between 1680 and
1807. (Data from https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/bGGx6qZa
(accessed 21 March 2022))
5.6. Plan of the profile, hold, and decks of Marie-Séraphique made by Jean-
René Lhermitte in 1770. (Château des ducs de Bretagnes, Musée d’histoire
de Nantes)
5.7. William Jackson’s painting A Liverpool Slave Ship, c.1780. 1964.227.2.
(National Museums Liverpool)
5.8. The slave ship Fredensborg II, commanded by Captain J. Berg. (Privately
owned. Photograph: M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark Picture Archive)
5.9. TSTD standardized tonnages plotted against average embarkation levels
for British slaving voyages, 1787–1807. (Data from
https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/mOu2kS5A (accessed 20 March
2022))
5.10. A Guinea merchant ship, drying sails. William Van de Velde the Younger,
c.1675. PAF6918. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
5.11. Profile view of the likely appearance of Henrietta Marie (constructed in
1699). From Moore (1997). (‘Henrietta Marie’, Slavery Images: A Visual
Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African
Diaspora, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2617
(accessed May 16, 2022))
5.12. A view of the Blandford Frigate, Nicholas Pocock, c.1760. M761. (Bristol
City Museums, Galleries, & Archives/Bridgeman Images)
5.13. Hall as illustrated in Hutchinson (1794). (Public domain)
5.14. Description of a Slave Ship. Broadsheet printed by James Phillips London,
in 1789. (Private Collection: The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images)
5.15. Cross-section of an eighteenth-century slave ship. (Chris
Hollshwander/Division of Work & Industry, National Museum of American
History, Smithsonian Institution)
5.16. The Anchorage off the Town of Bonny River Sixteen Miles from the
Entrance. PAD1929. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
5.17. Capture of the Spanish slaver Formidable by HMS Buzzard on 17
December 1834, William Huggin. BHC0625. (National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich, London)
5.18. Method for separating slaves, accompanying the testimony of Robert
Heatley, HCSP 69: 123. (Redrawn by Caron Newman)
5.19. French slave ship Marie-Séraphique, Saint Domingue (Haiti), watercolour
by unknown artist. (Château des ducs de Bretagnes, Musée d’histoire de
Nantes)
5.20. Detail from a painting of the slave ship Fredensborg II, dated 1788.
(Privately owned. Photograph: M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark Picture
Archive)
6.1. The Mataró ship model. Marietem Museum Collection (Marietem Museum
Rotterdam)
6.2. Detail from the lid of an ivory salt cellar, made by an Edo or Owo artist,
Benin (Nigeria), c.1525–1600. Af1878,1101.48. (British Museum Images)
6.3. Drawing of a mermaid as found in the lakes of Angola, by James Barbot
Jnr, from Churchill and Churchill (1732: v, plate 30) (Public domain)
6.4. Sapi–Portuguese salt-cellar lid, with mermaid figure. EDc 67. (National
Museum of Denmark. Photograph by Laila Malene Odyja Halsteen)
6.5. A twentieth-century Ibibio (Nigerian) Mami Wata figure. (87 × 61 × 25
cm). 1994.3.9. (Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University. Photograph
by Bruce M. White)
6.6. Copper alloy Akan gold weight in the form of a single-masted European
sailing ship (49 × 88 × 18 mm), eighteenth–nineteenth centuries.
nmfa_95-6-3. (Gift of Ernst Anspach, National Museum of African Art,
Smithsonian Institution. Photograph by Franko Khoury)
6.7. Undated emblem of Agaja (226 × 138 mm). Wooden finial, covered in
silver, depicting a three-masted ship with quarterdeck and two anchors.
1992.40.1 (402.910.001). (Musée Africaine de Lyon. Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47162707 (accessed
20 August 2022))
6.8. Cast of a bas-relief from the Palace of Agaja, Abomey, made by
Emmanuel-Georges Waterlot in 1911. 71.2012.0.4166. (RMN—Grand
Palais/Musée du quai Branly)
6.9. Female figurehead, c.1805, attributed to Simeon Skillin Jnr (?1756–1806).
M27185. (Peabody Essex Museum)
6.10. Three nineteenth-century wooden tomb figures from Brass in the Niger
Delta. (Left: 0.4652. Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester.
Centre: Ea7825. Bristol City Museums, Galleries, & Archives. Right: AF
5122 University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology)
6.11. Ancestral screen, duein fubara, eighteenth–nineteenth centuries, Kalabari,
Nigeria (1140 × 730 × 420 mm). Af1950,45.333.a. (British Museum
Images)
6.12. ‘Ship-like’ instrument. TM-A-11006. (National Museum of World Cultures,
Amsterdam)
6.13. Nkisi kumbi lipanya, Cabinda National Museum of Ethnology. AO253.
(Direção-Geral do Património Cultural/Arquivo e Documentação
Fotográfica)
7.1. Samples of trade cloth. The West India Company and Board of Directors,
Documents and Letters from Guinea, 1705–1722. (Danish National
Archives. Photo: Vibe Martens)
7.2. European trade knife collected in Senegal in 1787–8 by Anders Sparrman.
1799.02.0083. (Museum of World Cultures, Stockholm)
7.3. Chokwe pendant, Angola, sixteenth–eighteenth centuries (279 × 375
mm). 1996.456. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
7.4. Seventeenth-century trade beads from the manufacturing site of Nicholas
Crisp, Hammersmith Embankment, London. (MoLA. Photo: Karlis Karklins)
7.5. Glass trade beads collected in Senegal by Anders Sparrman, 1787–8.
1799.002.0090. (Museum of World Cultures. Stockholm)
7.6. Left: powdered-glass bodom bead, probably of nineteenth-century date,
made in West Africa. Right: Venetian version of the bodom. 73.3.351 (L)
and 73.3.333 (R). Corning Museum of Glass. (Images licensed by The
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY (www.cmog.org), under CC BY-NC-
SA 4.0)
7.7. One of the 162 block-print designs for Indiennes made by Favre,
Petitpierre et Compagnie (1800–25). (© François Lauginie / Château des
ducs de Bretagne, Musée d’histoire de Nantes)
7.8. Page from a textile sample book made by the Manchester firm Benjamin
and John Bower. 156.4 T31. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art
Resource/Scala, Florence.)
7.9. Battery-wares made at Saltford Brass Mill. Left: Lisbon pan (350 × 100
mm). Right: Guinea kettle (300 × 190 mm). (Tony Coverdale, Saltford
Brass Mill Project)
7.10. Brass and pewter basin assemblage from the Elmina wreck site. (Gregory
Cook)
7.11. A strand of akoso beads dating to the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries.
(Suzanne Gott)
7.12. Ijebu-Ode cloth, handwoven local cotton and imported silk, with brocaded
imagery. A.716.29. (National Museums Scotland).
7.13. Thomas Clarkson’s chest, opened to show its contents. (Wisbech and
Fenland Museum)
7.14. A selection of the manillas recovered from the Elmina wreck site. (Gregory
Cook)
8.1. A. E. Chalon’s portrait of Thomas Clarkson, c.1790. (Wilberforce
House/Bridgeman Images)
8.2. Box of shells c.1800. Mahogany and pine box with pine trays holding
cardboard and glass boxes containing specimens. W.5:1 to 4-2010.
(Victoria & Albert Museum)
8.3. The Grotto at Bulstrode Park, as depicted by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm in
1781. King George III Topographical Collection, 11.1d. (British Library
Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)
8.4. Mid-nineteenth-century sailor’s valentine (shells and mahogany), made in
the West Indies. (Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images)
8.5. The four Bambara cowries gifted to Sarah Sophia Banks by Mungo Park in
1797. SSB 155.4. (British Museum Images)
9.1. Mortality rates among captives on British vessels over time—imputed
estimate. (TSTD data set
https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/Neg0nOcp (accessed 20 March
2022))
9.2. Katrina Keefer’s reconstruction of the markings of Recaptive 5959, Register
of Liberated Africans 1814–15, Sierra Leone Public Archives. (Katrina
Keefer)
9.3. Medical chest of naval surgeon Sir Benjamin Outram (1774–1856).
TOA0130. (National Maritime Museum UK, Greenwich, London)
9.4. Left: urethral syringe. Right: apothecary’s mortar and pestle. The Queen
Anne’s Revenge wreck site. (Images courtesy of the North Carolina
Department of Natural and Cultural Resources)
9.5. Cupping instruments in leather case, London, England, 1801–1. A606733.
(Science Museum, London/Wellcome Collection Images)
9.6. An illustration in Le Commerce de l’Amerique par Marseille (1764 : ii).
Original copper engraving by Serge Daget, 1725. (Courtesy of the John
Carter Brown Library)
9.7. Scrubbing brush (16.2 × 6.0 cm) from the Fredensborg wreck site. Aust-
Agder Museum. (Photo: Karl Ragnar Gjertsen, KUBEN Museum and
Archive)
9.8. Detail from Résumé du Témoignage Donné Devant un Comité de la
Chambre des Communes de la Grande Bretagne et de l’Irelande, Touchant
la Traite des Negres, 1814. (Diagram of the Decks of a Slave Ship, 1814,
Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life
in the Early African Diaspora,
http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2004 (accessed 30
March 2023))
10.1. Snuffbox made from the timbers of HMS Black Joke. ZBA 2435.4. (National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
10.2. Wives and Sweethearts, or Saturday Night, 1792: a broadsheet published
in London by John Evans. (American Antiquarian Society)
10.3. Brass bell from the Benin Kingdom, sixteenth or seventeenth century.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.17.85. (Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art
Resource/Scala, Florence)
10.4. Swivel gun, c.1750–1770. Mariners’ Museum and Park,
1935.0029.000001A. (Courtesy of the Mariners’ Museum and Park,
Newport News, Virginia)
10.5. Transport des Nègres dans les Colonies. Lithograph by Prexetat Oursel,
second quarter of the nineteenth century. (Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Chartres, France/Bridgeman Images)
10.6. Items of restraint, punishment, and force-feeding purchased by Thomas
Clarkson in Liverpool. From Clarkson (1808: i, between pp. 374 and 375).
(‘Untitled Image (Iron Shackles)’, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the
African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora,
http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2619 (accessed 13
July 2022))
10.7. Cord-wrapped shackle from the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck site. (Image
courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural
Resources)
10.8. A Marine & Seaman fishing off the Anchor on board the Pallas in Senegal
Road, Jany 75. Gabriel Bray, 1775. PAJ2013. (National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich, London)
10.9. Mid-eighteenth-century salt-glazed stoneware dish from the wreck of
Fredensborg. Aust-Agder Museum. (Photo: Karl Ragnar Gjertsen, KUBEN
Museum and Archive)
10.10. Deck plan of the Danish ship Rio Volta, constructed in 1777. Neg. A.3457.
M/S Museet for Søfart, Maritime Museum of Denmark. (M/S Museet for
Søfart CC-BY-NC-SA)
10.11. Sandstone mortar (400 × 250 × 230 mm) from the Fredensborg wreck
site. Aust-Agder Museum. (Photo: Karl Ragnar Gjertsen, KUBEN Museum
and Archive)
10.12. Colorized version of an archived copy of Vue du navire la Marie-Séraphique
de Nantes au moment de repas des captives. 2e voyage a Loangue 1771.
(Collection Dauvergne, National Maritime Museum, France, Plate No. 9912.
Colorization by Ian Burr, Emory University)
10.13. Group of Negroes as Imported to be Sold for Slaves, 1796. Print of an
engraving by William Blake for John Stedman. E.1215E-1886. (Victoria and
Albert Museum)
10.14. Nineteenth-century naval cat o’ nine tails. NMM TOA0066. (National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
10.15. Plan of the slave deck of Marie-Séraphique made by Jean-René Lhermitte
in 1770. (Château des ducs de Bretagnes, Musée d’histoire de Nantes)
11.1. Colorized reprint of a lithograph from the fold-out sheet (‘Plan and sections
of a slave ship’) included in the cover pocket of Carl Wadström’s An Essay
on Colonization, 1794. (The Library Company of Philadelphia/Everett
Collection/Bridgeman Images)
11.2. Illustration by William Butterworth for The Young Sea Officer’s Sheet
Anchor. From Lever (1808: plate facing p. 9). (Public domain, Google
Digitized)
11.3. Trade card of the London plane-maker John Jennion. BM, Heal, 118.8.
(British Museum Images)
11.4. Illustration by William Butterworth for The Young Sea Officer’s Sheet
Anchor. From Lever (1808: plate facing p. 23). (Public domain, Google
Digitized)
11.5. Akan drum acquired by Hans Sloane in Virginia. Am, SLMisc.1368. (British
Museum Images)
11.6. Tobacco pipe from grave B72 Newton Plantation, Barbados. (Jerome
Handler, Virginia Humanities)
11.7. Left: nineteenth-century Kongo power figure (Nkisi Nkondi). Right: Minkisi
Nkubulu. 1919.01.1162. (L: Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA Foundation
for the Arts Collection, gift of the McDermott Foundation/Bridgeman
Images. R: CC by 2.5, Museum of World Cultures, Stockholm)
12.1. The scarification marks of John Rock recorded 18 February 1820, after
Mullin 1994 29). (Redrawn by Caron Newman)
12.2. Scarification marks on the faces of enslaved Africans from Mozambique,
Johann Moritz Rugendas, 1835. (‘Brazilian Slaves from Mozambique,
1830s’, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and
Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora,
http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1571 (accessed 29
March 2023))
12.3. Beads found with burial B340, New York African Burial Ground. (Adapted
by Caron Newman from Bianco et al. (2006: fig. 299); original drawing by
M. Schur)
List of Tables
1.1. Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database summary statistics for slaving voyages
outfitted in ports in England, Scotland, and Ireland between 1562 and
1807
2.1. Estimated numbers of captives carried away from Africa (by region) on
ships originating in Britain between 1562 and 1807
2.2. Principal disembarkation points for captives carried away from Africa on
voyages originating in British ports between 1562 and 1807
3.1. Key slaving logs and journals employed in this study
3.2. Key slaving voyage memoirs employed in this study
3.3. Key documents published at the behest of SEAST 1788–9 and containing
detailed accounts of the Middle Passage
3.4. Testimonies by sailors with Middle Passage experience recorded in
Substance of the Evidence (1789)
3.5. House of Commons Sessional Papers (HCSP) containing witness
statements made as part of the 1778–92 inquiry process
3.6. Key parliamentary inquiry testimonies made by sailors with Middle Passage
experience
5.1. The nine Liverpool vessels measured in 1788 by Captain Parrey
5.2. Characteristics of some of the vessels introduced in Chapter 3, using
information drawn from TSTD, Lloyds Register, and details provided in
sailors’ accounts
5.3. Measurements relating to airflow on the ships measured by Captain Parrey
5.4. The metamorphosis of Duke of Argyle in 1750, as reconstructed from John
Newton’s account
6.1. Figureheads of some Liverpool-built slave ships of the eighteenth century,
where recorded in the Liverpool Registry of Merchant Ships
6.2. Popular women’s names employed for British slave ships, and the number
of voyages made by ships so named
7.1. Trade goods in demand at Cabinda, 1700
7.2. Trade goods carried on Daniel and Henry, 1700
7.3. Trade goods carried on Henrietta Marie, 1699
7.4. Cargo of the East India Company ship Royal Charles, 1661
8.1. Individuals with links to the slave trade who collected botanical samples on
behalf of James Petiver or transported letters and materials for him
9.1. Crew deaths on Samuel Gamble’s Sandown, 1793–4
9.2. Sickness and death on Duke of Argyle, 1750–1
11.1. Documented insurrections on British slaving voyages
11.2. Infrapolitical actions on Duke of Argyle, 1751 and African, 1752–3
11.3. Weapons used by captives, with the numbers of times each is mentioned
in documentary sources
12.1. African-born individuals from selected sites in the Americas
List of Boxes
BM British Museum
DRASSM Direction des Recherches Archéologiques Subaquatiques et
Sous-Marines
DWP Diving With a Purpose
EIC East India Company
GRAN Group de Recherche en Archéologie Navale
HCSP House of Commons, Sessional Papers
ISA International Seabed Authority
IZIKO Museums of South Africa
LRO Liverpool Record Office
MCC Middelburgsche Commercie Compagnie
MFMHS Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
MFMM Mel Fisher Maritime Museum
MoLAS Museum of London Archaeology Service
MoLA Museum of London Archaeology
NABS National Association of Black Scuba Divers
NCDNCR North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
NMAAHC National Museum of African American History and Culture
NML National Museums Liverpool
NMM National Maritime Museum
NMR National Monument Record
RAC Royal African Company
SEAST Society for Affecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade
SWP Slave Wrecks Project
TNA The National Archives of the UK
CO Colonial Office
T Treasury
BT Board of Trade
PROB Wills 1384–1858
TSTD Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
V&A Victoria and Albert Museum
WAPE West African Pidgin English
WPA Works Progress Administration
1
Materializing the Middle Passage
An Introduction in Three Objects
Since the 1960s, the history of Britain’s role in the slave trade has
been explored in great depth. Even so, significant gaps remain in our
understanding of the voyage that carried Africans to the Caribbean
and the Americas—a crossing long known as the Middle Passage.2
We know a good deal about certain aspects of this experience, not
least because important developments in the statistical synthesis and
presentation of archival data have produced a much clearer
understanding of where captives embarked, where they were taken,
the mortality rates on board slaving vessels, and the overall volume
of the slave trade (see Box 1.1). As examined in Chapter 3, few
detailed autobiographical African accounts of the journey into slavery
survive, but many accounts by British sailors have been preserved as
sea journals (see Figure 1.1), memoirs, travel narratives, or
abolitionist texts. In addition, a mass of testimony regarding
conditions on board British vessels was recorded during late-
eighteenth-century parliamentary inquiries into the slave trade. The
documentary record for British slave shipping is therefore extensive,
with the important caveat that this really is a British record, not an
African one.
Figure 1.1 Sandown in the Floating Dock. From the sea journal of
Samuel Gamble (1793–4). National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
LOG/M/21, title page.
that 132 living Africans be jettisoned overboard as the ship lay off
Jamaica. Why he took this decision is unclear, but in 1783 William
Murray presided over the second hearing in a dispute between
Zong’s owners and insurers as to who should bear the cost of the
jettisoned captives.12 As Murray was at pains to point out, this
hearing was not a criminal trial. He reminded the court that:
The matter left to the jury [in the first trial at Guildhall] was, whether it [the
jettison] was from necessity for they had no doubt (tho’ it shocks one very
much) the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown over
board it is a very shocking case.13
Whilst the notion of celebrating the slave ship repels today, this
was clearly not the case for many eighteenth-century viewers of this
artefact. This disjuncture, and the question of how we today, as
scholars and as members of the public, should interact with the
material culture of slave shipping, has troubled academia in recent
years. Since the turn of the century, scholarship on early modern
visual images of slavery has been dominated neither by
archaeologists nor historians, but by cultural theorists. The seminal
study here is Marcus Wood’s Blind Memory.23 Wood has argued
eloquently that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century representations
of slavery are hopelessly compromised by their saturation in racist
discourse, and by a voyeuristic obsession with physical suffering.
Through critique of a range of images, Wood perceives an
intersection between paternalism, pornography, racism, and
violence, which, he argues, characterized visual representations of
slavery between 1780 and 1865. Further, he suggests that any effort
to use these objects to understand ‘what happened’ in the past is
itself compromised: to look upon these works today and to attempt
through them to empathize with the trauma suffered by the
enslaved is, he suggests, complicity with our eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century ancestors.
Wood’s work mainly concerns paintings and other images
depicting enslaved Africans, but he extends his argument to other
artefacts of slavery, including the excavated finds from slave ships
discussed and illustrated throughout Materializing the Middle
Passage. For Wood, any effort to ‘rearticulate trauma through
empathy with objects’ is doomed.24 There can be no tangible contact
with the slave trade, he suggests, even via finds brought up from
wrecked slave ships like Henrietta Marie (discussed in Chapter 4).
Given this pessimism, it is ironic that Wood’s reading of the visual
culture of slavery—and his analysis of the representation of the
Middle Passage in museums—has had such a formative influence on
the way the voyage is presented to the public today.25 Many
historians of slavery have taken issue with aspects of Wood’s work,
pointing out that, whereas he might not seek to ‘understand’ the
past, they do. Like archaeologists, most historians keep faith with
the idea that a past existed beyond our own cultural imagining of it,
and that past is, if not fully ‘knowable’, at least open to informed,
contextualized interpretation.26 I have suggested above that
artefacts, like texts, were transcripts or statements in the discourse
of chattel slavery. The object (or text) was framed, and sustained,
by a worldview that is, for the historical archaeologist who has
written this book, a central point of enquiry. As Felicity Nussbaum
expresses it in her discussion of the need for scholars to consider the
politics of difference as it emerged in the eighteenth century, the
point of that project ‘is not simply to display or deconstruct the
practices represented by certain narratives of the past, but to locate
the logic of difference; the structures that were called into place and
maintained during the Enlightenment and its legacy’.27
The Swallow punch bowl, like most of the artefacts encountered
in this book, was framed by, and sustained, contemporary discourse
on the human as cargo. But, at the same time, porcelain bowls like
that in Figure 1.3 would have held entirely different meanings for the
master of a slave ship, a Quaker opponent of slavery, and the
African ‘servant’ of an absentee Jamaican planter, mixing punch for
his owner in Georgian Liverpool. A contextualized material
perspective—that is to say, an archaeological focus on the stuff of
slavery—has a vital part to play in capturing these polyvalent
meanings and exploring what they reveal about the logic of
difference in early modern Britain.
Language: English
A SECOND READER
By
Frank E. Spaulding
Superintendent of Schools, Newton, Mass.
and
Catherine T. Bryce
Supervisor of Primary Schools, Newton, Mass.
With Illustrations by
Margaret Ely Webb
NEW YORK
NEWSON & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1907, by
Newson and Company
All rights reserved
The authors and publishers desire to acknowledge their obligation
to Mr. Nathaniel L. Berry, Supervisor of Drawing in the Public
Schools of Newton, Massachusetts, for valuable assistance in
planning and arranging the illustrations in this book.
PREFACE
This Second Reader, like the two preceding books of the Aldine
Series, combines material and method in such a way that the former
does not suffer, while the latter gains by the combination. That is, the
subject-matter of the book, both the text and the illustrations, is just
as suitable and just as interesting as it could be made were there no
such thing as method; indeed, the sole sign of method, as one reads
the book, is the parenthesis about certain words preceding the
stories. At the same time, this subject-matter, both the text and the
illustrations, embodies in systematic arrangement the most effective
principles of mastering the mechanics of reading.
Children who have read thoroughly the preceding books of this
Series have acquired independence, the habit of self-reliance, and
the power of self-help to such a degree that they will be able to
master this book with little or no direct aid from the teacher. And
when they have thus mastered this book, they will be good readers.
That is, so far as the mechanics of reading is concerned, they will be
able to read unaided anything which they can understand; so far as
the subject-matter is concerned, they will be able to understand from
the printed page anything which they can understand through the
spoken word. More than this, if the teacher has contributed her part,
most such children will have realized the utility and tasted the real
delights of reading to such an extent that they will continue to read of
their own accord; most of them will also be good oral readers,
reading with appropriate expression and genuine enthusiasm.
These statements are not mere predictions of the hoped-for
results of untried theories; they are simple, unexaggerated
expressions of facts which have been observed in the work of
thousands of children of a score of nationalities.
To secure such results a complete mastery and intelligent
observation is necessary of the principles and plans described in the
authors’ Manual for Teachers, entitled “Learning to Read.”
The authors gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness to Miss
Marie Van Vorst for the use of “Three of us Know” and “The
Sandman”; to Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller for “The Bluebird”; to
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for the use of the poem
“Discontented,” by Sarah Orne Jewett, and “Calling the Violet,” by
Lucy Larcom; to Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons for “The Wind,” by
Robert Louis Stevenson.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Out of Door Neighbors 1
The Cat and the Birds 3
Why Ravens Croak 6
The Proud Crow 8
The Wolf and the Kid 12
Queer Chickens 17
Little Ducks Robert Mack 21
Once Upon a Time 23
The Caterpillar 25
Who is Strongest? 27
Lambikin 37
The Ant and the Mouse 46
Songs of Life 51
The Brook 53
The Little Brook 55
Calling the Violet Lucy Larcom 59
The Wind Mary Lamb 61
The Wind Christina Rossetti 62
The Wind R. L. Stevenson 63
The Leaf’s Journey 64
Sweet and Low Tennyson 69
Sleep, Baby, Sleep! From the German 70
Stars and Daisies 71
Lady Moon Lord Houghton 73
With Nature’s Children 75
The Little Shepherdess 77
Discontent Sarah Orne Jewett 81
Belling the Cat 84
Three of us Know Marie Van Vorst 91
The Dandelion 93
The Magpie’s Lesson 95
The Bluebird Mrs. Emily Huntington
Miller 100
The Wolf and the Stork 102
The Indian Mother’s Lullaby Charles Myall 103
In Story Land 105
How Mrs. White Hen helped
Rose 107
The Sandman Marie Van Vorst 115
Billy Binks 117
Some Things to think About 131
When the Little Boy ran Away 133
How the Bean got its Black
Seam 138
Friends L. G. Warner 145
Help One Another 147
With our Feathered Friends 149
The Drowning of Mr. Leghorn 151
The Starving of Mrs. Leghorn 160
Mr. and Mrs. Leghorn to the
Rescue 172
Vocabulary 179
Out of Door Neighbors
THE CAT AND THE BIRDS
“Show you the way home!” growled the wolf. “I am hungry and I’m
going to eat you.”