James Penny, a slave trader, was presented with a magnificent silver epergne in for speaking in favour of the slave trade to a parliamentary committee. The wealth acquired by the town was substantial and the stimulus it gave to trading and industrial development throughout the north-west of England and the Midlands was of crucial importance.
However, even after abolition Liverpool continued to develop the trading connections which had been established by the slave trade, both in Africa and the Americas. Great city but how utterly appalling. How far will men go, even today, in their brutality.
And most of them would have claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ. You can warp the teaching of humanity to meet any need or desire. The wealth acquired by the town was substantial. The slave trade made a great deal of money for the city's docks. The stimulus it gave to trading and industrial development throughout the north-west of England and the Midlands was to have significant impact. In Liverpool was a fishing port with a population of 5, people. By , 78, people lived and worked in Liverpool.
Hair, eds. The original sources available on the Liverpool slave trade are outlined in F. Sanderson, 'Liverpool and the slave trade: a guide to sources,' Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S.
The manuscripts of the Liverpool slave merchant William Davenport held at Keele University Library have already been published in the same BRRAM series as the present collection, as have the American materials from both the above-mentioned Tarleton papers and the Holt-Gregson papers. The eighteenth-century Liverpool trading community is described in Sheryllynne Haggerty, The British-Atlantic trading community men, women, and the distribution of goods Several individual merchants and voyages represented in this publication have received attention from historians.
Notes on Thomas Leyland's career and extracts from some of his manuscripts are available in Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool privateers and letters of marque with an account of the Liverpool slave trade Material on his life is also included in John Hughes, Liverpool banks and bankers and W.
Crick and J. Wadsworth, A hundred years of joint stock banking, 4th edn. For the Bostock letterbook, see J. See also Vera M. Newton's relationship to transatlantic slaving has also been the focus of two recent studies: Marcus Rediker, The slave ship: a human history and James Walvin, The trader, the owner, the slave Comments on the log of the brig Ranger are found in Averil Mackenzie-Grieve, The last years of the English slave trade, My thanks to David Stoker, Manager of the Liverpool Record Office and Local Studies at the Liverpool Central Library, for checking the material to be filmed and supplying me with copies of in-house typescript descriptions of these records.
I have drawn upon these descriptions in writing my introduction, and have also gleaned detailed information on Liverpool's slave merchants from items listed in the bibliography. Morgan, K. Last updated: 29 September Brown Esq. The James Brown papers consist of a private log book see MD 47 kept by Captain James Brown when he commanded the Liverpool trading ship Gossypium on a total of eleven voyages between Liverpool and New Orleans between and six from Liverpool to New Orleans and five return voyages to Liverpool ; a letter book see MD 48 containing copies of letters written by Brown himself between and his death on 23 October , and by his executors; and a collection of accounts connected with the voyages of the Gossypium see MD 49 and other ships in which Brown had some financial interest.
Little is known of Brown himself save what can be gleaned or surmised from these papers; the highlight of his seafaring career seems to have been the violent hurricane he and the Gossypium survived in the Gulf of Mexico in October Brown was trading between Liverpool and New Orleans at a period of rapid expansion both in cotton growing in the Southern States and in the Lancashire textile industry.
His outward freights were mostly salt, but it was not always easy to find remunerative markets for it. Nor, in the mids, was cotton all that profitable a freight; glut production years or heavy consignments down the Mississippi might mean a demand for shipping but low prices for the commodity itself; furthermore American shipping was increasingly competing for cargo in these years.
Occasional speculative cargoes of copper and tinplate did not find such ready buyers in America as anticipated while, in the other direction, cotton cargoes were occasionally supplemented with consignments of Indian corn and flour. The profits to ship-owners were most variable, even erratic, and it is not altogether surprising to find the Gossypium engaged in a later voyage to Quebec, from whence she returned to Liverpool in the then record-breaking time of twenty days in October Brown also seems to have had an interest in the barque Ellen, which between September and June made a round voyage from Liverpool to the Caribbean coasts of Central America.
The papers kept by Brown and his executors contain a number of accounts for the various voyages, including provision and chandlery accounts, bills for sails and other ship equipment, wages paid, pilotage and harbour dues and the like which shed considerable light on the costings of Liverpool trans-Atlantic trading voyages at the time.
Brown's 'private' log book might interest latter-day yachtsmen in their planning of sailing voyages across the Atlantic, although the amount of 'dirty' weather he recorded might be rather deterring. Despite her record-making voyage from Quebec in , the Gossypium's average time between Liverpool and New Orleans was 52 days, her swiftest voyage taking 32 days and the longest 65; the average of five returning voyages was Besides routine notes of weather and sailing conditions Brown's log book gives some inkling of the monotony of long sailing-ship voyages when the crew had to be found painting and minor repair jobs to wile away the time, though this was preferable to the stress of storm and hurricane when the ship at best was 'labouring' in heavy seas, at worst in peril of loosing all sails, rigging, even of foundering.
Sighting another ship was an event to be noted down, especially when it was a famous vessel like the Great Western or when, a week out of Liverpool on 15 September Captain Smith of the barque Bangalore, an old schoolfellow of mine whom I had not seen for 14 years came on board the Gossypium being 5 months in his voyage from the East Indies.
Short of Provisions and Bread, Supplied him with both and other small stores. And very happy to meet him well. That particular day had begun rather badly for Brown laconically remarked 'John - seaman, struck the cook, cutting his eye badly. A month after leaving the Mersey, the log for 7 March noted that the 'First and Second mates had a quarrel that ended in a knock-down, when they separated afterwards yet better friends. Put him in irons he showing some resistance.
This last entry might indicate the martinet captain, as might the laconic record that no fewer than nine of his crew deserted on reaching New Orleans after an eight-week passage on 3 November Brown, too, seems to have been unlucky with his ship's stewards, for he added a postscript to a letter sent from New Orleans on 20 April to John Croft advising him to stop the steward's monthly pay since 'he has been making rather free with the Ale and Porter and I think it is likely that he will leave.
Two isolated snatches of verse crammed in the log which included the lines:. Hail beaut[e]ous morn. Thy cheering light Has chased the dark, tempest[u]ous night, The dim o'ershadowing gloom is gone The blast has ceased their dismal moan Hushed is the storm, the winds have ceased The sun bleaks forth, from clouds released, To guild the sweet enchanting scene. Most of the business letters deal with the disposal and acquisition of cargoes in New Orleans. Among them, however, the correspondence of Brown and, later, his executors, with the New Brunswick attorney, D.
Robertson of St Johns, has special interest in that it records that Brown owned a 'farm' in New Brunswick which was rented to an unsatisfactory tenant, Crookshaw, who sold the timber and generally racked the property. It may be surmised that Brown's interest in the property arose from the dependence of Merseyside mercantile traders and seafarers on North American timber for shipbuilding at this time. A hint of financial stringency might be conveyed in the correspondence about additional insurance for the Gossypium when she sailed from New Orleans to the Peruvian coast for the guano cargo in , but for many the most intriguing item in the correspondence associated with that voyage was the postscript written by Brown's partner, Leftwich, in a letter of instructions to the captain, John Lowther, with early Victorian double and treble italicising:.
Hoist your signals in passing different ships and be particular in writing us at all and every opportunity, and then without fail and when you write give all particulars of your movements as it is much more satisfactory than a short and brief letter. On the voyage the inventory of the Gossypium included a dozen muskets but no other armament. Trouble and danger had also been apprehended in June from privateering depredations on the outbreak of war between Mexico and the United States.
Brown's seafaring days apparently ended with his return from New Orleans in the summer of , but he retained his financial interest in the Gossypium and the Alexander Grant till his death. As there is no indication that he acquired an interest in the barque Ellen before her voyage to the Caribbean in September , one might surmise that he was gradually building up his position as a Liverpool ship-owner and might have attained greater prominence in Liverpool commercial circles but for his premature death at the age of forty-four, apparently from pneumonia following a cold, in the autumn of There is no reason to suppose that failing health or physical disability led to his retirement from active seafaring four years previously, although in a letter to John Croft from New Orleans on 18 May he had briefly mentioned that he had been, suffering from his 'old complaint' of a pain in the side.
Had he lived longer it is likely that he would have attained prominence as a ship-owner; it seems probable, however, that his family retained an interest in Merseyside shipping, for along with these papers there are two bills of sale see MD 52 of shares in the sailing ship Candida to which James Brown, in all likelihood one of the four children of the master of the Gossypium, was a party, as purchaser in and vendor in Rowe, J.
Last updated: 27 January Slave Trade Records from Liverpool, - Description. Search Collection Liverpool's Rise as a Slaving Port The documents reproduced in this publication relate to the triangular slave trade between Britain, Africa and the Americas during the eighteenth century, the period that saw Liverpool rise from being a small north-western port mainly handling cargoes and ships in the coasting, Irish and European trades to a large port with international trading connections.
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