Trading vessels dominate the seas between 1660 and 1730. Their cargoes supply pirate incomes, while merchants and fences turn plunder into money. This chapter follows goods, people, credit and news around the Atlantic, giving the GM traffic to populate a harbour, merchants to bargain with and convoys to intercept. For territories, consult Powers of the Caribbean; for harbours, Nassau, Port Royal and Other Ports. Ships supplies hulls, Gear and Prices supplies character costs, and Era Rules supplies mechanics.
The Trade System
The familiar triangle sends manufactures to Africa, captives to the Americas and plantation goods to Europe. Actual voyages seldom complete that circuit. Most slavers sail out and back from one port, often returning in ballast; separate fleets carry American crops to Europe. Sugar ships and slave ships have different owners. Five overlapping circuits provide a more useful picture for play.
THE TRADE AT A GLANCE
- Volume. About 720,000 people are carried from Africa to the Americas in 1676 to 1700 and about 1.09 million in 1701 to 1725.
- Law. English colonial trade is tied to English and colonial ships, and sugar, tobacco and indigo may go only to England or another English colony. The French islands trade only with French ships from April 1717. Spain licenses its fleets and its slave supply.
- Money. The piece of eight is the coin of every sea. The English islands are short of it and keep accounts in sugar.
- Ships. The sloop is the workhorse. A 30-ton Boston sloop with seven hands, bound for Antigua, is the commonest vessel a Company stops.
- Seasons. Hurricanes run from June to November, worst in August and September.
Europe to Africa. Bristol records put cloth at roughly a third of outward cargo value, followed by brass kettles and copper rods, then iron bars, guns, powder, brandy, rum and beads. Cowrie shells serve as currency on the Slave Coast; gold serves on the Gold Coast, where an ounce of trade goods represents about 40s prime cost. Whydah prices captives in bundles of goods.
Africa to the Americas. Captives go to the islands and mainland, with Jamaica and Curaçao forwarding them to Spanish ports (The Trade in People).
The Americas to Europe. Ships carry sugar, molasses, rum, tobacco, rice, indigo, logwood, cacao, cochineal, hides and silver eastward, returning with manufactures, wine and provisions.
North America to the islands. Boston, New York and Newfoundland send fish, boards, staves, horses and flour south, receiving molasses, rum and coin. Plantations buy low-grade cod; better fish goes to Spain, Portugal and Mediterranean markets.
Within the Caribbean. Jamaica supplies Spanish ports with English goods and enslaved people. Bermuda sloops bring Turks Islands salt to the American coast. Logwood travels from Honduras and Campeche to Port Royal and Boston. Dutch sloops ship cacao, hides and sugar from Curaçao.
THE PLANTATION COLONIES, BY THE COUNT
| Place and year | White or European | Enslaved |
|---|---|---|
| Barbados, 1684 | 19,568 | 46,502 |
| Barbados, 1715 | 16,888 | — |
| Jamaica, 1713 | about 7,000 | about 55,000 |
| Nevis, 1708 | 1,104 | 3,676 |
| South Carolina, 1708 | 3,960 | 5,500 (4,100 African, 1,400 Indian) |
| Bermuda, 1721 | 4,850 | 3,514 (listed as Blacks, free and enslaved together) |
| Saint-Domingue, 1715 | 6,668 | 35,451 |
| Martinique, 1700 | 6,597 | 14,566 to about 16,000 |
| St Thomas, 1715 | 547 | 3,042 |
| Curaçao, about 1700 | about 2,400 | about 3,600 |
Enslaved people have outnumbered free inhabitants on Barbados since 1660, while its white population declines. Growing Jamaica has roughly eight enslaved people per white inhabitant in 1716. Saint-Domingue expands fastest, from 3,358 enslaved people in 1687 to 35,451 in 1715 and 79,545 in 1730.
What changed. In 1660 Dutch ships carry much of the region's sugar and rank second to English slave carriers. Barbados generates more commerce than all other English colonies combined. The Navigation Act of 13 September 1660 begins excluding Dutch shipping. By 1700 English islands produce about 25,000 tons of sugar, against Brazil's 20,000, French islands' 10,000 and Dutch islands' 4,000. The African Company's monopoly has ended, Bristol merchants have entered the Guinea trade and Kingston is eight years old. French sugar production is rising by 1716: Saint-Domingue sends about 7,000 tons to France in 1715 and 10,000 in 1721.
What Moved: Goods and Their Prices
Containers determine a cargo's weight and handling. Later records put a sugar hogshead at about 1,792 pounds; Teach's twenty-five hogsheads at Ocracoke in 1718 therefore weigh about twenty tons. Chesapeake tobacco hogsheads measure 48 by 30 inches and weigh about 1,000 pounds packed. A wine pipe or butt holds 126 gallons, a puncheon 84, a tierce 42. Dried cod is reckoned in 112-pound quintals.
GOODS OF THE TRADE
| Good | Source | Unit | Volume, law and use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugar | Barbados, Jamaica, the Leewards, Saint-Domingue, Martinique | Hogshead | Jamaica exports about 25,000 hogsheads a year by 1730. Enumerated, with cotton, ginger and fustic: English sugar goes only to England or an English colony. French islands ship brown sugar only; no new refinery since 1684 |
| Molasses and rum | The same works | Hogshead, puncheon, barrel | New England takes about 100,000 gallons of molasses a year from the Dutch by 1715, and Boston alone about 2,000 hogsheads a year from Dutch, French and Danish ports in 1716; it distils about 2,000 hogsheads of rum a year. Rum has been given to seamen in the West Indies in place of beer since 1655; it is not yet the Navy's official ration |
| Tafia | French islands | Barrel | Unaged cane spirit, cheaper than rum, mostly drunk locally; it cannot be landed in France and is smuggled to New England, New France and the African slaving ports |
| Tobacco | Virginia, Maryland, Cuba, Brazil | Hogshead | Chesapeake exports run about 20 to 35 million pounds a year by 1700, by sources that disagree, and planters take a record crop of 29 million in 1709. Brazil rolls are the pirates' taste. Cuban leaf is Crown property from April 1717 |
| Rice | Carolina | Barrel | About 8,000 barrels a year by 1715. Enumerated from about 1704: lawful only to England, then Britain, and the colonies until 1730 |
| Indigo | Saint-Domingue, Jamaica, Guadeloupe | Barrel | About 1,200 indigo works on Saint-Domingue by 1713. Enumerated |
| Logwood and dyewoods | Campeche, Laguna de Términos, the Belize River, the Bay of Honduras | Ton | About 4,965 tons shipped to England in 1713 to 1716. England lifted its ban on logwood dye in 1662; Spain tolerates the cutting and does not recognise it |
| Cacao | Caracas province | Bag | Thousands of growers sell to Curaçao traders, who load it for Dutch processors. Enumerated for the English in 1672 |
| Cochineal | Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, Puebla | — | New Spain's second export after silver; it sails in the flotas |
| Naval stores | Carolina | Barrel, ton | Britain burns about 40,000 barrels of pitch and tar and 7,000 tons of hemp a year (Board of Trade, 28 March 1717). A bounty of £4 a ton on tar and pitch runs from 1705 to 1725 |
| Salt | Turks Islands, Bonaire | — | Bermuda sends 18 vessels to rake in 1708 and 65 in 1716, from March to November. Salt for the fisheries is exempt from the Staple Act |
| Cod | Newfoundland, Cape Breton | Quintal | The French fishery at Cape Breton works 800 to 1,000 boats from 82 ships in 1715, 300 to 400 quintals a boat |
| Wine | Madeira, Fayal, the Canaries; Bordeaux | Pipe, butt, tierce | Madeira and Azores wine is the lawful foreign wine at a colonial table. Boston imports about 1,800 pipes a year |
| Silver | Mexico, Potosí | Peso (piece of eight) | Potosí's registered silver falls from about 198,000 marks in 1700 to about 114,000 in 1720; Mexican output rises from about 1720 |
PRICES ON RECORD
| Good | Price | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| Tar, a last | £11 to £12 | 1715 and 1717 |
| Tobacco, a pound | 4½d | Landed in London, 1689 |
| Tobacco, a pound | 0.8d | A Chesapeake farm, 1690s |
Gear and Prices gives costs used by characters, including logwood, pitch and Jamaica horses. Planters borrow against crops consigned to London merchants, incurring debt before harvest.
LEGEND
The sugar prices in the record cannot be fixed to a year. The one dated series reached is London's: low muscovado sold at 30s to 35s a hundredweight in 1713 to 1716, against 33s to 47s in 1701 to 1705 (Sheridan). They give first white sugar at £3 or £3 10s a hundredweight, the best muscovado 3s or 4s cheaper, Jamaica sugar 5s or 6s a hundredweight dearer in England than Barbados muscovado, and freight to England at 6s 6d a hundredweight in one Barbados act and 12s "since the late war", in sources of about 1700 to 1708. A Boston price list of early 1720 gives New England rum at 4s 6d to 4s 9d, Barbados rum at 5s and molasses at 2s to 2s 4d, with no unit stated. French raw sugar is put at 14 or 15 livres a hundredweight in 1682 and 5 or 6 by 1713. The book prints no London sugar price for 1716.
The Trade in People
Slave trading underpins the Caribbean economy. People Held Aboard in Era Rules governs the Company's choices when a prize carries captives; Gear and Prices excludes people from equipment prices. The following account describes the historical trade.
The Scale and the Carriers
Estimated embarkations from Africa total 488,064 for 1651 to 1675, 719,675 for 1676 to 1700 and about 1.09 million for 1701 to 1725. Across the play period, the trade more than doubles.
PEOPLE EMBARKED BY CARRIER, 1701 TO 1725
| Flag | People embarked |
|---|---|
| Portugal and Brazil | 474,447 |
| Great Britain | 410,597 |
| France | 120,939 |
| The Netherlands | 73,816 |
| Denmark | 5,833 |
| British North America | 3,277 |
| Spain | none recorded |
Older estimates are lower and must be kept separate. They put British embarkations at 115,200 and Dutch at 64,800 in 1651 to 1675, making the Dutch second during the buccaneer decades before falling to fourth by 1700. For 1701 to 1725 the older series credits Spain with about 11,000 embarkations; the newer records none. Spain buys from English, Dutch, French and Portuguese carriers. In Caribbean waters in 1716, a Company is most likely to meet a British slaver. Portuguese ships chiefly serve Angola and Brazil, outside its usual cruising grounds; French participation is growing.
The Coast
African dealers, rulers and merchants sell captives to European buyers at forts, trading factories and beaches reached through surf.
The Gold Coast. By 1687 the African Company holds six forts, centred on Cape Coast Castle. English possession dates to 1664 and was confirmed at Breda in 1667. A reported 1728 account gives four bulwarks, seventy guns and two hundred and fifty men (Legend; Other Ports, Cape Coast Castle). The castle combines fort, prison, court and warehouse. Its dungeon, built by 1682, could hold a thousand people according to Barbot. Elmina has been the Dutch headquarters since 1637; Denmark holds Christiansborg.
The Slave Coast. Ships anchor offshore at Whydah and trade through canoes crossing the surf. By 1716 it ranks as the trade's second-largest slave port. An English factory dates to 1684; William's Fort was fortified between 1689 and 1702. Dutch traders arrived about 1670; Portugal begins its fort in 1721. A visitor during 1692 to 1700 estimated a thousand people traded monthly. The Whydah Gally sailed to buy five hundred captives from King Huffon for Jamaica.
The Bights and Angola. New Calabar, then Bonny, supply the Bight of Biafra trade: about 11 per cent of embarkations before 1700 and 15 per cent afterwards. British ships carry over two-thirds. West Central Africa supplied most captives until the seventeenth century's last quarter and remains a major source; Luanda supplies Brazil. Fort James on the Gambia has been English since 1661.
The companies. Chartered in 1672, the African Company transports about 5,000 people annually in the 1680s, branding them "DoY" or "RAC". Its monopoly ends under the Act of 1698. Prices and exports roughly double after 1697; insolvency follows in 1708. Bristol merchants enter immediately, averaging over 250 captives per ship. On 23 February 1716 the Privy Council declines a peacetime warship escort for African commerce. French private traders enter from late 1713. January 1716 lettres patentes authorise Rouen, Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux; Nantes sends 20 ships in 1715, 2 in 1716 and 11 in 1717.
The Crossing
Slavers are merchantmen refitted to carry captives: generally 150 to 250 tons, thirty to thirty-five crew and 350 to 450 people at full capacity. British loads average about 267; Nantes vessels run about 150 tons with 38 to 41 hands. Captives lie chained in pairs, each allotted roughly six feet by sixteen inches. Beans, corn, yams, rice and palm oil provide food, at best once daily.
The Middle Passage lasts one to six months. A Gold Coast to Barbados voyage in 1706 to 1707 took fifty-six days; another in 1722 lasted a hundred and forty-eight, killing a fifth of its captives. Dysentery and scurvy cause most deaths, with smallpox and measles bringing epidemics. Of 21,298 people carried by the Royal Adventurers in 1663 to 1666, 5,107 died at sea. The African Company records 16,077 deaths among 186,748 transported in 1672 to 1731, figures believed too low. Another estimate puts mortality at 20 per cent in 1662 to 1713. Across the whole trade, about 12 to 14 per cent die; individual logs record 47 to 58 per cent. Before embarkation, ten to fifteen in every hundred die between capture and the coast, rising to forty in Angola. Crews lose roughly a fifth per voyage. Surgeons are valuable to slavers and pirate Companies alike.
Records from 1698 onward describe about 350 shipboard risings, perhaps one voyage in ten; most fail. Captives also take their own lives by refusing food or jumping overboard. Captains exploit the sharks following their ships to deter escape. In 1729 captives seize the Clare and land near Cape Coast Castle. Those aboard Little George sail back to Africa in 1730.
The Landing and the Price
Ships land at Bridgetown, Kingston, Saint-Pierre, Cap-Français, Willemstad, Statia and Spanish ports. Auctions, contracts and sales aboard dispose of captives. Buyers pay less for "new" or "saltwater" Africans than for "seasoned" people. Women's prices average about eighty-one for every hundred paid for men.
WHAT A PERSON WAS SOLD FOR
| Where and when | Price |
|---|---|
| Barbados, 1663 and 1664, composite average | £13 17s 9d to £14 11s 8d |
| Barbados, delivered 1663 to 1664 by the Royal Adventurers | just over £16 |
| Barbados, 1670s, a man; a woman | £18 to £19; £14 to £16 |
| Annamaboe, Gold Coast, 6 February 1704 | £14 |
| Barbados, 1709, as the planters claimed | £25 to £40 |
| Barbados, contract of 16 February 1720/21: man, woman, child | £23, £22, £21 |
| The Leewards, 1726 | £18 |
Payment under the 1720/21 contract falls due sixty days after delivery. Pooled western-hemisphere averages rise from £20 17s in 1675 to 1688 to £31 5s in 1689 to 1713. At 20 shillings to the pound, £23 represents roughly nine to eleven months of a merchant seaman's peacetime wages of 25 to 30 shillings monthly.
Jamaica and the Spanish Ports
Utrecht grants the South Sea Company a thirty-year asiento in 1713: 4,800 people annually, 144,000 altogether. Offices operate at Buenos Aires, Caracas, Cartagena, Havana, Panama, Portobelo and Veracruz. Spain receives 33 pieces of eight per person, while the company may send one 500-ton ship annually to trade at the fairs. Jamaica supplies the captives: 1,230 delivered in the first year, 2,680 in 1714 and about 13,000 during 1716 and 1717. Total deliveries exceed 34,000, with about 4,000 deaths in transit. The first annual ship, Royal Prince, departs in August 1716.
Of roughly 31,000 people imported into Jamaica during 1702 to 1710, 8,526 are re-exported, mostly to Spanish buyers. In 1711 to 1720 the island imports about 53,700 and re-exports 24,991. A Kingston sloop carrying forty captives towards a Spanish port is routine harbour traffic in 1716, whether covered by the asiento or not.
Jamaica taxes exported captives at 20s each under its 1715 Act; the South Sea Company's 1716 protest reports 40s. The Crown repeals the Act in 1718. Curaçao forwards between 200 and 4,400 people annually in 1674 to 1713, falling to 500 to 600 afterwards. Its fences in 1716 therefore handle more sugar, cacao and dry goods. Over a quarter of captives arriving in Spanish America pass through another power's colony.
On the Plantation
Survivors endure one to three years of "seasoning". Up to a third die in Jamaica; Cuban losses run 7 to 12 per cent annually. After seasoning, life in Jamaica lasts less than two decades; at least half of plantation-born children die in infancy. During harvest, boiling houses operate all night, their fires visible along the coast. A median Barbados estate holds about sixty enslaved people. The island's 1661 law treats them as chattel: violence against a Christian brings whipping for a first offence; whipping, nose-slitting and facial branding for a second; death for a third. Killing during punishment carries no penalty. Masters owe one set of clothes yearly. Jamaica adopts the code in 1664. Its 1703 law requires one white man per ten enslaved people among an estate's first twenty, then one per twenty. Planters pay fines instead.
Resistance brings repeated risings. About 200 people revolt at St Ann's, Jamaica, in 1673, founding the Leeward Maroons. At Sutton's Clarendon estate on 31 July 1690, 300 to 500 rise; over 200 remain free. Barbados's 1675 rising ends with 11 beheadings, 6 burnings, 25 executions and 70 people flogged or deported; another plot follows in 1692. Bermuda has risings in 1673 and 1681. On 6 April 1712 over twenty people in New York, mostly Coromantee, kill eight or nine whites (nine in the governor's report); 21 are executed. Powers of the Caribbean covers the Maroons.
Other People in the Hold
White indentured servants and convicts land at the same wharves. Service lasts one to seven years, usually four or five, against passages costing £5 to £7. In the seventeenth-century Caribbean, a third to a half die before completing their terms; few arrive after 1660. Liverpool ships 639 Preston Jacobite prisoners for colonial sale in 1716, including 47 sent to Jamaica aboard Two Brothers. Effective from 21 November 1717, the Transportation Act imposes seven- or fourteen-year sentences overseas. The Treasury pays £3 per London convict to its contractor; counties pay more. Chesapeake buyers pay about £10 for a convict.
Pirates and the Trade
A pirate may take selected captives and gold while leaving the rest aboard; feeding and finding buyers for three hundred people poses a different problem. Jamaica reports in December 1716 that pirates took forty people and gold from Captain Evans's Guinea ship. Another Guinea ship loses six or eight people to pirates at Antigua in March 1717. A Company's articles determine whether it may sell captives (Era Rules, People Held Aboard).
LEGEND
The sale practices that most accounts print come from later in the century. A tavern vendue of the sick and dying, bought for a few dollars a head, and the "scramble," in which buyers rush into a yard at a signal and seize whom they can, are described in sources of the later eighteenth century. John Newton later told Parliament that a captive bought for about £3 in Africa sold for about £25 in the Caribbean. The record for 1716 gives sale by auction or by contract; a GM who uses a scramble or a vendue sets it as a later custom. The prices of £10 for a person over sixteen and £8 for one aged ten to sixteen, which the African Company charged the South Sea Company for people landed at Jamaica from 1713, are also unclear: what the figures measure is not known.
Routes and Voyages
Easterly trade winds shape these routes. Ships departing Europe or Africa for the islands sail west before the wind. Homeward ships work north through the Florida Straits to reach the Gulf Stream, which carries them north and east. Places and Campaign Tools supplies distances, daily runs, stores and news speeds; this section covers routes and seasons.
Europe to the islands. England to Barbados takes six to nine weeks, depending on route and season. A naval vessel might reach Jamaica from London in eight weeks and return in five; merchantmen take considerably longer. The Falmouth packet of 1702 to 1711 aims for a hundred-day Barbados round trip and usually exceeds it. Spanish fleets pass the Canaries and Lesser Antilles, then turn north-west for Veracruz or south-west for Cartagena and Portobelo. New England traders serving Barbados usually measure 70 to 100 tons and spend three or four weeks there before returning home or sailing to Newfoundland.
Down the islands and back. A downwind passage from Barbados to Jamaica takes under two weeks. Returning against the wind can take fourteen. The same islands reached in days may take months to revisit.
The Windward Passage and the Florida Straits. Jamaica's Atlantic traffic passes between Cuba and Hispaniola through the Windward Passage. Havana's northbound vessels use the Florida Straits along the wreck coast. Ships assemble in Havana Bay from May to August; Spanish fleets leave for Spain by September, aiming to avoid hurricanes.
The homeward track. By the late seventeenth century the Chesapeake tobacco fleet averages 175 vessels and 2,500 seamen, with wartime naval escorts. Carolina's rice shipping departs between winter and spring. Bermudian salt rakers arrive at the Turks in March and leave in November.
Hurricanes. The season runs from June to November, with the heaviest strikes in August and September, several in October and one in November, in 1726. A storm on 27 September 1694 kills over a thousand people on Barbados. Nevis is nearly ruined on 9 to 11 September 1707. A storm on 28 August 1712 runs from Barbados to Jamaica and wrecks houses and plantations. The plate fleet is wrecked on 31 July 1715. A storm strikes Bermuda on 20 August 1716. Those of 28 August 1722 (about 400 dead at Port Royal) and 22 October 1726 devastate Port Royal's shipping. Storm dates are Old Style.
Ships of the Trade
For vessel statistics, see Ships. The following table describes merchant rigs and crews.
RIGS IN MERCHANT USE
| Rig | What it is | Size and crew | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ship | Three masts, square-rigged; the generic large hull | 100 to 300 tons | The Guinea trade, the sugar fleets, the galleons |
| Snow | Two square-rigged masts and a trysail mast abaft the main; the largest two-master | Naval snows carry 5 to 16 guns | The Mediterranean and sometimes the West Indies |
| Brigantine | Square foremast, gaff mainmast with square topsails | 30 to 150 tons | The second most common rig built in British North America |
| Sloop | Single mast, fore-and-aft | A Boston sloop of 30 tons runs seven hands | The colonial workhorse |
| Bermuda sloop | Cedar-built | Up to 70 feet | 14 vessels in 1679; 60 sloops, 6 brigantines and 4 ships by 1700 |
| Jamaica sloop | Narrower and faster | About 12 knots | Port Royal and the cays |
| Schooner | Fore-and-aft two-master | Smaller crews | Developed in British North America from about 1713 |
| Fluyt | The Dutch cargo carrier: half the cost of rivals, twice the cargo, few or no guns | Fewer hands, shallow draught | The Dutch merchant marine, about 568,000 tons in 1670 |
| Periagua (periauger) | A hollowed-log or flat boat | Spanish half-galley periaguas carry up to 120 men | Hornigold and Bellamy began in periaguas from the Bahamas |
Tonnage and crews. Measurements vary: Thames builders adopt one formula in 1678, tax law another in 1694, and Builder's Old Measurement a third in 1720, all using a divisor of 94. Colonial registers commonly record two-thirds of actual tonnage, making a registered "100-ton" sloop closer to 150. Boston's Mary, 30 tons with 7 hands, clears for Antigua in July 1716: roughly four tons per man. In 1699 Boston's 193-vessel fleet ranks behind only London and Bristol in the English-speaking world: 25 ships of 100 to 300 tons, 38 of 100 tons or less, 50 brigantines, 13 ketches and 67 sloops.
Guardacosta craft. Spanish governors commission privately owned guardacostas. At San Juan, Miguel Enríquez chiefly employs sloops, schooners and brigantines. A royal decree credits him with ten or twelve corsair vessels in 1716.
Building and buying. No recorded building price is available for 1716. Gear and Prices lists about £168 for a sloop and £20 per ton for a fitted ship, both labelled Legend.
LEGEND
A Royal Navy twenty-gun sixth rate, HMS Squirrel, cost £4,546 19s 10d to build in 1707. A Navy contract of 1740 gives £7 15s a ton for a sloop's hull and about £1,500 to £1,600 for fitting; colonial-built hulls ran £2 to £3 a ton cheaper than English ones. These are later or undated figures.
Who sails them. Small crews work merchant vessels. Peacetime wages run 25 to 30 shillings monthly, rising in wartime.
Convoys, Fleets and Escorts
The Spanish fleets. Annual plans call for the Flota de Nueva España to serve Veracruz and the Galeones de Tierra Firme to serve Cartagena and Portobelo. Both winter in America before assembling at Havana. Their strength falls from about fifty large ships in the late sixteenth century to less than half. New Spain receives no flota between 1699 and 1706. Portobelo holds fairs in 1696 and 1708, then none until the 1720s. At Vigo in 1702 the fleet is destroyed after unloading most silver; Philip V retains nearly seven million pesos. Wager destroys San José off Cartagena on 8 June 1708 New Style (28 May English calendar). The combined 1715 fleets sail without such an escort and founder off Florida on 31 July. A decree of 8 May 1717 transfers the Casa de Contratación from Seville to Cadiz. Gaps between fleets leave Spanish towns buying Jamaican and Dutch supplies.
The Atlantic convoys. Britain's Cruisers and Convoys Act of 1708 allocates naval protection to commerce. The Council of Trade assembles fleets and restricts permission to sail independently: captured stragglers can expose those following. In the 1690s the Lords of Trade order four October departures, returning by March's end. Barbados merchants request another July homeward convoy in 1695. These schedules also tell pirates when to cruise.
Peacetime convoys continue in 1716. HMS Rochester receives Newfoundland instructions on 31 May; HMS Adventure escorts George and Brocham from Jamaica in December. The Privy Council leaves Guinea shipping without escort.
The Navy's escort. Jamaica has no admiral between 1713 and 1720, only captains commanding a handful of small ships. Estimates put the entire American peacetime naval force at perhaps ten vessels in 1716 to 1718. The Leewards' station ship is a small sixth rate. Powers of the Caribbean, Britain, Ships, Forts and Force covers stations and governors' reports. Sickness, deaths and desertion keep warships in harbour two-thirds of the year; better merchant pay draws away sailors.
Spanish escort. The Armada de Barlovento fluctuates between two and about twelve vessels for patrols, convoys and troop transport. In 1716 it lacks ships and money.
Money, Credit and News
Coin. The piece of eight circulates throughout these seas as a roughly struck "cob"; Mexico begins milled coinage in 1732. See Era Rules and Gear and Prices for sterling and colonial ratings. English islands lack coin. Guardacostas seize English vessels carrying Spanish silver, although it supplies plantation currency; restitution is promised only late in 1716.
COINS AND RATES
| Coin or rate | Value |
|---|---|
| Guinea, 1714 | 21s 6d |
| Guinea, fixed by proclamation, December 1717 | 21s |
| Pound sterling, 1716 | about 13 to 14 livres tournois |
| Piece of eight, in metal | about 3 livres tournois |
| Pound sterling | about 11 Dutch guilders |
| Livre tournois | 20 sous of 12 deniers |
| Guilder | 20 stuivers |
| Jamaica money against sterling, 1716 | 30 to 35 per cent below |
| Silver, an ounce, New York, 1717 to 1718 | 6s 10d rising to 9s |
Leeward debts are settled in sugar. An Assembly's £1,000 annual grant in "current money" buys sugar worth barely £400 in London. Carolina's paper currency is worthless by April 1717; Virginia accepts tobacco for some quit-rents. Dutch "dollars" offered by a fence may be lighter leeuwendaalders rather than pieces of eight.
Credit. Bills of exchange instruct a drawee to pay a named payee. London merchants extend credit against consigned sugar; Jamaican planters and merchants pay the African Company with bills and sugar. Pirates cannot readily spend a chest of bills, but its value to merchants makes it useful for ransom.
Factors and supercargoes. Factors receive consignments, sell on commission from permanent posts and sometimes guarantee buyers' credit. A later British source gives 2.5 per cent on most sales and 8 per cent for West Indian commission and storage. Supercargoes sail with goods, arrange sales and purchase return cargoes.
Insurance and news. Edward Lloyd's Tower Street coffee house, recorded from 1688, brings together private underwriters taking individual shares of policies. Premiums vary with season and piracy. From 1720 only two chartered companies may insure at sea as corporations. Lloyd publishes weekly shipping news by January 1692; the Boston News-Letter first appears on 24 April 1704. Places and Campaign Tools gives news ages on arrival.
LEGEND
No marine insurance rate for 1716 is on record. Boston policies of the 1740s give peacetime premiums of 2 to 3 per cent, West Indies voyages at 6 to 10 per cent under Spanish privateers, and 12 to 16 per cent after France entered the war; in a later peace rates settle at 3 to 6 per cent to the West Indies.
Smuggling and the Free Ports
The English Frame
The Navigation Act of 13 September 1660, in force from 1 April 1661, confines colonial trade to English-owned or colonial-built ships with crews three-quarters English, makes masters post bond, and enumerates sugar, tobacco, cotton wool, indigo, ginger and the dyeing woods, which may go only to England or another English colony. The penalty is forfeiture of ship and cargo. The Staple Act of 1663 requires European goods for the colonies to be landed and taxed in England first; salt for the fisheries and Madeira and Azores wine are exempt. The Act of 1696 requires ships to be registered on oath, gives colonial customs officers English powers, lets breaches be tried in colonial Admiralty courts, and splits each forfeiture in thirds among the Crown, the governor and the informer. Barbados and the Leewards, but not Jamaica, also pay a 4½ per cent export duty on their produce, which makes their sugar dearer than foreign sugar in New England. The Acts cost colonists about £4 in every £1,000 of income a year.
Foreign molasses still enters legally. Customs Commissioners confirm that no law bars Boston's Dutch, French and Danish sugar, rum and molasses imports in 1716; no duty applies. Surveyor Cumings estimates annual receipts at 2,000 hogsheads of molasses and 200 to 300 of sugar and rum from foreign ports. Antigua sends London its ban on French and other foreign sugar, rum, cotton and molasses on 12 July 1716. The Molasses Act ends this open trade in 1733.
The French and Spanish Frames
France gave the islands to a company in 1664 and took them back to the Crown in 1674. The lettres patentes of April 1717 reserve the trade to French ships from thirteen named ports and bar foreign ships and foreign supply; they are evaded on a growing scale. A royal declaration of 24 January 1713, registered on 3 May 1713, forbids making brandy from anything but wine, on pain of confiscation and a 3,000-livre fine, about £220 at the rate of 1716; an order of 24 November 1716 puts it into execution. Tafia cannot be landed in France for consumption until the nineteenth century. Madeleine Lacoste runs the Bordeaux house of Maison Lacoste, which carries her late husband's name; a Bordeaux house that handles wine and brandy is on the protected side of this law. French trade with Spanish America is barred in 1717.
Spain relies on older restrictions. Madrid's treaty of 1670 prohibits commerce in each crown's Caribbean territory; Utrecht in 1713 commits Britain to keeping subjects out of Spanish America without local permission. Nevertheless, Cuba and Jamaica share a contraband economy, and Cartagena depends on Jamaican supplies. In April 1717 Philip V establishes Havana's Real Factoría de Tabacos, requiring growers to sell the entire crop at Spanish-fixed prices. The vegueros rebel in 1717, 1720 and 1723; their first rising expels Vicente de Raja from Havana.
Restrictions tighten in 1717: France's Exclusif, Spain's tobacco monopoly, the Casa's transfer to Cadiz and Britain's anti-pirate proclamation of 5 September. The ruling of 21 December attacks Jamaica's transit duty on enslaved people. Law establishes the Compagnie d'Occident the same year.
The Free Ports and the Pirate Harbours
A free port is a legal status. Curaçao has been one since 1674: Sephardic merchants lead its trade, shipping and banking, and it is the entrepot for Venezuelan cacao, tobacco, hides and mules. The Venezuelan coast is about three days' sail each way, and the Spanish found Curiepe in 1721, a town of free Black settlers, to guard it. Sint Eustatius in 1716 is a small company depot, and it becomes a free port only in the mid-eighteenth century. St Thomas is not a free port in 1716; its free-port status comes decades later. It is already the only neutral port in the Caribbean after 1702 and has a 6 per cent tariff on foreign trade from 1704. On 16 August 1716 the Danish king allows trade with all nations at St Thomas at 6 per cent export and 5 per cent import duty, which is an open harbour, not a free port in law. Nassau is not a free port in law either; it is a harbour where no governor is at work (Powers of the Caribbean, The Free Ports and the Republic of Nassau).
Cases
Jamaica's Assembly charges its governor, Lord Archibald Hamilton, in 1716 with entering French goods as British, and indigo was sold to the French for gold and silver in November 1712 under his licence. A sloop and goods Perrin had bought from Hornigold are seized at Charles Town on 14 July 1716 "for want of due certificates", silk bone lace among them. A French ship, the Count de Paix, wrecks at Bermuda carrying sugar, indigo, gold dust and ambergris valued at about £20,000, and Bermuda sloops are accused of plundering her. At San Juan a governor's favour has a price: Enríquez, fined 100 pieces of eight for contraband in 1700, spends over 20,000 on gifts to Governor Ribera in 1713. The fence's risk is the certificate, not the pirate.
Ports as Marketplaces
WHAT EACH PORT HANDLES
| Port | Flag | What it handles |
|---|---|---|
| Bridgetown | English | Sugar and rum; about 387,000 enslaved Africans shipped to Barbados over the whole trade |
| Kingston | English | The centre of Jamaica's trade by 1716; re-export of people to the Spanish. Port Royal handled 213 ships in 1688 |
| Charles Town | English | Rice, pitch, tar and skins; paper worthless in 1717 |
| Boston | English | Fish, boards, horses and flour out; molasses, rum, wine and coin in |
| Bermuda | English | Salt from the Turks, cedar sloops |
| Nassau | None | Wrecking, salt, fish, turtle, conch, ambergris, dyewood |
| Havana | Spanish | The fleets' rendezvous from May to August, provisioning, shipbuilding, tobacco from April 1717 |
| Cartagena and Portobelo | Spanish | Cartagena is the asiento's chief landing port on the Main; Portobelo has fairs in 1696 and 1708 and none to the 1720s |
| Cap-Français | French | The chief slave port and capital since 1711, about 1,000 people landed a year; coin short; English of Jamaica buy its sugar |
| Saint-Pierre | French | Martinique's commercial capital; ships load clayed sugar and tafia |
| Willemstad | Dutch | Free port from 1674; cacao, hides, dyewood and salt; the depot thinning |
| Sint Eustatius | Dutch | A slave depot in the Waterfort holding 400 to 450 people |
| Cape Coast, Elmina, Whydah | English, Dutch, mixed | The Guinea trade |
Who Trades: The Professions
Trade professionals are the Company's customers, creditors and targets. Character Creation and Roles makes these occupations playable.
The merchant. London houses, Bristol syndicates, Boston merchants and Curaçao's Sephardic traders finance voyages and bear losses. Jewish residents form about 18 per cent of Kingston's population by 1720, trading precious metals and changing money without voting or holding office. Merchants meet the Company as buyers, lenders or victims.
The factor. From Cape Coast, Kingston or a Bordeaux counting room, a factor sells on commission and may fence the Company's goods. Fence and Factor covers this occupation ashore.
The supercargo, the master and the broker. Selling cargo falls to the supercargo; sailing falls to the master (Merchant Captain or Supercargo, Sailing Master). Brokers find underwriters for voyages or buyers for prizes (Tavern Keeper and Broker).
The customs officer. Collectors and surveyors serve the Crown independently of governors. If coin is lacking, they accept duty in goods. Under the Act of 1696 governors and informers each receive a third of seizures. Colonial Clerk or Advocate works alongside these officials.
The wrecker and the cutter. The Eleutheran rule of 1647 grants wreckers a third of salvage. Bermudians settling New Providence in the 1660s claim the whole recovery. Logwood cutters work the swamps with free and enslaved labour, supplied with rum.
Using Trade at the Table
- A cargo to carry. A Boston master with a 30-ton sloop and seven hands needs a convoy partner to Antigua. His hold is fish, boards and horses, and he pays in molasses and coin.
- A debt to collect. A James River planter owes a London house for a crop he consigned, and a Scots factor offers cash for his next one. A Company is paid to find which of the two he can afford to disappoint.
- A convoy to join. The George and the Brocham sail from Jamaica under HMS Adventure in December 1716. The stragglers are the pirates' meat.
- A prize to take. A Guinea ship has lost forty people and her gold to pirates, and her master wants the Company to hunt them. The people are persons (Era Rules, People Held Aboard).
- A smuggling run. Dutch molasses from Statia to Boston, or French sugar from Léogâne to Antigua. The risk is a missing certificate, and the Surveyor wants his third.
- A plantation landing. A Company puts in on a Jamaican coast at crop time, when the boiling house is lit all night. An estate manager offers a trade, and the people in the cane have a message.
- A slave ship's captain. A Bristol master who has put down a rising at sea wants a Company to escort him into Kingston. His surgeon is his best man, and two of the crew will not sail on.
- An insurer's agent. A London underwriter's man at Kingston wants to know if the Count de Paix was a wreck or a robbery. The goods landed at Bermuda are worth £6,000 and the Council has shares in them.
- A logwood camp. In December 1716 a Spanish squadron under Don Alonso de Andrade takes the surrender of about twenty vessels at Triste (Historical Reference prints both the English and the Spanish dates). A cutter who got away wants passage to Port Royal and knows where the other cutters' sloops lie.
- A tobacco leaf. A veguero at Havana has hidden his crop from the estanco, and an English sloop lies in the bay. Governor Raja's men want to know where it went.