Only the Royal company was named in the agreement, but all British traders were to participate in the trade. It was contracted on the part of the Spanish that they would take at least 4,800 negroes a year for thirty years, and that the company might sell as many more as it could for twenty-five years at any Spanish-American port except three. In return for this the company paid 200,000 crowns spot cash, a duty of 3312 crowns on each slave landed, and a quarter of its profits each to the Spanish and the British kings.
This contract is found in Article 16 of the Treaty of Utrecht, which was signed on April 11, 1713. Although England obtained by this treaty the Hudson Bay Territory, Acadia, Newfoundland, and Gibraltar, this slave-trade article "was regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of the pacification of 1713."
At the time of this treaty London and Bristol were the slave-ship ports of England, and Newport was the chief one in America. Liverpool entered the slave trade previous to 1730, with "a single barque of thirty tons."
The vessel had half the capacity of one of the sailing lighters common to New York Harbor. An Erie Canal boat carries two hundred and forty tons. But the little bark was profitable, and the trade grew after 1731 until in 1752 Liverpool had eighty-seven vessels in the trade, Bristol one hundred and fifty-seven, and London one hundred and thirty-five. The Liverpool merchants built such sharp and swift ships for the trade that a special wet dock, that would keep them afloat during ebb tide while in that port, had to
