The American Slave Trade (Spears)/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
THE SLAVERS' PROFIT
Nine Hundred Pounds on One Voyage of the Newport Slaver Sanderson, a Vessel that was Offered for Sale at £450 with No Buyers — One Voyage of the Liverpool Slaver Enterprise that Paid £24,430 — Details of Expenses and Receipts on a Voyage of the Ninety-ton Schooner La Forfuna — A Baltimore Schooner's Profit of $100,000 — When the Venus Cleared $200,000 — Sums Paid to Captains and Crews — Slave Transportation Compared with Modern Passenger Traffic.
It has been repeatedly asserted in the course of this work that the slave-trade was, on the whole, enormously profitable, and it is now proposed to give ina business way some facts in verification of those assertions. There were, of course, many voyages that went awry, but that that was not the usual course of the trade is abundantly proved. Thus, the fact that Newport had one hundred and fifty vessels in the trade by the middle of the eighteenth century, shows what Newport merchants made out of the traffic. That Liverpool had but one sloop of thirty tons in the trade in 1729, while in 1751 "no fewer than fifty-three vessels, with an aggregate burthen of 5,334 tons, sailed from the Mersey for the slave-coast," shows how Liverpool slavers prospered. But something more than these general statements must prove of interest. To go back to an early period, we find that the negroes imported on the While Horse (the first slaver sent out from New York for the direct trade with Africa) were sold at auction for an average price of $125 each for the choice stock. The negroes had arrived ina bad condition, but they were doctored up for the sale, and brought good prices for that day, so that the slaver made a good profit even though the purchasers afterward lost some of their slaves. The exact profit is not given, but the fact that a profit was made is proved by the act of the directors of the West India Company taking the trade thereafter into their own hands.
When Captain David Lindsay, of the Sanderson, sold the cargo he landed ‘‘in helth and fatt" in 1753 he received £35 each for twenty-five of his slaves, £30 each for three more, while the remainder brought prices ranging down to £21, save one small boy who brought £15. All told, forty-seven slaves sold here brought £1,432. The remaining slaves were carried to Newport, but there is no record of their sale. We may guess that they realized about £250, or, say, a total of £1,680 for the cargo of slaves.
The net profit on this voyage cannot be ascertained now, but Captain George Scott's letter of 1740 says that a prime slave cost £12 in the unsalable dry goods, while other documents show that in 1753 a prime slave cost one hundred and ten gallons of rum, or £11. The gross profit on the slaves sold in Barbadoes was doubtless as much as £900, and the net profit on the whole voyage, after the remaining slaves were sold elsewhere, was at least £900. And yet the Sanderson had been offered for sale several years earlier for £450, and during this voyage, as we have learned already, her captain was able to see "daylight al round" through the open seams in her bows.
In Williams's "Liverpool Slave Trade" it is shown that in 1786 the Liverpool slavers sold 31,690 slaves for £1,282,690 net. The gross value of the goods exported to Africa was £864,895, while the maintenance of the slaves cost £15,845. That leaves £401,950 for the owners of the slavers, from which, however, they had to pay their crews and the wear and tear of the ships. These expenses are classed as "freight," at £103,488, but the fact is there was a profit on the "freight."? Nevertheless, calling the freight all expense, the clean profit was £298,462.
That is an estimate giving the expenses at the highest limit, and the sales at the lowest. Going more into detail, the returns for a single good voyage are given.
The ship Lottery, Captain John Whittle, belonged to Mr. Thomas Leyland, who was "thrice Mayor of Liverpool." She sailed from the Mersey on July 6, 1798, and passed Barbadoes on November 27th with four hundred and sixty negroes. Of these four hundred and fifty-three were sold for £22,726 net — the owner received that sum after paying all commissions and charges. From this sum, however, must be deducted £2,307 109. for the ship's outfit and £8,326 14s. for the cost of the cargo sent out to Africa, a total of £10,634, which leaves the sum of £12,091 profit on the voyage. That is to say the profit on each negro was over £26, and it was earned in six months.
The Lottery in another voyage cleared £19,021. The Finterprise on a cargo of three hundred and ninetytwo slaves landed, cleared £24,430. The Hortwne on three hundred and forty-three cleared £9,487. The Louisa on three hundred and twenty-six slaves cleared £19,133. The Bloom, belonging to another house, on three hundred and seven slaves cleared £8,123. An average of six voyages shows a clean profit of £43 per slave. And to this profit was added that on the West India goods carried to Liverpool when the ship went home to refit.
Other estimates of single voyages give profits ranging from £12 up to £40 per head landed.
An important element in the trade was the cost of the ship. The records show that a good ship fit to carry from three hundred to four hundred slaves could be built for £7,500. Such a ship would make a clean profit of from £7,000 to £20,000 each voyage, and it is certain that some of them made as high as five voyages before they became so foul that they had to be abandoned.
Of the profits made when the trade was declared to be piracy we have abundant records, even though it was a smuggling business.
Captain Theodore Canot in his autobiography, "Twenty Years of an African Slaver" (it is practically an autobiography), has the following (p. 101):
| 1. — Expenses Out. | |
| Cost of La Fortuna, a 90-ton schooner | $3,700.00 |
| Fitting out, sails, carpenter’s and cooper’s bills | 2,500.00 |
| Provisions for crew and slaves | 1,115.00 |
| Wages advanced to 18 men before the mast | 900.00 |
| Wages advanced to captain, mates, boatswain, cook and steward | 440.00 |
| 200,000 cigars and 500 doubloons, cargo | 10,900.00 |
| Clearance and hush-money | 200.00 |
| Total: | $19,755.00 |
| Commission at 5% | 987.00 |
| Full cost of voyage out | $20,742.00 |
| 2. — Expenses Home. | |
| Captain’s head-money, at $8 a head | $1,736.00 |
| Mate’s head-money at $4.00 a head | 873.00 |
| Second mate’s and boatswain’s head-money, at $2 each | 873.00 |
| Captain's wages | 219.78 |
| First mate's wages | 175.56 |
| Second mate’s and boatswain’s wages | 307.12 |
| Cook’s and steward’s wages | 264,00 |
| 18 sailors’ wages | 1,972.00 |
| Total of expenses out and home | $27,162.46 |
| 8. — Expenses in Havana. | |
| Government officers, at $8 per head | $1,736.00 |
| My commission on 217 slaves, expenses off | 5,565.00 |
| Consignees’ Commission | 8,873.00 |
| 217 slave dresses | 634,00 |
| Extra expenses of all kinds | 1,000.00 |
| Total of all expenses | $39,970.46 |
| 4. — Returns. | |
| Vessel at auction | $3,950.00 |
| Proceeds of 217 slaves | 77,469.00 |
| $81,419.00 | |
| Résumé. | |
| Total Returns | $81,419.00 |
| Total Expenses | 39,970.46 |
| Net Profit | $41,448.54 |
With a schooner that cost $3,700 and a total capital all told, amounting to less than $21,000, the net profit in six months was $41,488.54.
Writing on the same subject, Captain Philip Drake tells about one voyage he made in the schooner Napoleon.
The Napoleon was a ninety-ton Baltimore clipper, a model for speed and symmetry. She came out from Cuba, in ballast, as a new craft, and made two successful trips before, at Don Pedro's request, I supplied the place of mate and surgeon in her last voyage, when she sailed freighted with two hundred and fifty full-grown men and one hundred picked boys and girls for the Cuban market. By actual calculation the average cost per head of the three hundred and fifty was $16, and in Havana the market average was $360, yielding a profit for the whole, if safely delivered, at $360 a head, of $120,400 on the slaves. Subtracting $20,000 from this, the average cost of the clipper's round trip, including commissions, and her earnings would be $100,000 in round numbers. Such were the enormous profits of the slave-trade in 1835."
An official report on the first voyage of the beautiful Baltimore clipper ship Venus [See House Ex. Doc. 115, 26th Cong. 2d Sess.] says:
With regard to the ship Venus, otherwise the Duquesa de Braganza, we should state that the original cost, we understand, was 30,000 dollars; and that the fitting out, and expenses of every description for the voyage, including the value of the return cargo, was estimated at $60,000 more. The number of negroes brought back, as has been before stated, was 860; and they are said to have been sold at 340 dollars per head, producing the sum of nearly 300,000 dollars; of which therefore two-thirds was net profit." That was in 1838-39.
As far back as 1827, the captain of a small slave would receive $2,000 for a round trip requiring six months' time, while the mate got $1,000. To fully appreciate how much money that was to a ship's officers one has to remember that even now there are plenty of captains of schooners and barks of a thousand tons capacity who receive but $75 or 580 a month, although wages all around are fifty per cent. higher, and even more. The captains of transatlantic liners to-day receive from $2,000 to $3,000 a year, whereas the captain of a little ninety-ton slaver got $2,000 in six months. The liner that cost, say, a million dollars will carry first-class passengers in luxurious staterooms and furnish abundant meals for from $100 to $150 for the passage, and $125 is a fair average price for superb accommodations on the most expensive ves. sel. The average profit on a slave after the year 1825 was not less than $250, or twice the price of a firstclass passage on a ship costing a million. To make the contrast absolutely fair we should say that the slaver who received $340 per head, and paid but $20 in Africa received $320 for transporting the slave to Cuba. His net profit was reduced to, say, $250 by the expenses of the voyage, just as the steam liner's net profit may be reduced to $25 by the expenses of the voyage.
However, to be liberal, there was the sum of $250 net, at least, which the slaver could get for transporting a negro from Africa to Cuba. If the owners of steamships costing a million can afford to carry firstclass passengers in luxury for $125, the slaver might have carried negroes in cleanliness and perfect comfort, and still have realized profits of from fifty to one hundred per centum every voyage, from the investment. It is plain that the horrors of the Middle Passage were not necessarily incident to the transportation of slaves from Africa to the West Indies.