Transatlantic Slave Trade Research Paper

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HIST 308 – Spring 2020 Dr. Matthew S. Hopper Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

Slave Ship Research Paper Guidelines This quarter, every student in HIST 308 will complete a research paper on the history of a slave ship from the nineteenth century. Essays are required to cite both primary and secondary sources. They must be a minimum of 10 double-spaced pages (excluding bibliography) in 12-pt. font with one-inch margins and may not exceed 20 pages. The following guidelines will help you research and write your essay. Background The British Royal Navy captured more than 1,500 slave ships in the course of its anti-slave-trade patrols in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean between 1808 and 1896 and released nearly 250,000 enslaved Africans from captivity aboard these vessels. The voluminous records of these captures preserve a massive amount of information about the slave trade and the struggle to end it, but very few of these captured slave ships have ever been explored in detail by historians. This quarter, you will have the opportunity to select one captured slave ship and thoroughly research it and tell its story, including the ultimate outcome for the enslaved Africans held captive on board. Your research paper has the potential to fill an important gap in the scholarship on slavery and abolition, and it may even become a publishable article, particularly because many of the primary sources you will use for this paper have been underutilized by historians, and many details of these stories remain to be uncovered. If done well, a microhistory of a single slave ship can effectively illustrate the horrors of the slave trade while demonstrating the complexity and nuances of slavery and abolition by using the various stages and locations of a particular journey to illustrate patterns of the slave trade in general. Some experienced scholars have even turned the story of a single slave ship or a single journey into an entire book. Excellent examples include: Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds Of The Slave Trade (2002); Sylviane Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (2009); James Walvin, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery (2011); Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion (2013); Bruce Mouser, A Slaving Voyage to Africa and Jamaica: The Log of the Sandown, 1793-1794 (2002), and Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon (2018). Robert Harms, for example, famously used a single journal from one journey of one specific French slave ship, the Diligent, as the launching point to illustrate the complexities of the entire transatlantic slave trade.

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Selecting a Ship The ship you choose to research may be any one of the hundreds of ships captured by the British Royal Navy in the nineteenth century. A list containing the majority of the ships captured between 1808 and 1840 can be found in “Appendix A – List of Captures,” in Peter Grindal, Opposing the Slavers (2016), which is available as an eBook through the library under HIST 308 course reserves. To select your ship, you may begin by exploring secondary sources. You might start with the three classic accounts of the Royal Navy and the slave trade: Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade (1968), W.E.F. Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers (1969), and Raymond C. Howell, The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade (1987), which are on reserve in the library. In addition to these classic accounts, there are three newer books on this subject: Sian Rees, Sweet Water and Bitter (2011), Peter Grindal, Opposing the Slavers (2016), John Brioch, Squadron (2017). Grindal’s book is particularly detailed at a whopping 863 pages. Each of these books contains an index listing the ships covered in the text, but you may have the most success by reading selected chapters that relate to periods and regions that most interest you and selecting your ship from among those discussed in those chapters. Ships may be of particular interest to you based on your knowledge or experience with particular regions in Africa or the Americas or your interest in particular areas of history. Ships may interest you because of their country of origin (i.e., flag), the places they embarked enslaved Africans, the number of captives they had aboard, the destinations they were sailing to, the British ship that captured them, the circumstances of the capture, the outcome of the trial of the slave ship, etc. Select a ship that sounds interesting to you based on your own particular interests. The only requirement is that the slave ship is one of the majority of ships that contained a number of enslaved Africans at the time of capture (rather than one of the ships condemned for being “fitted out” for the slave trade but were otherwise empty of captives). Since our class is primarily interested in the fates of the Africans caught up in the transatlantic slave trade, your focus should not be on the ship itself or the enslavers but rather on the enslaved Africans themselves. Another good option for selecting a ship is to explore the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database at www.slavevoyages.org. After reading the introductory materials, click on “Transatlantic” and select “Database” from the dropdown menu. You can limit your search under the field “Outcome” to “Outcome of voyage if ship captured” and select “British.” This will give you a list of more than 1,800 captured slave ships, although it is important to note that many of these are before the nineteenth century; we are interested in the period between 1808 and 1897, for which we have the most primary sources. Keep in mind that documentation tends to be most extensive after about 1820.

Select “Outcome”

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Alternatively, you may browse the 95 volumes of the Parliamentary Papers related to the slave trade in the library (HT 1161.I73) or browse the FO 84 files from the National Archives (UK) online (we will look at these sources together as a class) and find individual ships described in the correspondence in these files. Further information about these two sources is found below in the section on Primary Sources. We also have another source unique to our class here at Cal Poly. Further information on it is below under Primary Sources. On the course website, I have posted a spreadsheet listing the complete contents of several volumes of the HCA 35 series that I have photographed over the past few years. You are welcome to browse the multiple sheets in the Excel workbook to view the ships contained in these volumes. The spreadsheet will give you an idea of how many pages of documentation are contained for each ship in these volumes (note that some ships appear in multiple volumes), where the ships were captured, their nationality, now many enslaved Africans were aboard, where the ship was condemned, and other details. Once you have identified the appropriate volume(s) and pages, you can view the specific pages in the sub-folders of the HCA 35 folder in the shared OneDrive. This collection is explained in the Primary Sources section below. Secondary Sources Once you have selected your ship, you will need to first identify secondary sources you can use to contextualize the history of your ship and its voyage. There are several good reasons for historians to begin with secondary sources. First, it is helpful to have some historical background before you begin looking at archival sources. You will be better equipped to encounter vocabulary, events, and concepts in the primary sources if you first explore what historians have already written about your topic. Second, a solid background in the secondary sources can save you from the embarrassment of belatedly learning that something you believed to be a new discovery is actually already well established in the historical literature. Additionally, having a strong knowledge of the secondary sources can help you be more efficient in your work with primary sources as you will be more likely to recognize the important aspects of your primary sources if you already understand the important themes explored by other historians. Some History majors have already mastered the art of finding secondary sources in their Research & Writing Seminar (HIST 303) and Historiography Seminar (HIST 304), but most majors in this class have not yet taken these courses. The following description may be a refresher of those research methods for more experienced students but a helpful introduction for many others. If you have taken other research courses in other majors, you are welcome to return to your notes from those classes for additional support as many of the research methods may be similar. To find secondary sources, login to the Cal Poly portal and click on the “Library” tab, then click on “Research Guides” and select the general “History” research guide to access the main databases. (You can also find them from the library’s homepage under “Databases A-Z.”) Using Boolean searches in the “keywords” and “subject” fields of the “advanced” search pages of JSTOR, Project Muse, and Academic Search Premier, identify articles; and using OneSearch, Ebook Central, Wiley Online Library, SpringerLink, and WorldCat, identify books related to your research project in the following six categories:

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1) The slave trade in general (i.e., either the Transatlantic slave trade or Indian Ocean slave

trade depending on your ship) 2) The slave trade in the specific area of Africa in which your ship embarked enslaved African

captives (e.g., Bight of Benin, Senegambia, Angola). 3) Slavery in the region to which your ship was heading (e.g., Cuba, Bahia, Pernambuco). 4) British antislavery policy toward the country your ship was from (e.g., Portugal, Spain, USA) 5) The history of the Royal Navy’s anti-slave-trade campaign in the particular region in which

your ship was captured (e.g., West Africa, Indian Ocean, Caribbean). 6) The history of liberated Africans in the particular area in which the captives from your ship

were released (e.g., Sierra Leone, Cape of Good Hope, Saint Helena, Caribbean). For each of these six categories identify a minimum of two secondary sources (books and articles). List them under each category using the proper Turabian/Chicago citation style (for either footnotes or bibliography). Essays should ideally include at least one book and one article in each category, although there may be a different number of books and articles in each category provided the total number of sources for each category is at least two (i.e., a minimum of 12 secondary sources in total for the essay). Here is an example of a potential entry under category 6: Padraic X. Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). Here is another example of a potential entry under category 4: Maeve Ryan, “The price of legitimacy in humanitarian intervention: Britain, the right of search, and the abolition of the West African slave trade,” in Brendan Simms and D.J.B. Trim, Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 231-255. It is not necessary to find books or articles that mention your specific ship by name (such specific mentions are rare), but if you do find your ship mentioned somewhere, be sure to make a note of where you found that reference as it is likely to be very helpful to you as you write your essay. Primary Sources Now that you have identified your secondary sources and have begun to read them, you are prepared to conduct your primary source research. This step is the longest and most rewarding part of the research process, so be sure to leave yourself a substantial amount of time to delve into these sources. Although we will not have time to travel directly to archives during this term, we have the next best thing in the form of extensive photographs of documents from archives and other sources. Your final essay must contain at least five different primary sources. The ideal research paper will use printed and handwritten manuscripts from various archival record groups. This quarter, we will have access to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers volumes relating to the slave trade reprinted in 95-volume set by Irish University Press, in addition to digital copies of the original records of the

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High Court of Admiralty (HCA 35) photographed from the National Archives (UK) in Kew. We also have full digital access to the entire, massive 2,000+-volume Foreign Office records group relating to the slave trade (FO 84) via the National Archives (UK) website. Through the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database website (www.slavevoyages.org) we can also access the African Names Database and the full Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. In class, we will conduct training exercises in how to make use of historical newspapers (NEH), Parliamentary debates (Hansard), the U.S. Serial Set (LOC), the English Admiralty Reports (Hathi Trust), and the Registers of Liberated Africans from the Sierra Leone Archives (via www.liberatedafricans.org). (For select cases, I have also photographed additional records from the office of the Admiralty (ADM) and High Court of Admiralty (HCA) including appeals case records and prize papers. If you are interested in going “above and beyond” with your essay this term by using these additional sources, please see me about this possibility.) And new this quarter we now have access to the most exciting resource of all, ProQuest’s UK Parliamentary Papers database. We will spend time in class going over how to access each of these sources. The following is a supplemental guide to accessing them. HCA 35 The main primary sources for this research paper will come from the HCA 35 series in the National Archives (UK). This record group includes 89 handwritten volumes which reproduce the correspondence between Admiralty and Treasury regarding all slave ships seized by the Royal Navy between 1821 and 1891 and several additional cases beyond this date range. In part because these volumes have never been indexed or digitized and because they reproduce correspondence archived elsewhere, these records have received little attention from historians. Lloyd and Ward do not cite HCA 35 and Howell cites only the later volumes (76-89). The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database does not cite HCA 35, although it does cite the subsidiary record group – HCA 37 – in the cases of about 22 ships. This quarter we have the opportunity to work with these volumes without traveling all the way to the National Archives. Over the past three years on multiple research trips to Kew, I have photographed these 89 volumes, and a team of graduate students has been working with me to index them. So far, about 24 of the 89 volumes have been indexed, and our team is continuing our work this quarter to fully index the remaining volumes. About HCA 35 The following is the description of HCA 35 from the National Archives (UK) Discovery Catalog: In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in all British possessions and after that date many examples of the navy’s enforcement of this are to be found, especially in HCA 49/97, cases adjudicated in the court of vice-admiralty for Sierra Leone. In 1821 William Rothery was appointed by the treasury to report on all cases involving slavery in admiralty, vice-admiralty and mixed commission (held jointly with representatives of the other country involved) courts. In 1860 he was succeeded by his son Henry, who remained in the post until 1888, by which time the work was greatly diminished. Their reports are to be found in HCA 35, 1821-1891.

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Reference: HCA 35 Title: Slave Trade Adviser to the Treasury: Report Books

Description:

This series consists of entry books, known as 'Government Reports', which contain reports of the slave trade adviser on questions referred to him by the Treasury for report. They concern matters arising out of cases in the Admiralty, Vice-Admiralty, and Mixed Commission courts under the Proceeds of Captured Slavers Act 1821 and other measures relating to the suppression of slavery. Down to 1848 they also contain entries of associated papers. There is also a volume containing Treasury minutes referred to in the reports, 1860 to 1869.

Date: 1821-1891 Held by: The National Archives, Kew Legal status:

Public Record(s)

Language: English Physical description:

89 volume(s)

How to cite HCA 35 The National Archives may be described or cited as:

 The National Archives (TNA)  The National Archives of the UK (TNA)

The National Archives website requests: “We recommend using a capital T on ‘The’ when writing our name, whether or not it comes at the beginning of a sentence.” Cite the department code (HCA) then the series number (35) followed by the volume number. Example: The National Archives of the UK (TNA), HCA 35/1 The following abbreviations may be used, without punctuation and not italicised:

 p or pp for page or pages  f or ff for folio or folios

Example: TNA, HCA 35/1 pp 15-16 How to use HCA 35 First, access the online resources from the “HCA 35” folder (available in your OneDrive under “Shared Files”) to identify your ship and find original 19th-century documentation for your particular case. You may search for your specific ship in the index in the “HCA Index” sub-folder and view

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the Excel spreadsheet titled “HCA Volumes.” If you are in the process of selecting a ship (see p. 2 above), you can browse the various subfolders for a case that interests you (each folder represents a different volume in the HCA 35 series and contains between 200 and 400 images representing 400 to 800 pages) or browse the “HCA index.”

The pages of the specific volume you are looking at will provide your first primary source. Note that records for some ships can be very lengthy and detailed containing correspondence about “bounties” paid to the Royal Navy, dramatic details about the pursuit and capture of the slave ship, and in certain rare cases, a full “register” of the liberated Africans removed from the ship. Other records may be short, in which case be sure to double check the entire “workbook” rather than one “sheet” for other references to your ship. You can use the “Control+F” feature in Microsoft Excel to search the document, but be sure to click on “Options” and select “workbook” because the search will otherwise default to “sheet,” which will only search a single volume. The most interesting research papers will use the most detailed records, so keep an open mind and be willing to change ships if you find more detailed records for a different ship that turns out to be more interesting during your research. Once you have found your ship look at the corresponding files in the HCA 35 file in the OneDrive. Each folder contains one volume. For periods with volumes that have been photographed but have not yet been indexed, it may be necessary to browse

Each tab or “sheet” is a new volume. Start and end pages for each case.

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multiple volumes. Below is a list of the approximate date ranges covered in each volume. Again, keep in mind that ships appear in multiple volumes and correspondence frequently spans multiple years, so you may need to do some old-fashioned detective work to find the full correspondence on your ship. Approximate Dates of HCA Volumes (from the National Archives Discovery Catalogue) HCA 35/1 1821-1822 HCA 35/2 1822-1823 HCA 35/3 1823-1839 HCA 35/4 1823-1824 HCA 35/5 1824 HCA 35/6 1823-1825 HCA 35/7 1825-1826 HCA 35/8 1825-1832 HCA 35/9 1825-1826 HCA 35/10 1826-1827 HCA 35/11 1826-1827 HCA 35/12 1827-1828 HCA 35/13 1828-1829 HCA 35/14 1827-1829 HCA 35/15 1829-1841 HCA 35/16 1829-1830 HCA 35/17 1829-1830 HCA 35/18 1830-1841 HCA 35/19 1830-1831 HCA 35/20 1831-1832 HCA 35/21 1831-1832 HCA 35/22 1831-1842 HCA 35/23 1832-1833 HCA 35/24 1832-1833 HCA 35/25 1832-1841 HCA 35/26 1832-1833 HCA 35/27 1833-1834 HCA 35/28 1833-1834 HCA 35/29 1833-1834 HCA 35/30 1834-1839

HCA 35/31 1834-1839 HCA 35/32 1834-1836 HCA 35/33 1835 HCA 35/34 1835-1836 HCA 35/35 1835-1837 HCA 35/36 1836-1837 HCA 35/37 1836-1838 HCA 35/38 1836-1837 HCA 35/39 1837-1839 HCA 35/40 1837-1838 HCA 35/41 1837-1838 HCA 35/42 1837 HCA 35/43 1836-1837 HCA 35/44 1838 HCA 35/45 1838-1840 HCA 35/46 1839-1842 HCA 35/47 1839 HCA 35/48 1838-1840 HCA 35/49 1839-1841 HCA 35/50 1840 HCA 35/51 1840-1841 HCA 35/52 1840-1842 HCA 35/53 1840-1852 HCA 35/54 1840-1843 HCA 35/55 1840-1841 HCA 35/56 1840-1842 HCA 35/57 1840-1852 HCA 35/58 1841-1843 HCA 35/59 1841-1843 HCA 35/60 1842-1843

HCA 35/61 1841-1854 HCA 35/62 1842-1843 HCA 35/63 1842-1844 HCA 35/64 1843-1850 HCA 35/65 1843-1845 HCA 35/66 1843-1845 HCA 35/67 1844-1850 HCA 35/68 1845 HCA 35/69 1845-1847 HCA 35/70 1845-1846 HCA 35/71 1845-1847 HCA 35/72 1846-1848 HCA 35/73 1846-1848 HCA 35/74 1848-1849 HCA 35/75 1849-1851 HCA 35/76 1854-1857 HCA 35/77 1857-1860 HCA 35/78 1860-1863 HCA 35/79 1863-1864 HCA 35/80 1864-1865 HCA 35/81 1865-1868 HCA 35/82 1868-1871 HCA 35/83 1872-1874 HCA 35/84 1874-1876 HCA 35/85 1876-1878 HCA 35/86 1878-1881 HCA 35/87 1881-1886 HCA 35/88 1887-1891 HCA 35/89 1860-1869

For tips on how to read the documents in the HCA series, please see the “Working with the HCA 35” appendix below at the end of these guidelines. Slave Voyages Next, find your ship in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (www.slavevoyages.org) using the “Vessel Name” query field from under the “Ship, Nation, Owners” basic variables and limiting the date range to a few years around your ship’s capture date.

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Record the specific Voyage ID number for this exercise. But don’t stop here. Look at the very bottom of the page under “Sources” and identify which Parliamentary Papers (PP) volumes (e.g., XLIX) or Irish University Press (IUP) slave trade volumes the Slave Voyages database used to create this page. Make a note of the specific volume and page numbers of this reference and head to the Kennedy Library to view these documents in person. The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database will allow you to make comparisons between your ship’s voyage and more than 36,000 other voyages. You will be able to determine how common your ship’s itinerary was and make comparative observations about its size, the number of captives aboard, and the frequency with which similar voyages were made. You may also be able to draw conclusions about the ratio of adults to children, and males to females aboard the ship in comparison with other ships in the same period. You can also explore the African Names database. Irish University Press Parliamentary Papers Volumes Your next step is to visit the third floor of Kennedy Library and locate HT 1161.I73. In recent years, Cal Poly has acquired nearly all of the 95 volumes in the Irish University Press Parliamentary Papers - Slave Trade series. These volumes reprint facsimiles of the documentation related to the slave trade ordered to be published by the House of Commons in the nineteenth century. In the easiest cases, the Slave Voyages “sources” field will give you the precise volume and pages of the reference to you need preceded by the abbreviation “IUP.” However, in other cases, you will need to find the specific reference by exploring the Irish University Press volumes by date and series. Note that when an IUP volume number is not given, a PP volume may be along with a date. Browse the IUP volumes corresponding to your date range and check the table of contents for your particular PP volume. This may take a while, but don’t lose heart – you may discover some interesting related material during your search. These volumes may be checked out like regular library books. However, please take good care of them if you choose to take them out of the library. You may need to inquire of your classmates if your desired volume is checked out. In addition, on the website, I have scanned into a PDF file a full copy of the 55-page subject set description, which was published as a separate volume in 1969. If you have the PP number from Slave Voyages but not the Irish University Press volume and page number, it may be helpful to consult this important reference, which is available on the course website. This PDF is fully searchable, so you may be able to quickly identify the appropriate volume of the IUP series by using “Control+F” in this file and searching for the Roman numeral corresponding to the Parliamentary Paper you need.

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For example: If Slave Voyages gives the reference “PP 1939 XXXI (162),” you could search for “XXXI” in the scanned PDF of the IUP Slave Trade volumes guide and be directed to Vol. 68. Liberated Africans Next, search Dr. Henry Lovejoy’s Liberated Africans database (www.liberatedafricans.org) and try to find the “registers” of liberated Africans taken from your ship. The database is most thorough for ships taken to Sierra Leone, but the website is constantly being updated to include sources from all around the world. From the homepage do a keyword search in the main search field using the name of your ship. Documents about ships typically are listed as a “case,” which when clicked will take you to “historical documents” including registers of liberated Africans. Note that there may be multiple records for each ship. In general, sources described as “event” or “individual” will be less helpful for this essay than the sources that are labeled “historical documents.” Treaties Now that you have found a wealth of primary sources on your ship, try your hand at identifying the international treaty or law that allowed your ship to be captured. You may start by reviewing the HCA, PP, or IUP documents you have already found to see which laws that the slave ship was condemned for violating. Look for words such as “in violation of” or “in contravention of” before the names of specific treaties or international agreements. If the ship is Spanish, Portuguese, or Brazilian, there will be a bilateral treaty of mutual search or a treaty to set up a “Court of Mixed Commission.” For this research paper, you will need to find at least one primary source related to the particular treaty or law that permitted your ship to be seized. To do this, try searching the following online sources linked through the course website: Hertslet's Treaties (via Hathi Trust), English Admiralty Reports (via Hathi Trust), Slavery in America and

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the World (via Hein Online), and Hansard (UK Parliamentary Debates). At least one of these databases should help you find the original text of your treaty and any debate surrounding it. If you get stuck, try Appendix B or C of Grindal’s Opposing the Slavers, a PDF of which is on the website as “Grindal – Appendix B-C – List of Laws & Treaties.” It gives a chronological list of laws and treaties. Or see Maeve Ryan’s chapter cited above under Secondary Sources. The best source for most of the ships you will research this term will be Hertslet’s Treaties in Hathi Trust (see the link on the course website). Although his source is deceptively called “commercial treaties” most of the major anti-slave trade treaties negotiated between Britain and major slave trading countries are contained in these volumes, since the slave trade was considered a form of “commercial” activity. See especially Volumes 2 and 3. Each volume has a helpful table of contents arranged by country and lists the treaties covered in that particular volume. Newspapers Next, using the newspaper research skills you developed in HIST 303, identify any newspapers that may have reported the capture of your ship or may report information related to the Royal Navy vessel that captured your ship or any of the names of people associated with your case. If you are unable to find any reports on your specific ship, try searching for the name of the capturing ship (e.g., HMS Sybille) using the same databases (Chronicling America, etc.). Any articles you may find will help you contextualize the broader Royal Navy anti-slave trade project and will add to your primary sources. The course website provides links to databases of nineteenth-century newspapers that we have access to at Cal Poly. The most important of these is Chronicling America, which contains American newspapers, but frequently covers the capture of slave ships by the Royal Navy. The link for this source is: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/. FO 84 Finally, for the most challenging part of your primary source research, search the FO 84 series of the Foreign Office (UK) records related to the slave trade to find supplementary documentation on the capture of your ship. We will go over how to do this in class. The FO 84 record group was originally microfilmed by the National Archives (UK), but the entire series (2,200+ volumes) has been recently digitized and converted into downloadable PDF files. To find documentation related to your ship, start with a very general keyword search (specific ships have not been indexed) such as the country your ship was from (e.g., Spain, Portugal) or especially the place it was adjudicated (e.g., Sierra Leone) or simply “Admiralty” and limit your search to a range of dates approximately five years around your ship’s capture. Visit the National Archives (UK) website and use their search tool Discovery to search FO 84 at the link from the course website or visit: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7404 In order to view these documents you will need to click on the specific volume (e.g., FO 84/193) and then “Add to Basket.” You will not have to pay anything to download the (very large) PDF file, but you will be asked to provide your email address on “checkout.”

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Download the PDF file and browse through it until you get near the dates surrounding your particular ship’s capture and trial. Some ships accumulate vast documentation while others produce very little. You won’t know what you will find until you have a look. Note that browsing through these

large PDF files can take a while, and there’s no such thing as doing a “Control+F” search in volumes of 19th-century cursive documents. This may be the hardest and most rewarding part of your research as you never know what you will find as you dig into this material. Other Sources Ideally you will find approximately 10 sources in the various categories outlined above. The best research papers will find at least one primary source for each of the categories. In addition to the resources listed above, you will also find links to some other potentially helpful sources on the course website. These include the English Admiralty Reports, for which via Hathi Trust we have access to at least nine volumes that provide reports on cases heard in the High Court of Admiralty including numerous slave trade cases. Your ship may be named in the table of contents of one of these volumes if its conviction was heard by the court on appeal. You may also access the Reports of the African Institution via Hathi Trust. These reports cover Sierra Leone in annual volumes between 1808 and 1815 and a few additional years. This source will be especially helpful if your ship is adjudicated at Freetown in this period. Your ship may also be mentioned in Parliamentary debates, so you may search the Hansard using the link provided on the course website. Although it would be ideal to have a first-hand account of the middle passage of your ship’s voyage from the perspective of one of the African captives, such accounts are extremely rare. However, you may find a slave narrative that recounts a similar voyage in another ship that followed a similar itinerary. The best source for such narratives is SHADD, the Studies in the History of the African Diaspora – Documents collection edited by Dr. Paul Lovejoy at York University. Please see this website for these sources: http://www.tubmaninstitute.ca/the_shadd_collection Once you have identified your primary sources you are ready to write the first draft of your research paper.

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Writing Your First Draft Now that you have identified, located, and collected your primary and secondary sources, it is time to begin writing your first draft. Start by reading the excerpt from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird on the course website. In her section on “Short Assignments,” she describes how she keeps a one-inch picture frame on her desk to remind her that “all I have to do is write down what I can see through a one-inch picture frame” (p.17). A first draft of a research paper may seem intimidating, but it will be much less so when it is divided up into several smaller tasks. To implement this strategy, first try your hand at describing one very small part of the story of your slave ship such as the story of its capture by the Royal Navy. Set the stage: What day was it? Was it morning, afternoon, night? What was the weather like? Who was involved? Was there a struggle? If the story is dramatic, fill in some of the details of the drama to draw in your reader. How many captives were on board? What was their condition? If your sources allow, make your reader see, hear and smell the scene. Next, try describing another part of your story such as: What happened to the liberated Africans on board the captured slave ship? Where was the captured ship taken? What happened at the trial? Each of these moments is a small but important part of the story and can be seen through a “one- inch picture frame” that can be written in relatively short amount of time. Allow yourself some breaks between writing different sections. Follow Anne Lamott’s advice and write in small increments around the same time each day. Just get a few thoughts down at a time and let your ideas “ferment.” It won’t be perfect your first time, but the point is to begin to develop a draft that you can edit and improve in the coming weeks. Here are some other “one-inch picture frames” you can begin to work on using your secondary sources in order to help contextualize your story: Why was the Royal Navy patrolling for slave ships? What law allowed the ship to be captured? How was that law passed or that treaty negotiated? What was Great Britain’s relationship with the country whose flag your ship was flying? What was the background on your particular Royal Navy ship and its captain? Had this Royal Navy vessel captured other ships before? Had it been in the area for long? Here are some “one-inch picture frames” you can write using the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (slavevoyages.org): How many ships sailed from this region in the ten years surrounding your ship’s capture? How common was the route that your ship was sailing in the ten years surrounding your ship’s capture? How many people were taken from this region in total in the 19th century, or in the whole history of the Transatlantic slave trade? Here are some more “one-inch picture frames” you can write using your primary sources: Did the capture of this ship get reported in any newspapers? Did the Royal Navy vessel receive any “prize money” for its capture? Was the captured slave ship sold at auction? For how much? To whom were the liberated Africans indentured? For how long? What was the ratio of men, women, and children aboard this ship?

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Once you begin to have drafts of some of the small sections listed above, you can begin to assemble them into an order that makes sense to you for your particular case. Here is a sample outline for how a paper might be arranged. (Keep in mind there are many good ways to organize your paper. This is just one example.) Sample Outline: 1) Introduction 2) Story of capture 3) Background on British antislavery 4) Background on Royal Navy 5) Background on this specific Royal Navy vessel 6) Story of what treaty was used to condemn the slave ship 7) Background on treaty 8) Background on British relations with treaty country 9) Background on slave trade in this particular region 10) Story of what happens to the captives removed from this particular slave ship 11) Background on the general treatment of liberated Africans 12) Explanation of how the story of your ship exemplifies the broader history of slavery and anti-slavery You may review the secondary literature you have found in each of these sections or in a separate “historiography” section early in your paper. Your first draft should paste your various short “one- inch picture frames” into a single document with one-inch margins, and double-spaced text in 12- point font. Your footnotes may still be rough at this stage but I highly recommend citing your sources at least partially at this stage in order to save yourself time in the revision process. Show your draft to at least one other person and get some feedback on your writing before editing your essay and preparing your final draft, which will be due in class at 4pm on December 9. Formulating Your Argument Kate Turabian (Section 10.1) explains that an introduction should contain a “statement of your research question” and a “statement of the significance of your question.” But how can an essay on a narrow topic such as a single slave ship really have a research question or a statement of significance? Let us compare how two authors of books centered on the story of a single slave ship have handled this issue. The first example comes from a famous book written by Yale historian of Africa, Dr. Robert Harms. The Diligent follows the story of a French slave ship in the eighteenth century to illustrate the wider history of the transatlantic slave trade. After capturing the attention of his reader with an opening anecdote about the discovery of his main source, Durand’s logbook, he outlines what he intends to accomplish in his book and his argument.

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He continues a few pages later:

Then on the final page of the introduction:

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Note how Harms lets his readers know, at the outset, what he intends to accomplish in the book and why it is significant. Next, let us have a look at how another author, Dr. Sean Kelley, explains what he hopes to accomplish in his recent book, The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare, and why his research is significant. In The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare, Kelley traces a single ship’s journey to South Carolina from Sierra Leone in 1755-56. Here is an excerpt from the first page of the introduction:

And later in the introduction:

Notice how in their introductions both Harms and Kelley inform their readers of what they will be arguing and why the story of a single slave ship can be significant for understanding wider trends in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. You may choose to develop a similar argument.

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Developing Your Thesis Statement Below are some sample thesis statements from a recent class. Note that these samples do not attempt to fundamentally rewrite the entire history of the transatlantic slave trade but rather aim to accomplish more modest goals with a thesis statement that is concise and limited enough to be defensible while also strong enough to be compelling and command the attention of the reader.

1) This essay argues that a case study of a single ship can illuminate the horrifying world of the transatlantic slave trade. The case of the Spanish schooner Anna Felix powerfully illustrates the egregious conditions faced by enslaved Africans aboard slave ships in the Atlantic Ocean whether they arrived at their intended destination or were captured by the British Royal Navy in the process. 2) In this essay, I argue that the French ship Parisienne – one of more than 36,000 documented slave voyages across the Atlantic – demonstrates the extensive but frequently overlooked interconnections between European colonies in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. 3) In the following pages, I argue that the story of the Portuguese brig Bom Sorte demonstrates the complexities and contradictions of antislavery in the Atlantic world in the nineteenth century. Despite their intentions, the crews of British naval vessels often removed African captives from slave ships only to place them in conditions that rivaled slavery with mortality rates that exceeded those of the transatlantic slave trade itself. 4) This essay argues that the case of the Spanish schooner Catalina exemplifies the extreme measures European slave traders would take in order to secure cargos of African captives for the lucrative markets in Cuba in the first decades of the nineteenth century. 5) In this essay, I argue that the case of the Portuguese bark Veloz exemplifies the paradoxes of British abolitionism in the Atlantic world. The efforts of the Royal Navy to improve the lives of enslaved Africans in the first half of the nineteenth century sometimes backfired spectacularly resulting in extraordinary loss of life. Some convicted slave traders were released only to continue slave trading the following year, and some condemned slave ships were auctioned to slave traders only to be used for further slave voyages. 6) This essay uses a single case study to illustrate the wider world of the transatlantic slave trade. I argue that the case of the Dutch brig Eliza demonstrates the complexities of European slave trading in the heyday of British anti-slave-trade activity in the Atlantic world and the various ways European slave traders attempted to evade capture and elude the Royal Navy in West Africa. 7) In the following pages, I use the case of the Spanish ship Palafox to argue that conditions of liberated Africans in Sierra Leone – in terms of mortality, health, and labor conditions – approached or even superseded the terrible conditions experienced by enslaved Africans in Brazil. A Note on Vocabulary Wherever possible, avoid using the term “slave” as the primary identifier of the individuals held captive on the ship you are studying. Instead, use the terms “enslaved Africans” or “captives.” These people at the heart of your essay certainly did not think of themselves primarily as “slaves”

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and did not choose that status for themselves but received that title by their enslavers. As historians, you can afford enslaved individuals greater agency and autonomy when you avoid calling them “slaves.” (However, the terms “slave ship,” “slave voyage,” and “slave trade” are still acceptable.) Citing Your Sources Below are some examples of proper citations of some primary and secondary sources. Please notice that the footnotes advance sequentially and follow set patterns as outlined in Kate Turabian’s Manual for Writers (Chapter 17). Note that each footnote ends in a period. Primary Source (archival collection): On the morning of January 3, 1820, the HMS Myrmidon sighted the Nuestra Senora de Nieves at anchor off the Gallinas River in Sierra Leone.1 Primary Source (newspaper): The Morning Chronicle (London) reported that the HMS Redwing captured the Spanish brigantine Anna off Old Calabar with 248 African captives aboard on October 11, 1825.2 Secondary Source (Book): W.E.F. Ward has argued that the HMS Myrmidon “alarmed the coast by her unusual turn of speed.”3 Secondary Source (Chapter in an Edited Volume): Maeve Ryan has observed that as late as 1822 Britain lacked an “ideal” treaty with Spain that would permit British ships to seize Spanish ships on the basis of being “equipped for trading in slaves.”4 Secondary Source (Journal Article): Jake Richards has argued that liberated Africans could claim certain kinds of treatment, wages and status, as prescribed by anti-slave-trade treaties, “but they possessed no right to those goods.”5 Presenting Your Research An important part of the work of historians is presenting our research to audiences of both specialists and non-specialists. Learning how to address an audience clearly and confidently is an acquired skill that we develop collaboratively in a learn-by-doing environment. In the articles on the course website, Linda Kerber outlines several best practices for presenting historical research in conference settings, which we will discuss in class, and some additional pointers are listed below.

1 Memorial of Captain Henry John Leeke (HMS Myrmidon) to Treasury (3 Jan. 1820), The National Archives of the UK (TNA), HCA 35/1, p.1. 2 “Slave Vessels Captured by Commodore Bullen,” The Morning Chronicle (London), September 10, 1827. 3 W.E.F. Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers: The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 101. 4 Maeve Ryan, “The price of legitimacy in humanitarian intervention: Britain, the right of search, and the abolition of the West African slave trade,” in Humanitarian Intervention: A History, eds., Brendan Simms and D.J.B. Trim (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 231-255. 5 Jake Richards, “Anti-Slave Trade Law, ‘Liberated Africans’ and the State in the South Atlantic World, c.1839-1852,” Past and Present 241 (Nov. 2018): 179-219.

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On Wednesday, June 10, from 7:10pm to 10:00pm, each student will make a 5-minute presentation to the class about their research. At the conclusion of your presentation you will hand in your final research paper. It is important for everyone to be on time and strictly stick to the time constraints. Presentations will be made through Zoom to the whole class using “Share Screen” to show your visual aids (maps and images). During your brief presentation, it is not necessary to provide the full background on the history of the transatlantic slave trade, the history of British abolitionism, or the role of the Royal Navy in suppressing the slave trade; everyone in the class will already have a background in these subjects. Instead, focus on the unique aspects of your research. Tell us about your ship, where it sailed from and where it was heading, what flag it flew, who was aboard, how and where it was captured, where it was taken, what happened in court, and what became of the liberated Africans. You may choose to provide additional context that may be unique to your particular ship, such as the type of work enslaved Africans were doing in the region your ship was headed at the time it was captured in order to establish in order to establish context for what outcomes might have been if the captives would have arrived at their intended destination. You might also provide context on the treaty and background on the court if you have this information. You might also explain what life might have been like for liberated Africans in the particular part of the world they were taken. You may also provide additional context about how common or rare your ship’s voyage was for the period based on statistics you may derive from Slave Voyages. Tips for Making a Strong Presentation  Voice: Use your best presentation voice. It is not necessary to shout, but if your voice is too soft, some audience members may miss what you have to say.  Tempo: Don’t rush – if you speak too fast your main points could be missed. Pace yourself.  Eye Contact: Be sure to make eye contact with your audience. If you read directly from your paper, you will have a difficult time maintaining the interest of your audience.  Professionalism: Avoid swaying back and forth, slouching, picking your nose, playing with your keys in your pocket, swigging from a soda or water bottle, eating, fidgeting, cursing, or using your phone.  Attire: Dress professionally. “Business casual” is fine, but avoid shorts and flip flops, tank tops, especially revealing or tight garments, or any inappropriate words on a garment that may be visible.  Practice: Try giving your presentation at home in front of the mirror or in front of a friend to get any kinks out in advance. Notes: Rather than read directly from your essay, place keywords or key pieces of information on cards that you can hold in your hand or print your remarks in a large font that is easy to read.  Timing: Mind the time. If you exceed your time limit, you will be cutting other presenters short, which is rude.  Relax: You are in all likelihood the world’s leading expert on the history of this particular ship, so be confident. Stand up tall with your shoulder’s back, breathe, and relax – you are among friends.

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Nova Felicidade (Portuguese slave ship)

Number of captives found onboard this ship

Amount of bounty to be paid to captors

HMS Pheasant (captor)

Date of condemnation

Name of Court

Place taken

“ultimo” = last (i.e., last month)

Working with the HCA 35 Series

Appendix