Shared Spaces: African Captives, New England Ships, and the Illegal Slave Trade to the Guianas

Throughout the eighteenth century, there was a robust, albeit largely illegal, slave trade between British America and the Guianas, including the colonies of Suriname, Berbice, Essequibo, Demerara, and Cayenne (modern French Guiana). New England ships were central to this trade, trafficking captives from British North America and the West Indies to the Wild Coast. Yet, it was markedly different from the transatlantic slave trade. The ships employed were mostly small, New England-built sloops and schooners. Although fast by the standards of the day, they could not carry large numbers of captives. Voyages tended to be shorter as well, usually only lasting a week or two. And, perhaps most significantly, these vessels carried mixed cargoes and a wide range of commodities in addition to captives.

Examining the captives’ experience as one of many commodities trafficked by New England ships to the Guianas creates opportunities to study early modern ships as spaces of enslavement. Captives occupied, both physically and metaphorically, a shared space on these vessels that reinforced and furthered the process that transformed people into property. As things to be bought and sold, they existed and subsisted beside other goods and chattel, such as salt cod, timber, tools, and horses. Records of this slave trade and its mixed cargoes come from the many commercial disputes that went to trial. While often concerning business dealings gone awry, court records related to these voyages nevertheless provide a glimpse inside the holds of the ships involved. And below deck was where the captives resided, suffering in stifling, crowded conditions while also forging and maintaining communities and resisting commodification.