Description:

Ships’ muster rolls from 1783 – 1784; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive.
Detail from muster roll no: 119.

Detail from the muster roll of the ship, the Wasp, 1782.
Five of the crew died. One fell overboard and two died, probably of disease, at Old Calabar, West Africa. Another died and one drowned on the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean.

The muster roll is a list of all crew signed on for all or part of a voyage, which was used to calculate the money each man should pay to the Sailors’ Hospital Fund (insurance).

The Society of Merchant Venturers is a Bristol-based organisation, which was formed in 1552 as an elite body of merchants involved in overseas trade. The Society still exists today.

Date: 1782

Copyright: Copyright The Society of Merchant Venturers