Description:

Ships muster rolls from 1770 – 1771; Society of Merchant Venturers archive.
Muster roll no: 68.

Detail of muster roll for the ship, the Gambia, sailing from Africa and Barbados in the Caribbean, 1769.
Joseph Banfield was on board the Gambia on a slaving voyage in 1769. He was separated from his ship and helped by Africans living on the coast. He was rescued and returned to his ship by the wife of the governor of Fort James, an English trading fort in Gambia, West Africa.

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: 1769

Copyright: Copyright The Society of Merchant Venturers