Description:

From ships’ muster roll book, 1793 – 1795; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive. Muster roll no: SMV 177.
Muster Roll for the ship, the Friendship , 1792.
The Friendship left Bristol for New Calabar, West Africa, and bought 232 or 243 enslaved Africans. Reports suggest that 206 or 208 survived the voyage to be sold in Jamaica.
The cook James Adams, an American, was arrested in Jamaica as a runaway slave.

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: 1792

Copyright: Copyright The Society of Merchant Venturers