Description:

Ships’ muster rolls, 29th September 1769 – 29th September 1770; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive.
Muster roll no: 183.

Muster roll for the ship the Nightingale, which sailed from Bristol to West Africa in 1769. Here, it collected 236 enslaved Africans before sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean island of Barbados.

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