Description:

Ships’ muster rolls, from 29th September 1770 – 29th September 1771; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive.
Muster roll no: 157.

Muster roll for the ship the Dorsetshire. The slave ship left Bristol in 1770 and sailed to Jamaica in the Caribbean, via 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: 1770

Copyright: Copyright The Society of Merchant Venturers