Description:

Ships’ muster rolls from 29th Sept 1763 – 29th Sept 1764; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive. Muster roll no: 189.

Muster roll for the slave ship Hector, sailing from Bristol to West Africa in 1763. The captain purchased 480 enslaved Africans in West Africa before sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to St Kitts in the Caribbean. The ship then sailed to Virginina, USA, before eventually returning to Bristol.

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: 1763

Copyright: Copyright The Society of Merchant Venturers