Description:

Ships’ muster rolls from 1783 – 1784; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive. Muster roll no: 25.

Muster roll for the ship, the Active, 1792.

The Active sailed from Bristol to Anamaboe and the Cape Coast, West Africa. The master had orders to buy 356 slaves, but it is not known how many were bought and whether any survived when the ship was wrecked in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

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