Description:

From ships’ muster roll book, 29th September 1772 – 29th September 1773; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive. Muster roll no: 70.
Muster roll for the ship, the Betsey, from Africa and South Carolina, 1771.
There were four ships called the Betsey involved in the slave trade. This one, on this voyage, sold 285 or 279 enslaved Africans from Angola in 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: 1771

Copyright: Copyright The Society of Merchant Venturers