Description:

Ships’ muster rolls, from 29th Sep1771 – 29th Sept 1772; Society of Merchant Venturers’ archive. Muster roll no: 134.

Muster roll for the Virgin Queen slave ship which left Bristol in 1770 for Old Calabar (now Nigeria), in West Africa, where it collected 115 enslaved Africans. The ship sailed to Barbados in the Caribbean and then back to Bristol via Cork in Ireland.

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