ake, _History of
Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.]

Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India
Company's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April
and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely
enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of
Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad
food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died,
and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing then
carried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill
her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her
destination at Curacao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally
a sloop sent by the Curacao governor to remove the surviving slaves was
captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising
the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one
leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the
slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high
among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other
hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher,
made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the
average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or
ten per cent.

[Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and
Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.]

[Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.]

Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New
England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a
projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at L300 sterling, was
to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines
and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of L65, and provisioned for L50 more.
Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages
of L10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight
thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five
barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco,
tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of L775--it was to sail for the
Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some
35