Continued from last week

AS Bermuda's economic base shifted from the limited productivity of land to the open-ended potential of commerce, the labor of black Bermudians became more vital to the success of the colonial economy.

The integration of slaves into the maritime labor force was gradual, however, for there were great risks involved in using slaves as sailors, not the least of which was the opportunity to run away in foreign ports.

In 1700, Edward Randolph estimated that Bermuda's fleet was manned by 170 masters, 400 white sailors, and 100 black, mulatto, and Indian slaves, revealing that roughly one in five sailors was a slave and that roughly one in five adult male slaves was a deep-water sailor.

A detailed crew list kept between August 1708 and July 1709 bears this ratio out: of the 102 clearing vessels that list crews, sixty-three departed with one or more black sailors (62 percent).

A total of 90 enslaved and two free black men were among a total workforce of 655 sailors and masters (roughly one in seven).

More than half of the listed slaves belonged to owners, masters, or crew members of the ships on which they served.

At least 24 slaves belonged to owners of vessels, while another twenty-seven accompanied their owners to sea and worked alongside them.

Widows sent an additional nine slaves to sea to earn wages for their support.

The remaining slaves were presumably hired by captains and shipowners from friends, neighbors, and relatives in the colony or, in the case of the two freedmen, through direct negotiation.

The ratio of black to white sailors doubtless increased after July 1712, when the Bermuda Council limited the size of white crews but allowed "as many negroes or slaves as (masters) shall think fit" in order to keep a sufficient militia on the island to repel a feared French invasion.

The increasing importance of salt raking to the Bermudian commercial system further expanded the employment of slave sailors.

In 1725, Governor John Hope explained to the Board of Trade that "all vessels clear out with a number of mariners sufficient to navigate the vessel anywhere (four to six for most sloops), but they generally take three to four slaves besides . . . (and) go agathering of salt at Turks Island, etc. When they then arrive, the white men are turn'd ashoar to rake salt . . . for 10 or 12 months on a stretch [while] the master with his vessel navigated by Negroes during that time goes a Marooningfishing for turtles, diving upon wrecks, and sometimes trading with pyrates. If the vessel happens to be lucky upon any of these accounts, Curaçao, St. Eustatia, St. Thomas or the French Islands are the ports where they always are well received without any questions asked, and if a good price is offered, the vessel generally goes with the cargo. If not, they return and take in their white sailors with salt from the Turks Islands and under cover of their old clearings from hence they proceed to some of the Northern Plantations" to sell their cargo of salt.

Although on paper the typical Bermuda sloop had a majority of white seamen, in reality it was often manned entirely by a slave crews under the command of only a single white master for most of the year while white sailors raked salt on remote Caribbean islands.

Ironically, the vulnerability of the Turks Islands to French and Spanish invasion resulted in Bermuda's use of free white labor in the arduous drudgery of raking salt while slaves were increasingly attuned to skilled shipboard work.

By the 1720s, the number of slaves regularly employed by Bermuda's merchant fleet had sharply risen, prompting a debate over the nationality of black and Indian slaves.

The Navigation Acts mandated that at least three quarters of the crew of British vessels must be subjects of the crown.

Bermudians considered their slaves as such and manned their vessels accordingly, in many cases with a black majority, but naval officers in other British ports viewed Bermuda's maritime employment of slaves in a different light and occasionally seized sloops for violating the British manning quota.

The issue came before the Board of Trade in 1725 when Robert Dinwiddie, Bermuda's collector of customs, seized the sloop William for smuggling and for having a crew of one white and three black seamen.

In the William's defense, Provost Marshal George Tucker protested that "it has been a long time customary . . . to clear out negroes as sailors" and offered their regular participation in the island's militia as service to the crown.

Other Bermudian masters cited cases where they had cleared ports in Bristol and London with substantial black crews unmolested. The ship-owning judges of Bermuda's Vice Admiralty Court understandably acquitted the vessel but Dinwiddie appealed to London for justice.

Based largely on their military service, the Board of Trade deemed Bermudian slaves to be British subjectsat least as far as the Navigation Acts were concernedand upheld the Bermuda court's decision.

With official recognition of Bermudian slaves as British sailors, masters increased their use of slaves aboard ship with confidence. By the 1740s, blacks accounted for at least one quarter of the sailors on virtually every sloop.

A 1743 Royal Navy list of the racial makeup of vessels in Kingston Harbor reveals that at least half of the crews of the four Bermudian vessels in port were black and that Captain Joseph Bascome was the sole white man on his sloop Royal Ranger, manned by eight slaves.

In 1770, Governor George Bruere claimed that many Bermuda sloops were navigated "by (a white) captain and mate and all the rest of the hands (are) Negroes."

A census taken four years later lists 572 white and 481 black Bermudians away at sea manning the island's fleet of 200 vessels, but these figures do not include the number of seamen then on the island, nor do they take into account that many of the white "seamen" were actually in the Turks and Caicos Islands raking salt.

On the eve of the American Revolution, slave sailors formed the backbone of Bermuda's merchant fleet. At least 45 percent of Bermuda's sailors were slaves, representing 38 percent or more of the adult male slave population.

The incorporation of black Bermudians into the maritime workforce was not merely a way to keep male slaves fully employed, for adapting slavery to shipboard work had important commercial ramifications.

By 1700, most of Bermuda's male slaves laboured as carpenters, joiners, caulkers, pilots, and marinersskilled professions vital to the shipbuilding industry and to the operation of the merchant fleet. Many white Bermudian shipwrights and mariners employed their own slaves in building and sailing sloops, using slave labor in traditionally wage-based occupations to reduce both the cost of constructing vessels and the operating expenses of trading voyages.

The work of slave sailors was assessed in monthly wages, but since the slaves were severely limited by their inability to strike or refuse service, their wages often were below those commanded by white sailors in the larger Atlantic free wage labor market but generally equal to those of white Bermudian seamen.

As a rough index of profitability, in the 1730s the wages earned by a Bermudian slave sailor in less than three years could equal his market value in Bermuda, yielding a very high rate of return to his owner or a substantial savings when that owner was a ship's captain or vessel owner.

With a lower overhead cost for each voyage and a secure labor supply (vital for minimizing costly delays in outports), Bermudians were able to undercut the freight rates offered by competitors in the carrying trade (chiefly New England) and realise greater profits. Cadwallader Colden, arguing for local protectionist duties in 1726, lamented to his fellow New Yorkers that "we all know that the Bermudians sail their vessels much cheaper than we do."

Much to his satisfaction, Henry Laurens found the same true thirty-seven years later when a Bermudian freighted a shipment of his starch for a third less than the rate quoted by a Philadelphia captain. Bermudians were widely called "the Dutch of America" because their sloops were "the very best and swiftest sailing vessels, and get freighted readily at a better price than the vessels of any other country."

Slave sailors were also instrumental in the shadowy world of Bermudian smuggling with the French and Dutch West Indies.

White captains regularly discharged their white crewmen before embarking on illicit commerce, counting on the fact that if they were apprehended, the testimony of their black sailors would be inadmissible in most colonial courts.

Whether for diminished costs or as a shield against prosecution for illicit trade, the extensive use of slave sailors gave white Bermudian mariners an important edge in the highly competitive, often volatile Atlantic colonial carrying market and expanded the range of their trade beyond the legal bounds of the Navigation Acts. Cedar timbers and sloop rigs made Bermudian vessels superior carriers, but slave crews made them profitable.

Continued next week