Abstract
This archive-based case study uses accounting and related records to uncover details of the everyday life of the captains, sailors and seamen who manned the ships that allowed Portuguese slave trading to flourish during the eighteenth century. By elaborating the lives of the crews of the ships of the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão, a Portuguese chartered company created in 1755 for the express purpose of slave trading, the study contributes to a growing body of literature that uses accounting documents as a source of social history and enables previously silent voices to be heard. Furthermore, the study brings together two notions which have previously remained separated in the accounting history literature: the everyday lives of participants within the setting of a ‘dark’ episode of human history.
Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
São lágrimas de Portugal!
[O salty sea, so much of whose salt Is Portugal’s tears!]
Introduction
The notion of accounting as a social and institutional practice (Hopwood and Miller, 1994; Miller, 1994) has become increasingly prominent in the accounting history literature, drawing attention to the fact that ‘accounting is both pervasive and enabling, with impacts, whether intended or not, on organizational and social functioning’ (Gomes et al., 2011: 390). Indeed, as Gaffikin (2011) put it, ‘as accounting historians we are obliged to consider the broader social implications of our discipline’ (p. 239). Included in the diverse research adopting this notion of accounting in recent years is a growing body of literature that documents accounting’s ‘dark side’ and explores many regrettable historical events in which accounting may have played an enabling role. Slavery and the slave trade are to the fore among these events and have provided inspiration for an already significant but still increasing number of historical studies. As will be demonstrated in the subsequent section dealing with prior literature, some of these studies have examined the accounting side of the story, exploring several locations and timeframes. Understandably, in most of these studies, a focus is placed on the accounting practices applied. However, as Vollmers (2003: 391) noted, when discussing the use of slaves in the turpentine industry of North Carolina in the late Antebellum period (1849–1861), ‘behind the routine and banality of bookkeeping records, which masked the humanity of those it commodified, lies a story of hardship and oppression’.
This archive-based study seeks to use accounting and related records to uncover details of the everyday life of the captains, sailors and seamen who manned the ships that allowed slave trading to flourish. As Mannix (1962) observed, slaves were not the only victims of the slave trade:
popular opinion is mistaken when it holds that Negroes were the sole victims of the trade. White sailors before the mast were also treated as mere items in the ledger. Because they had less value than the slaves, they were often given less food and more floggings, as we learn from the mass of testimony presented to Parliament in 1790–1791. (p. xi)
Indeed, while studies of the transatlantic slave trade inevitably focus on the lives of the slaves, some make reference to – and even provide rich descriptions of – the tasks that sailors and common seamen had to perform aboard the ships, the severe discipline exercised by some ruthless captains and the generally very harsh conditions that were endured. These included an unsanitary working environment, violence, exposure to disease and the consequences of supply shortages. These studies have shown, for example, that average mortality rates among crews were at least as high as those experienced by the slaves. In one such study, Stein (1980) observed that ‘Captains were occasionally paid bonuses for keeping their slaves alive; they were never rewarded for keeping sailors alive’ (p. 39). In the context of the Portuguese shipping trade, Boxer (1991: 214) referred to the sailors’ difficulty in getting ‘fair treatment from the Crown officials on shore who embezzled their wages or gave them short rations’, the ‘contemptuous dislike for sailors which was so common’ among ‘well-educated’ men, and the low position they seemed to occupy in the social rankings of the time. This manifested in a shortage of such men, leading to the frequent use of foreign crews, which themselves sometimes included slave labour.
The archives of the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão (hereafter GPM), a Portuguese chartered company created in 1755 for the express purpose of slave trading, offer the opportunity to obtain rich insights into the everyday lives of those engaged directly in the company’s activities, addressing and augmenting the above-mentioned assertions made in several secondary sources. The study focuses on the period from 1755 to 1797 – during which GPM performed hundreds of ‘triangular trade’ voyages, 1 often with a monopoly power granted by the Portuguese Crown – and relies upon evidence from primary sources located in different archives in Lisbon.
This study contributes to a growing body of literature that uses accounting documents as a source for social history and responds to Hopwood’s (1994) call for stories on ‘Accounting and everyday life’. As will be detailed in the review of prior literature presented in section ‘Literature review, method and archival sources’, significant contributions have already been made in this area and they span a diverse range of settings. However, in elaborating upon the role of accounting in the broad social contexts in which it operates, this study is concerned with the distinctive setting of the lives of the captains and crews of eighteenth-century Portuguese slave trading vessels. This is in contrast to most prior studies of accounting and everyday life, which have tended to have relatively benign settings. This study’s express purpose is to use accounting and related information to provide insights to the everyday lives of participants within a ‘dark’ episode of human history. As such, the study spans and builds upon two fields of research that have previously remained largely separate: ‘accounting and the history of everyday life’ and ‘accounting’s dark side’. By focussing on the lives of the captains and crews of slave trading ships, the study makes an additional contribution by giving recognition to ‘voices from below’ (Napier, 2006) that would otherwise remain lost.
The next section reviews relevant prior literature and outlines the main archival resources that provide the basis for the study. Section ‘Slavery, crews, GPM and accounting’ describes the main aspects of GPM’s activities, including the slave trading voyages undertaken, and the information on crews provided by accounting and supporting records. Section ‘Discussion’ analyses and discusses the main findings, and this is followed by summative comments in the final section.
Literature review, method and archival sources
This section reviews prior literature that motivated this study: first, an increasing area of research which has portrayed a ‘dark side’ of accounting, with particular focus on slavery, and, second, previous literature on accounting and everyday life. Also included in this section is a description of the archival sources that underpin the study.
Accounting’s ‘dark side’
During the last 30 years, a powerful body of critical literature has emerged that portrays what has been termed the ‘dark side of accounting’. This literature comprises numerous, diverse and enlightening demonstrations of accounting’s power to control and dehumanise human beings and thereby facilitate abuse, exclusion, exploitation and stigmatisation. Such studies have presented compelling evidence of the culpability of both accounting and accountants in enabling unethical and morally reprehensible events. As Funnell and Walker (2013) state, this
impressive, expanding body of historical research has shown accounting to be far more than a prosaic, neutral technical practice. Instead, accounting inscriptions can have a pronounced and powerful moral dimension as a sinister political tool used to promote the interests, ideologies and plans of individuals or groups, irrespective of any catastrophic impacts on others. (p. 1)
This growing literature and its underlying events range across diverse settings around the world, as well as several timeframes. 2 Among these, the role of accounting in facilitating the horrors perpetrated by the Holocaust/Nazism stands out for its pioneering character and compelling illustrations, with the seminal study by Funnell (1998) followed by other enlightening contributions, including Lippman (2009), Lippman and Wilson (2007) and Walker (2000). Other themes featuring in ‘dark side’ studies include the Irish Famine (Funnell, 2001; O’Regan, 2010), the Highland Clearances (Walker, 2003a), poverty (Care, 2011; Holden et al., 2009; O’Hogartaigh et al., 2012; Servalli, 2013; Walker, 2004, 2008), war and financial reporting (Chwastiak, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2008; Chwastiak and Lehman, 2008; Chwastiak and Young, 2003; Cooper and Catchpowle, 2009), indigenous dispossession (Gibson, 2000; Greer, 2009; Hooper and Kearins, 2008; Neu, 2000a, 2000b; Neu and Graham, 2004; Neu and Heincke, 2004), indentured labour (Irvine, 2004; Tyson and Davie, 2009), accounting for imperialism/accounting and empire (Annisette and Neu, 2004; Bakre, 2008; Davie, 2000, 2005a), race and ethnicity (Annisette, 2003; Davie, 2005b; Hammond and Streeter, 2013; Kim, 2004a; Poullaos, 2009; Sidhu and West, 2014), gender (Kim, 2004b; Kirkham and Loft, 2013; Lehman, 2012) and class (Walker, 2002). Despite their diversity, these studies all evidence that, far from being a neutral technology, accounting has long played an active role in dehumanising, exploiting and degrading human beings.
Being ‘among the worst violations of human rights in the history of humanity’ (United Nations, 2008), 3 slavery and the slave trade have inspired countless studies across numerous areas of research. However, the accounting side of this dark event has only recently inspired researchers, who have focused on different locations and time frames, including the United States Antebellum South and British West Indies (Barney and Flesher, 1994; Fleischman et al., 2004, 2011a, 2011b; Fleischman and Tyson, 2004; Heier, 2010; Oldroyd et al., 2008; Vollmers, 2003), the French slave trade (McWatters and Lemarchand, 2006, 2009, 2010), and the South Sea Company and the Spanish Asiento (Carmona et al., 2010; Donoso Anes, 2002). This body of research has highlighted the enabling role accounting played in the slave trade. That is, rather than just being a descriptive discipline that measured the outcomes of slave trading – by recording profits and valuing and reporting slaves – accounting was an important element of the apparatus that sustained slavery and slave trading.
Although Portugal was a forerunner, its slave trade – and the role of accounting within it – remains understudied. As acknowledged by Domingues da Silva (2008: 491), foundational work was undertaken by Antonio Carreira (1982) and GPM was an important element of his study. However, Carreira’s work did not focus on the role of accounting in the slave trade, and nor have other subsequent works on GPM. 4 Accordingly, there remains a gap to be filled, especially given that ‘Maranhão has the best documented slave trade in all Portuguese America. However, it is one of the least studied branches of the Atlantic slave trade’ (Domingues da Silva, 2008: 477). As Hawthorne (2010) suggested, the slave trade from Upper Guinea to the captaincies of Pará and Maranhão is ‘an understudied diaspora in an understudied part of Brazil’ (p. 3). In addition, the few existing studies have left out one crucial group of participants in the trade: the ships’ crews.
Accounting and everyday life
Over 20 years ago, Hopwood (1994) called for studies focusing on the ‘ways in which the functioning of accounting is related to wider cultural and social practices’ (p. 299). Since then, a number of studies have emerged, diffidently at first, but gaining momentum in more recent years. Ingrid Jeacle, in particular, has highlighted the manifold possibilities and versatility of this novel and underexplored area, refuting any doubts regarding its claim to being a ‘serious’ research topic. Jeacle’s (2008) contributions have focused on areas as diverse as the tea club; the cinema (Jeacle, 2009b) and the annual BAFTA awards ceremony (Jeacle, 2014a), as well as the influence of accounting ‘in the dissemination of a classical taste in British furniture during the Georgian era’ (Jeacle, 2005: 117) and in the ‘construction and widespread adoption of the standard Georgian house’ (Jeacle, 2003b: 582), the construction of the ‘standard body’ in Western culture (Jeacle, 2003a), female cosmetic consumption (Jeacle, 2006) and ‘the role of calculative technologies in the creation and sustenance of fast fashion and hence the governance of everyday dress’ (Jeacle, 2014b: 1). In a summarising contribution, Jeacle (2009a: 120) called ‘on researchers to recognise the significance of the everyday’, highlighting its potential ‘as a site for furthering an understanding of accounting’, and provided examples of qualitative studies which could be undertaken.
Other authors have also made important contributions in related but distinct areas, including the household (Carnegie and Walker, 2007a, 2007b; Llewellyn and Walker, 2000; Walker, 1998, 2003b; Walker and Llewellyn, 2000); lifestyle and occupational differentiation in Victorian accountancy (Edwards and Walker, 2010); child accounting texts published in the US during the early to mid-twentieth century (Walker, 2010); the circus (Cummings and St Leon, 2009); and works of fiction, such as Gustav Freytag’s Soll Und Haben (Maltby, 1997) and The Bank Audit by Bruce Marshall (West, 2001). Czarniawska (2008) focused on changing perceptions of accounting across time and different cultural contexts, with special emphasis on gender issues, through the novels of Douglas Adams, and in a later contribution explored accounting across time and space via detective novels (Czarniawska, 2012: 661). Jacobs and Evans (2012) investigated how accounting is entwined in the cultural practice of popular music, while Jackson et al. (2012) examined how ‘an accounting failure’ influenced the two established competing discourses surrounding alcohol drinking in nineteenth-century Britain and significantly impacted the UK drinking culture at the time. All the above-mentioned studies suggest that there is no area of life left untouched by accounting, and that research should, and is attempting to, reflect this reality.
Although diverse, the extant literature on accounting and everyday life has tended to focus on relatively benign settings. This study aims to highlight the notion of accounting’s dark side in the context of everyday life, by portraying the everyday lives of participants in a particularly bleak episode of human history: ship crews who helped slave trading to flourish.
Method and archival sources
This interpretive case study is founded on primary sources located at several archives in Lisbon, Portugal, with additional secondary sources used mainly for contextualisation. It adopts a broad definition of what constitutes the archive for accounting history research. This includes traditional accounting records, such as journals, ledgers and financial statements, but also extends to underlying source and subsidiary documents, such as cargo and other auxiliary books, legislation, reports and extensive volumes of correspondence exchanged between the company and various agents, including state authorities. In this way, the study also adopts a broad interpretation of what constitutes ‘accounting’, extending beyond just the numbers and descriptions contained expressly in financial records to also embrace the documents and other sources that provided the basis for, or otherwise influenced, those records. Where possible, data triangulation was employed to avoid possible biases in the sources.
Of the several archives used, the most important is the main collection of 217 books pertaining directly to the company. This collection is located at the National Archives of Torre do Tombo (ANTT). Additionally, this archive provided other collections used mainly for contextualisation, including those pertaining to the Board of Trade (Junta do Comércio) where, from May 1767, details on the crew members of departing ships were registered. Other archives that provided valuable information were the Historical Archive of the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications (AHMOPTC), where a specific book highlighting the interaction between the company and the state authorities is located, and the Historical Maritime Archive that, apart from general aspects related with maritime activity, provided information on the clergy members included in GPM’s crews.
The study focuses on the slave trading voyages conducted by GPM from 1755 to 1797. Although during its lifetime the company conducted other activities, and undertook hundreds of journeys that did not carry any human cargo, the specific focus of this study is the slave carrying voyages.
Slavery, crews, GPM and accounting
This section provides information about the context and history of the company, including details on its slave trading activities. It then describes and analyses the information on crews provided by the accounting system and related documentation, portraying, to the extent possible from the surviving primary sources, the everyday life of crew members.
Context and history of the company
On 6 June 1755, the Portuguese King Joseph I (D. José I, 1750–1777) approved the 55 articles comprising GPM’s statutes, and these were confirmed by a Royal Decree the following day. These gave the company considerable privileges, including a monopoly over the slave trade and generally every product traded into and from the regions where it operated. In response to the economic difficulties facing Portugal at that time, and the decay and ruin confronting Pará and Maranhão – the two administrative regions, respectively, in the north and north-eastern parts of current day Brazil – Pombal, the all-powerful Minister of the King, devised a global, interconnected development policy. This policy was aimed at increasing trade and agricultural production, with the introduction of African slaves crucial to achieving this goal. Thus, although the company conducted a range of activities in three continents, the cornerstone of its existence was the slave trade (see Pinto and West, 2017).
During the time it operated, which included more than two decades (1755–1778) as a monopoly authorised by the Portuguese King, GPM performed hundreds of journeys connecting three continents. The typical triangular trade commenced by sailing to the Western coast of Africa bartering for slaves. From there, the company’s ships, loaded with enslaved men and women, crossed the Atlantic. Once arriving in Pará or Maranhão, the human cargo was sold to local acquirers, after which the ships were reloaded with local produce and then sailed back to Lisbon. There were variations to this triangular pattern, with many direct voyages between Lisbon and Pará or Maranhão, but this study focuses on the slave carrying, triangular voyages, the surviving accounting records of which provide rich insights into the everyday lives of captains and crew.
Although the company had permanent representations in Africa, Pará and Maranhão, and its activities connected three continents, management was centred in Lisbon, with strategic and operational decisions taken by a Board composed of one superintendent, eight deputies and one secretary. This Board worked closely with the Portuguese state, since GPM’s activities aligned private profit aims with public duties. To this effect, GPM’s privileges were systematically enlarged during its lifetime, including effective ruling powers over several territories in Africa, which were secretly granted in 1757 (Secret Charter of 28 November 1757). Furthermore, additional statutes detailing how the company was to be managed were promulgated on 16 February 1760, specifying instructions about the importance and organisation of the accounting system.
Although the monopoly rights of GPM were withdrawn on 5 January 1778, the company tried to keep operating under the new conditions of free trade. However, its Board soon decided that the company should be closed down, and on 29 April 1778, a new Board was appointed and assigned the special duty of closing down the operations of the company. The company continued to trade on a reduced basis at least until 1788, and its complete termination would occur only in 1914. In what relates to the slave trade, the last cargo is registered for 30 December 1797, when a cargo of 14 slaves was carried from Bissau to Maranhão (TT_GPM_52_83). 5
GPM and its crews
For GPM, the 1755 statutes established the basis for recruiting captains and crews. To man its ships, the company had the power to demand any worker who was needed, including sailors and soldiers, with the only precedent for this being the King’s own demands for such labourers (Article 11). Article 12 declared special concerns about the choice of capable ship captains and officials, who were to be appointed by the King. This reflected the importance of the work they would undertake, the high level of trust that would be placed with them, and the magnitude of the benefits that they were expected to deliver. Furthermore, their duties and performance would be regarded as if being undertaken in the Royal Navy, with the customary entitlements of such status granted after a certificate issued by the company was handed over. To ensure that the ship captains were acting in every way as was expected, they were given a patent signed by the King, and pledged to conform to such a patent and statutes and to give a full account of their actions (Article 13).
The general tenor of the several pieces of legislation concerning crews, published during Pombal’s ministership, reflected high regard for the importance of their work for the vital overseas trade. For example, a royal decree of 11 December 1756, which will be further analysed below, justified the benefits given to officials, captains, sailors and other seamen acting in these capacities on the basis of the importance of the services rendered and their contribution to the common good of the kingdom. Thus, the conditions established by this 1756 royal decree aimed at ‘benefitting them as far as possible without damaging commerce’. Furthermore, on 10 June 1757, a royal decree established that preference should be given to sailors when liquidating assets for paying the debts of bankrupt merchants, ‘given the indispensable need that commerce has of the work of sailors and other seamen, and the bodily fatigue and life risk with which they perform it’. On the other hand, legislation also reflected the challenges and difficulties associated with hiring crews, and the several expedients to which these men resorted in search for a better position or deal. For example, the decree of 27 September 1756 prohibited seamen from joining the crews of foreign ships without a written permit issued by the King. It seems that in spite of all the penalties already established in previous legislation, some seamen attempted to escape ‘the royal service’ by hiding when crews were being appointed to national ships. They would often be subsequently hired by foreign ships at higher salaries. A document signed by Pombal on 6 September 1758 instructed that ‘all foreign ships leaving the ports of this Kingdom shall be visited at the time of their departure, to inquire if in them embark any Portuguese Sailors’ (PT/TT/JC/A-D/5/1, mç. 64, cx. 209). Such a procedure prompted a warning from the Board of Trade, given the delays and resulting losses, and suggested practical solutions to ensure swift departures.
The Royal Decree of 1 February 1758 defined a new way to rule the dispatch of ships. Captains of ‘merchant ships’ had to declare to the Board of Trade the number of crew members and pay a corresponding fee destined for the Church of Nossa Senhora da Piedade das Chagas. On the same occasion, captains also had to present three different statements (certidão): one sworn by the Chaplain who would travel in the ship, another by the Surgeon Major of the Navy approving the ship’s surgeon, and one from the Cosmographer Chief attesting that the steersman had submitted to the due examination.
African men were also to be found among the crews sailing between Portugal, Africa and Brazil. 6 The inclusion of both free and enslaved African men in the crews is evidenced by the word ‘black’ (preto) that is usually placed after their names in the several lists found in the books of the company. The list of costs for Galera Nossa Senhora da Atalaya sent to Angola on 21 December 1757 (TT_GPM_63_222) included 6,400 reis 7 paid to one crew member named ‘José do Rozário, Slave’. However, the entry does not clarify if this amount was indeed paid to this man or to his owner. 8 The regular presence of slaves in the crews operating in the transatlantic trade is attested by the volume of manumission requests that were filed and granted by the Portuguese Government after the publication of the Royal Decree of 19 September 1761. This decree barred the importation of slaves into the continental territory of Portugal, Madeira and Azores, but not into the colonies. The high volume of manumission requests led to a series of rules, ‘seeking to limit the effects of the decree, excluding its application to slaves who were registered on ship lists’ (Silva and Grinberg, 2011: 435).
The typical triangular voyage
The typical voyage comprised three legs, connecting three continents: from Lisbon to Africa, to Pará or Maranhão, and finally back to Lisbon. Although there were variations for each voyage, typical patterns emerge from the accounting and related records available.
Departing from Lisbon
The start of a voyage, either to Africa, Pará or Maranhão, would imply putting in place a complex array of arrangements, overseen by deputies. Dates of departure had to be defined, either due to legal restrictions or, more commonly, to take account of natural conditions; and the number and type of ships had to be stipulated, some belonging to the company while others were rented. Ships also had to be set up with the necessary provisions, as well as items required by agents in overseas administrations, and be deemed adequate to undertake other businesses, such as the slave trade. All of these matters had to be settled in time for departure. Foremost, the captain and crew members had to be selected. Indeed, as seen above, the selection of suitable ship captains was to be given particular attention by the Board, as stated in the 1755 statutes (Article 12), as the outcome of a voyage could depend on their skill, experience, character and actions. As for the rest of the crew, no details are known on how they were hired. Article 11 of the 1755 statutes established that GPM had the freedom to hire every crew needed to equip its fleets, either in Portugal, Pará or Maranhão, at any time, providing them with salaries and any other required benefits. However, from 11 May 1767 the Board of Trade took over the duty of certifying the crew for every departing ship, including names, ages and specific individual signs or characteristics.
The first book where such certification and descriptions are included opens by stating that ‘apart from other circumstances, the signals which they have’ were to be declared, in order to be registered in the passports as well as in listings to be sent to destination ports (PT/TT/JC/A-D/6/1). It also reminded of the prohibition for any captain of a merchant ship to embark a sailor, grumete, 9 boy or any other person who was not authorised, under threat of severe penalties. Accordingly, for each departing ship, a list of all crew members would be registered with the Board of Trade, and a corresponding copy would be sent to the destination port authorities, mentioning ‘names, ages, and signals’ of each crew member. In this book, records start on 27 May 1767, but the first slave carrying ship belonging to GPM to be mentioned is registered on 6 July 1767 (entry no. 6, fls. 39–44), referring to Curveta S. Pedro Gonçalves, departing to Bissau with a crew of 33 men, including Captain Ignacio Luiz da Silva. 10 Information is given on name, age, place of birth of crew members and sometimes their parents’ or wives’ names. Each entry is signed by the crew member himself and two witnesses, with details in the calligraphy evidencing which of the men could write; if illiterate, the signature is inscribed by the clerk, followed by a sometimes shaky cross mark, almost certainly written by the crew member. Most of the witnesses are other crew members, very frequently the captain himself, possibly evidencing some informality in the process of hiring, as well as a previous acquaintance. The entries follow a specific hierarchy: first the captain, followed by the priest, the steersman, the surgeon and the boatswain, sailors followed by boys, and usually ending with men of African descent. This hierarchy is respected for every registered ship. In this case, the captain was 27 years old, having previously done ‘more than ten voyages’; he was of ‘ordinary stature’, round faced, brown eyes, had ‘no imperfections’, and wore a wig. Most crew members kept their own hair (except for the boatswain and one sailor, who also wore a wig), with colours ranging from blond (just one instance), several shades of brown and the more typical ‘dark’ or black. The priest and ‘attendant number 7’, João Caetano, were already missing some hair. Eyes were usually ‘dark’, brown, and in seven instances blue; in some cases ‘big’ or ‘little’. Faces were classified as round, broad, small, thick, swarthy, or red; frequently pockmarked, although in different scales. Two had ‘not much beard’, one freckles, one a ‘white countenance’, another ‘thick lips’ and three had a ‘joyous face’. Statures were simply ‘ordinary’ (20), ‘less than ordinary’ (7) or ‘more than ordinary’ (2). In 22 of the cases, crew members presented ‘no imperfections’; for the remainder, existing imperfections were mentioned and included the following: a broken nail on the left thumb, a wounded chin, a burn mark by the mouth, a missing upper tooth, and a smaller right eye; occasionally, pockmarks were so strong as to be classified as imperfections. Ages ranged from 15 to 40, with an average of 24 years. Unsurprisingly, ‘boys’ tended to be younger (ages ranging from 15 to 26) with the category of sailor presenting an average of 32 years. Previous experience, measured either in years or number of voyages, was also mentioned, and ranged from 2 to 20 years, or from one previous voyage to 12 voyages. The youngest crew member, a 15-year-old boy called Francisco dos Santos, was embarking for 3 years. In contrast, only two men were departing for the first time: the priest and the cooper. The list ends with three black men and one classified as ‘dark’ (pardo), all manumitted, whose entries present two notable differences from the remainder of the crew: while for the other members it was compulsory to have the signature of two witnesses, for these four only one witness was required, and in this case always the captain. Additionally, no physical description of these men is provided, except their age (two aged 18, and two aged 24), their previous experience (ranging from one previous voyage to 12 years) and their origin: Bissau, Cape Verde, Angola and Pará. In what amounts, in substance, to a human inventory, it is as if blackness exempted the need for any further description.
Taking as an example the first slave carrying voyage the company undertook after its establishment, the information gathered from the accounting books reveals many of the details and challenges that preparing such a voyage would entail, as well as the considerable investment the company had to make. On 31 December 1755, an entry was made in the memorial (TT_GPM_63_14) detailing all costs borne in building and fitting out the ship Galera S. Jozé, which subsequently departed from Lisbon to Cacheu with Joze Ferreira de Azevedo as captain. Although some of the costs were listed according to the Board members’ recollection, as many documents were destroyed in the 1 November 1755 Earthquake, the details recorded were still extensive and summarised into several categories, as detailed in Table 1.
Costs of the Galera S. Jozé, December 1755 (in reis).
Source: TT_GPM_63_14.
These listings reveal that, apart from the building of the ship itself, there were many important elements necessary to equip it, and also that a considerable amount of bureaucracy was in place before the ship could depart. This is revealed by the amount of 1,130,014 reis for equipping the ship that included, among many other items, moorings, cables and ropes, hoisting implements, boilers, sailcloth and goods purveyed and work done by coopers. Some of these items, such as the boilers, were specifically stated as being both for the crew and slaves. On the other hand, the amount of 58,704 reis, although comparatively low, includes no less than 16 different fees paid to the same number of public departments and officers, shedding light on the prevalent bureaucracy. Linking these amounts to the ledger (TT_GPM_23_5) reveals that the ship was acquired on 13 August 1755 for 4,842,552 reis, a sum also visible in the financial statements of 1759 (TT_GPM_78_10). Additionally, the ship was loaded with a total of 10,745,005 reis of merchandise destined to be available for sale in Cacheu, including bartering for the much desired slaves (TT_GPM_63_12).
The details available in records evidence the exact composition of the crew, their names and occupations, as well as the individual amounts received as advances on wages, thus shedding light on the relative conditions of the several crew members, and permitting inferences to be drawn on the relative importance of each occupation or role (Table 2).
Advances on crew wages for Galera S. Jozé, December 1755 (in reis).
Source: TT_GPM_63_14.
In relation to the provisions, broad detail is also given regarding the quantities, type and purpose of each item, and the extensive number of legal fees involved in the process (Table 3).
Provisions for Galera S. Jozé, December 1755 (in reis).
Source: TT_GPM_63_14.
For subsequent voyages, it was customary to separate the ordinary provisions given to the crew from the items specifically destined for the sick. For example, the Galera Santo António departing for Cacheu on April 1758 (TT_GPM_64_14) included two lists of provisions: one of 124,200 reis and the other, specifically destined for the sick, of 55,640 reis. While the first included only codfish, dry fish, sardines, salt, white beans, cheese, rice, wine, firewood, garlic and onions, the second was perhaps more appealing: it included, along with a box of medicines, butter, angel hair, 11 pepper, cumin, saffron, lentils, prunes, pounded barley, lavender, 12 live chickens and corn to feed them, sugar and quince cheese.
Although the basic diet given to crew members appears to have been rich and varied, a more detailed analysis of voyage records highlights other aspects. Over time, as the company became more firmly established, it became common practice to supply ships only from the company’s warehouses, rather than make specific acquisitions. 12 This included equipping the ships departing for Africa with provisions and other resources that had been produced in Pará and Maranhão with the use of slave labour. In this way, items produced by slaves were used to acquire more slaves, thereby perpetuating the enslavement cycle. For example, the Galera Santo Antonio, which left for Cacheu in April 1758 (TT_GPM_64_14), included a specific section for ‘provisions for this ship, whose cost is not charged for being leftovers of the convoy ships and of homeward journey’. They specifically comprised six barrels of beef from Pará, 60 bushels of beans from Pará, ‘120 bushels of manioc flour for the blacks’ (these three items from the convoy ships), 1 barrel of vinegar, 2 barrels of olive oil, 2 barrels of biscuits and 1 barrel of rice (these four items from homeward journey). Clearly, no waste was to be tolerated in the company, and sailors and slaves were at the forefront in the pursuit of this goal. Similar details emerge for several other voyages.
Canonicals were a common precious element on board, not only because the Catholic faith was shared by all crew members but also because the celebration of Catholic mass on board was specifically prescribed in the 1684 Decree. 13 For this purpose, every ship would take on board a clergyman, whom the captain not only swore to protect during the voyage, but also to bring back safely to Lisbon (AHM_Indice_30_Livro_2321_6-III-54). The Galera S. Jozé carried 15,640 reis of religious items, including a silver chalice, a box with several ornaments and communion bread for masses.
The middle passage
According to the Memorial (TT_GPM_63_65), the ship Galera São Jozé departed Cacheu in May 1756, heading to Pará and carrying 94 slaves on board. The dispatch was organised by the local administrator, Manoel Ferreira de Oliveira, and the total value of this cargo, including provisions and other items given to the slaves until departure and inclusive of taxes, was 6,670,960 reis. Further information reveals that for the second leg of the voyage (Cacheu-Pará), there were additional costs of 685,560 reis (TT_GPM_23_5).
Unfortunately, it seems that no other records that would have elucidated the conditions endured in Africa and the Middle Passage have survived. But what the surviving records do reveal is the name of several books which were used by ship captains to control costs and provide the basis for their report on arrival in Lisbon. One such example is the Book of Wages (Livro de Soldadas), kept by the ship captain as evidence of amounts disbursed and used as basis for the entries made in the Lisbon books at the end of each voyage. Had this survived, it would have shed additional light on many of the costs presented in journals and ledgers. One other noteworthy feature is the fact that many of the costs were based on the ship captain’s own word, thereby creating opportunities for financial misappropriations. Judging by coeval correspondence, some captains clearly took advantage of these opportunities (for an example, see the ‘Challenges, problems, tensions and conflicts’ subsection).
The records available today, however – even when combined with secondary sources (including novels inspired by crews’ testimonies and other documentation) – leave much uncertainty about the challenges and difficulties slaves and crew members would have endured during the Middle Passage. 14
Heading to Lisbon
After arriving in Pará carrying the 94 slaves, whose sale was made for 7,254,000 reis, as accounted for by the local administrator Amaro Soares Lima on 12 December 1756 (TT_GPM_63_65 and TT_GPM_1_172), the ship Galera Sao Jozé left Pará loaded with produce that amounted to 8,783,417 reis (TT_GPM_63_61). The records also reveal that while in Pará additional costs were borne, including 227,154 reis for provisions for the third leg of the voyage (Pará-Lisbon) and 172,604 reis for crew wages (TT_GPM_23_5).
Additional entries reveal that, while some advance money was given at the outset of each leg of the voyage (see Tables 1 and 2), the global amounts were finally computed and the residual sums paid in Lisbon. On 4 September 1761 (TT_GPM_3_2035), 945,647 reis were paid to crew members of Curveta São Paulo, on returning from Cape Verde, settling the remainder of their wages. These entries also reveal the considerable amount of time needed to make all the computations and settle the outstanding amounts with everyone involved.
In the absence of the above-mentioned Book of Wages, the surviving lists of payments to crew members highlight what must have been the fate of some of them. Indeed, comparisons between the shipping lists on departure from Lisbon and on arrival from Brazil, evidence several changes in crew members. For example, for Galera Santo Antonio, which departed in April 1758 to Cacheu, of the 22 crew members registered on departure (TT_GPM_64_14) to whom 197,200 reis were given, 5 are not listed in the global payment list prepared on arrival in Lisbon on 28 May 1759 (TT_GPM_64_34). Only additional information could elucidate the reasons for this absence: either death occurred sometime during the voyage or, for whatever reason, they were left behind. The comparison of both lists, however, reveals their names and posts: one officer, Antonio Alves de Carvalho, steersman, who received 25,600 reis; and four ‘youths and attendants’ (mancebos e serventes) – Joze da Costa and Joze Alves (6,400 reis each), Joze Roiz (4,800 reis) and Joze Gomes (4,000 reis). On the other hand, two officials, one sailor and seven ‘youths and attendants’ appear listed only in the final payment, indicating that they were hired subsequent to the ship’s departure from Lisbon (see Table 4). In the absence of auxiliary records, the story of these men is confined to what is revealed by surviving accounting records.
Crew wages of the Galera Santo Antonio, May 1759 (in reis).
Source: TT_GPM_64_34.
Financial incentives given to captains and crews
Until 1773, all shipping costs, including those payable to crew members, were debited in a specific account kept for each ship, after which specific fees (freights) were assigned to each area where its services had been rendered. The slave trade was no exception. Indeed, until 1773, all shipping costs born for each voyage were debited to the ship’s account, after which a fee for each slave transported was credited in this account and debited to the cost of each slave cargo. 15 But from 1773, following complaints from the new Governor of Pará and ensuing instructions from the Portuguese State, a new way of assigning these costs was adopted by the company. From then on, shipping costs related to the second leg of the voyage, duly certified by Guinea Governors, were meticulously detailed and assigned to the costs of the slave cargo in question (for detail see Pinto and West, 2012).
What is interesting about this change, for the purpose of this paper, is that it provides additional details on the lives of crew members. Indeed, it is from here that confirmation is obtained that while ship captains and some higher officers would usually receive fixed salaries or commissions for the business they conducted, the other crew members tended to receive a variable sum, usually a daily amount. This is confirmed for a cargo of 221 slaves carried from Bissau to Pará on Curveta S. Pedro Gonçalves on 15 January 1774 (TT_GPM_50_293). The ‘Expenses in Pará’ assigned to this cargo included 100,000 reis, being ‘one-third of the salary of the Captain’. The one-third is derived from the slave carrying constituting one-third of the ship’s triangular voyage, as instructed in the letter of 27 October 1773 to the administrators of Pará (TT_GPM_99_81): ‘being a fixed salary, you should assign one-third [to the cost of the slaves]’. It also included 266,050 reis for ‘Salaries for the rest of the crew of the corvette for 51 days’, a time span including 7 days spent in Africa 16 and 44 days for the ‘Middle Passage’ (for details see Pinto and West, 2012). The salaries of the crew on other days – that is, when the ship was not carrying slaves – were excluded, as determined in the letter of 27 October 1773 to the administrators of Pará (TT_GPM_99_81). The changes in costing also reveal what crew members would possibly do during idle hours: this cargo included 480 reis, part of which was for ‘three packs of playing cards’, a cost that is very common for subsequent slave cargos.
In addition to, or instead of, a fixed salary, ship captains and higher rank officials could be paid a commission for the business conducted, in which case letters stated the percentage of such commission and the way it should be divided between the captain and his immediate aid. On 5 January 1761, on their voyage to Bissau, Captain Joseph dos Santos and his steersman Luiz Ferreira Braga (TT_GPM_98, pp. 26–29) were to receive a 5% commission over slaves, beeswax and ivory, 17 75% of which was for the captain and the remaining 25% for the steersman. In the case of the demise of the captain before the dispatch of the cargo to Lisbon or Pará, the 75% would be given to the steersman, and the remaining 25% would revert to the boatswain. However, if any such demise occurred after the business had been concluded, the corresponding amount would be given to his heirs.
For the slave trade, the acquisition cost included a commission to be paid to either the ship captain or the administrators in Africa, depending on who had made the acquisition. These amounts were calculated as a percentage of the acquisition cost, sometimes including also the expenses of provisions and taxes paid for in Africa, but this percentage was not always the same. The several letters exchanged between Lisbon and Africa do not always provide an explanation for this, so it might reasonably be assumed that these conditions were discussed between the Board and the ship captains or appointed administrators and resolved prior to departure from Lisbon. The existence of different percentages for different locations or agents, as well as changes over time, suggests that there may have been individual agreements on these matters between the board in Lisbon and its agents, some of which may have comprised only oral agreements.
In certain instances, crew members could be rewarded for taking good care of slaves, and for this purpose, a certain number of slaves was allocated to the care of each sailor, who would receive a fixed sum for each slave delivered alive. One such example appeared in a letter to Captain Bernardo Franco on his voyage to Bissau on January 1765:
the slaves that you take from Bissau to Pará you will split among the sailors and members of your crew that you consider as being more careful to the slaves’ good treatment, promising them the prize of 500 reis for each slave delivered alive, which sum will be satisfied [paid] by our administrators in the said state, on showing this letter. (TT_GPM_98_142)
Records available on shipping costs also highlight the prevailing differences in financial benefits given to each crew member. For the above-mentioned Galera Santo Antonio, which departed in April 1758 to Cacheu and returned on 28 May 1759 from Pará, the differences are elucidative (Table 4): while the captain received a total of 300,000 reis for the complete triangular voyage, the best paid sailor appearing both on departure and on arrival received only 78,400 reis. Considering all the crew members who accompanied the captain during the whole voyage, Joze Afonço da Sylva received the smallest amount: a mere 20,850 reis, less than 7% of the captain’s salary. For some unrecorded reason, Anastacio Domingues Pontes, the Steersman, received a total of 168,000 reis inclusive of 120,000 for wages and 48,000 for expenses (allowance). This man was not listed on the ship’s departure from Lisbon, and the entries do not clarify when or where he was hired. 18
While these skilled seamen had to remain in the service of the company while it wished to keep them, GPM seems to have paid their salaries faithfully and until the day of their demise. Indeed, several entries in journals reveal salaries being paid to the heirs: on 4 September 1761 an entry (TT_GPM_3_2036) reveals that 13,594 reis were paid to Maria Martins, an unspecified relative of Antonio dos Santos, a young sailor serving on the Galera Nossa Senhora da Conceição that departed to Angola in 1758 and from there to Pará in 1759, ‘until his demise’.
Although varied in form, the financial incentives given by GPM to its human resources had one common feature: they were designed to increase the alignment of these agents’ actions with the interests of the company, and as such differed according to each recipient’s functions, location and even personal characteristics. Although designed to extract compliance from its human resources, managing their diverse aims and possible agency issues, GPM’s actions were in nature characterised by multilevel tensions and conflicts. The next subsection will elaborate further on the main conflicts involving the company and its crews.
Challenges, problems, tensions and conflicts
Considering GPM’s activities, its ship captains and crews were of great concern for the company. In addition to Article 12 of the 1755 Charter, which highlighted the importance of selecting capable ship captains, Chapter 15 of the 1760 statutes stressed that ‘immediately after starting its mandate, the Board will call on ship captains, and listen to them on the right time for fleets’ and individual ships’ departure’. Captains were given specific instructions before departure, which they signed and promised to comply with. These letters tended to follow an identical model for every voyage, and included aspects related to the way operations should be conducted, but also included information that should be produced and sent to several locations, feeding the company’s information system as the voyage progressed. As one triangular voyage would last for several months, at the minimum, ship captains had the duty to send, on other ships leaving for Lisbon, reports or lists of cargo so that the Board could be informed as soon as possible of the number and cost of slaves and other commodities that were being dispatched to Brazil.
A typical concern expressed by the Board was the need to keep all crew members in good harmony on board, preventing any dispute that could arise between them, and ‘gently reprimanding’ those responsible for creating any disharmony. Upon arrival in port, any such events would be reported so that faults would be punished, while rewards were given to crew members who had distinguished themselves for their zeal and good performance. For this reason, lists of salaries paid at the end of the voyage in Lisbon evidence instances where some crew members received a variable wage, dependent on their performance and trustworthiness.
To help ensure relatively good treatment of the slaves carried on board, and to promote the wise use of provisions, examples were emphasised of previous instances of high disease or mortality rates, or low prices fetched by slaves in Brazilian markets on account of their condition. In any case, captains were also urged to carry as many slaves as the ship permitted, ‘for of the contrary grave loss follows for the company, being unnecessary to warn you that the slaves you acquire be free of ailments and easy to sell’ (TT_GPM_98_139).
Article 18 of the 1755 Charter granted ship captains absolute authority over their staff, either at sea or ashore, and forbade any other legal authority to interfere with their decisions unless the common law was at risk. Furthermore, governors and other local authorities were required to provide lodgings for captain and crew, if requested to do so. As letters stressed, all assistance was to be given by local administrators to ship captains. Notwithstanding, captains were also required to follow faithfully the local administrators’ instructions in every aspect; otherwise, letters stressed, it would be seen as a bad service rendered by the captain. On his voyage to Bissau on January 1765, Captain Bernardo Franco was warned:
in what relates to the time of departure [to Lisbon] you will follow the orders of the administrators, being understood that your role is to execute everything that by the said administrators is commanded, not only in this respect but also in respect to remaining instructions of this company, because the above said [administrators] will answer for any resulting losses. (TT_GPM_98_141)
Reducing the length of the whole voyage, and especially spending as little time as possible in Africa, was considered essential for the success of the enterprise. Captains were instructed to apply all their judgement and skill for speeding up the acquisitions, and resorted to loading slaves that the company’s administrators had acquired previously and kept in the barracoons. The local administrators were instructed to buy slaves at a steady pace, thus keeping a permanent stock. This guaranteed a ready supply for any incoming ship belonging to the company and also avoided the price rises that inevitably accompanied the arrival of ships. It was asserted that the cost of keeping these slaves, even for many months, was much lower than the possible loss of business due to having a lack of slaves ready to board.
The concern with the wellbeing of the slaves, although expressed frequently in the correspondence addressed to ship captains and administrators, was obviously dictated by economic reasons: each sick or dead slave would imply a reduction in the profit of the cargo. As such, frequent instructions were issued regarding practical measures to ensure that ‘not even the least part of it [the cargo of slaves] dies for lack of good treatment’ (among many other examples see TT_GPM_98_3 and TT_GPM_98_32). These included acquisition of only healthy slaves (TT_GPM_98_140 and TT_GPM_97_6), cleanliness and proper stowing of the slaves (TT_GPM_96_1), and, as mentioned above, even assigning a few slaves to the care of specific members of the crew, each receiving in return 500 reis for each slave delivered alive to Pará (TT_GPM_98_142).
Speed in conducting operations was a common topic of the correspondence sent by the Board. On 17 February 1761 (TT_GPM_98_33), the administrators of Cacheu were urged to dispatch the Curveta Nossa Senhora das Necessidades to Maranhão as quickly as possible, due to the existence of local produce waiting to be shipped to Lisbon, which highlights the pressure exerted over ultramarine administrators so as not to compromise the good performance of other locations. Similarly, administrators in Brazil were frequently informed by the Board of the serious efforts being undertaken in Africa to dispatch enough slaves through the Atlantic (TT_GPM_97_2) and likewise urged to avoid any delays in dispatching ships to Lisbon, so as to allow their ready use (TT_GPM_215_13). Crews were obviously crucial to the swiftness of operations, and there was a host of reasons dictating so. On 30 October 1761 (AHMOPTC, fls. 159–161), GPM requested that the Governor of Angola be instructed to give special treatment and priority to two ships of the company that were in the port of Luanda awaiting dispatch, considering the tremendous need of slaves in Pará and Maranhão and also the dangers these ships would face if not dispatched within the monsoon. The delay could also imply casualties for crew members, less able to resist local diseases, or even as a result of attacks or uprisings. If not, such delays would at least mean higher salaries to be paid to sailors, since they typically received a daily wage, instead of a fixed sum for the whole voyage or per each leg of it. The huge investment made by GPM in ships was a situation incompatible with unnecessary delays, which could also compromise the profitable sale of produce transported from Pará and Maranhão, which European markets were eager to acquire.
Notwithstanding the concerns of the company with smuggling and the several attempts to create legislation that would prevent any such happening, opportunities for fraud did exist and seem to have been taken advantage of by certain captains. One letter of 8 May 1762 (transcribed in Carreira (1982: 359–361) from the administrators of Cacheu reported several occurrences featuring Captain João Pereira das Neves as ‘the biggest smuggler that comes to Guinea’ and advising the Board to terminate any dealings with this captain, eliminating his presence altogether from any ship of the company. On this occasion, two of the serious offences of this captain, apart from not complying with admonitions from the administrators, were to allocate to his own private account a considerable quantity of beeswax, with a resulting shortage of this product available to be traded on the company’s behalf; a shortness that might have prompted concerns and questions from the Board to the Cacheu administrators. Also, the administrators had found the captain unloading from his ship, onto a small boat, several packs sent to local residents; a clear violation of the royal decrees on products that could be freely carried by crew members and were excluded from the legal definition of smuggling. This legislation presents lists of items that any crew member could carry on board, to which the name ‘liberties’ (liberdades) was given. Indeed, the Royal Decree of 11 December 1756 established the list of items that ‘Officials, Captains, Sailors and other Seamen can carry, on their own account and risk, to the overseas dominions, and from them to this kingdom’. Although the decree did not specify quantities, the expression ‘retail goods’ (géneros miudos) is stressed in the document (Table 5). Further analysis of its contents reveals that, apart from a marked intention of the decree to favour national production, these liberties (if respected) could not damage in any way the company’s business.
List of retail goods (liberdades) transported by crews.
Source: Decree of 11 December 1756.
In spite of all the concerns and preventive measures established in legislation, a recurring theme in the letters exchanged with the Board in Lisbon was the sale of contraband goods undertaken by basically anyone to whom such an opportunity presented itself, including crew members, ship captains, soldiers, economic agents in Brazil and even governors. Despite the severe penalties prescribed in the 1755 charter for anyone transgressing the monopoly rights of GPM, episodes of smuggling were a constant concern for the Board. In a letter of 25 February 1760 (TT_GPM_98_8), Captain José da Silva Costa was reminded on his voyage to Bissau of the need to enforce the company’s legal monopoly among every crew member, including himself. While several pieces of legislation and instructions issued over the years highlight the permanent attempt to contradict these occurrences, namely by imposing severe penalties on the offenders and offering huge rewards for the denouncers, they also demonstrate the difficulty in eliminating what seems to have always been a national tendency. Indeed, as Hamilton (1948) recalled:
The only serious violation of the royal monopoly on direct trade with the East Indies was by Portuguese officials. The high prices resulting from the suppression of competition in Portugal and the Indies made smuggling attractive. Since the captains of Portuguese war vessels received less than Dutch sergeants, and other officials were paid accordingly, the temptation to smuggle proved irresistible. (p. 38)
However, this better position of Dutch officials seems to have been insufficient because, ‘as in the case of the Portuguese, the chief infringement of the monopoly was by the underpaid officials of the [Dutch] East India Company’ (Hamilton, 1948: 45). Furthermore, in the case of the British East India Company:
despite the relatively high and steadily increasing remuneration of the company’s employees, it had almost as much difficulty in preventing the abuse of the company and the natives by the petty private monopolies of its servants in the east as did Portugal or Holland. (Hamilton, 1948: 49)
In fact, private trading seems to have been a common feature of all chartered companies, regardless of their nationality, dimension or success. As Hamilton (1948: 49) asserted, ‘how prevalent private trading by the company’s [British East India Company] officers must have been is shown by a minute from Lord Clive on September 19, 1766’, in which he proposed that the Governor should receive a commission of one and one-eighth per cent upon the revenues, in order to prevent his judgment to ‘be biased by his interest’.
Discussion
The main research objective of this archive-based case study is to demonstrate and utilise the potential of accounting documents as a source of social history by elaborating the lives of the captains and crews of the ships of an eighteenth-century Portuguese chartered company.
The public debate which led to the abolition of the slave trade in England and the ‘mass of testimony presented to Parliament’ (Mannix, 1962: xi) by former slaves and sailors provided a valuable record for posterity of the conditions endured in the trade, by both slaves and crews. In Portugal, however, there was no such discussion. As in other European nations, the end of this abhorrent trade for Portuguese traders was an imposition from Britain. Even Portuguese politicians and public opinion seem to have been absent from any discussion or, rather, any wish to end such a trade. 19 Thus, accounting records and related documentation that have survived are precious witnesses to the conditions endured by the participants in the trade.
As previous sections have demonstrated, in spite of the apparent loss of some records that would have been helpful to illustrate the everyday lives of these men, the information analysed in this study highlights the challenges and difficulties faced by crew members participating in this abhorrent trade. Who were these men? Was their participation in the trade voluntary? Did they profit from this trade? As crew members, they helped enslave, transport and exploit thousands of fellow human beings, actively benefiting from such trade. But the evidence uncovered from accounting records shows that, they too, were exploited and mistreated. In fact, even if sailors’ complaints ‘that the enslaved were treated better on board the ship than they were’ (Rediker, 2007: 261) must be taken cautiously, it is undeniable that ‘both the merchant and captain had a much greater vested interest as valuable property’ in the enslaved cargo (Rediker, 2007: 261). In truth, most studies focusing on the crews’ experiences in the slave trade stress that such ‘analysis does not assume that naval sailors’ exploitation was in any factual sense comparable to the chattel slavery experienced by Africans bound for the Americas’ (Burroughs, 2011: 308). However, ‘for centuries, sailors had likened their exploitation at the hands of cruel officers to slavery’ (Burroughs, 2011: 312), to the extent that ‘in the late eighteenth century, abolitionists strengthened this connection by gathering evidence of the abuse of slave-ship sailors to instigate the campaign against the slave trade’ (Burroughs, 2011: 312). In Britain, Thomas Clarkson interviewed ‘sailors, who had firsthand experience of the trade, complaints to register, stories to tell’ and used this evidence ‘to battle merchants, plantation owners, bankers and government officials – in short, all who had a vested interest on the slave trade and the larger institution of slavery’ (Rediker, 2007: 8). Indeed, ‘comparisons of slaves and slave-ship sailors served for the most part on a mutually supportive basis to expose these peoples’ separate but comparable plights’ (Burroughs, 2011: 314); a reality which was somewhat masked by the supposed factuality provided by accounting numbers. For Rediker (2007), the sailors’ ‘detailed testimony damned the trade in ways that abstract moral denunciation could never have done’ (p. 326).
In spite of the incompleteness of information, accounting and auxiliary records pertaining to GPM elucidate several aspects of the non-slaves who were aboard the ships: their names and occupations, the wages they were given at different stages of the voyage and the provisions embarked for each leg of the journey. Surviving records do not tell how life on board was, if indeed listed provisions were given to them, the punishments they received from their superiors, diseases and hardships endured, their fate along the voyage, nor the acts of violence which undoubtedly they inflicted on the human cargo transported. But the challenges they faced once embarked are envisaged by letters and reports exchanged with GPM’s Board in Lisbon: the dangers faced in Africa, the skill, care and swiftness with which their duties had to be performed, in order to protect the company’s interest. As crew members on slave ships, they were responsible for a huge investment made by their employers both in ships and in the diverse cargos transported. On departure from Lisbon, they were responsible for the safe delivery in Africa of precious commodities that would allow trade to take place. Once in Africa, they performed tasks that allowed the acquisition and storage of human cargo in the ship. When departing from Africa they were responsible for keeping alive, safe and healthy a precious human cargo, sometimes even receiving specific financial incentives for each slave delivered alive on destination. Finally, they were also responsible for the slave labour produced commodities, which the company transported to Lisbon.
From GPM’s perspective crews were, thus, important agents who manned the ships which guaranteed the company’s existence and prosperity. From the state’s perspective, the importance of their duties was reflected in the several pieces of legislation that governed them: they were central actors in a crucial trade, which was claimed to be essential for the common good of the nation. Thus, the risks they took were mentioned and, as far as the superior interests of commerce allowed, they were given benefits, priorities and advantages. Was this enough to guarantee that they were treated accordingly? Records suggest that this was not necessarily the case. While little is known about the way they were recruited and treated, the absolute authority which the captain had over his crew was an uncontested fact. The ship captain was the despotic ruler of a floating empire, leaving him the prerogative to impose on his subjects whatever demands and cruelties he approved of. As Rediker (2007) asserted,
violence cascaded downward, from captain and officers to sailors to the enslaved. Sailors, often beaten and abused themselves, took out their plight on the even more abject and powerless captives under their supervision and control. How this happened on any given ship would depend to a large extent on the captain, who had enormous latitude to run the ship as he wished. (p. 239)
But even if rudeness and utter cruelty might have been routine on most ships, regardless of their nationality (Christopher, 2006; Rediker, 2007), Portuguese legislation reveals that sailors often attempted to evade employment on national ships, preferring the higher wages paid on international ships.
In spite of a tendency to speculate on conditions endured because of the absence of records, the coldness of numbers elucidates some interesting aspects. For example, the salaries highlight the relative position of each role: the ship captain received considerably higher wages, along with other benefits such as commissions. Furthermore, there were opportunities for other gains, resulting from manipulation of costs that were for the most part based on the captain’s own negotiations and word, as well as smuggling. In spite of the financial benefits that GPM sailors received, specifically for taking good care of slaves, and which were a common feature of the trade (Steckel and Jensen, 1986: 77), the truth is that such benefits were dictated by a cold economic reasoning: the ultimate superior interest of the company. Furthermore, social differentiation was also visible in separate listings in the records, the value of provisions and the fact that skin colour was recorded for both free and enslaved crew members.
While letters addressed to captains by the Board that managed the company and its intercontinental operations from Lisbon stressed the importance of giving good treatment to both slaves and crew, and promoting harmony between every member of the team, analysis of shipping costs evidences the differences and the social ranking that prevailed. These are evident in aspects such as wage differentials, according to rank and skills, and comprising not only fixed amounts but sometimes also variable sums according to the perceptions of their superiors on matters such as loyalty and the quality with which duties were performed.
The multipurpose activities conducted by GPM in three continents were sustained by several layers of exploitation. Just as with the slaves, accounting’s contribution to the exploitation of crews seems to have been the occlusion of this harsh reality. Human exploitation and suffering, regardless of location, nationality, condition or skin colour, was disguised as success and prosperity for all. And while GPM’s Board in Lisbon assembled accounting records evidencing the company’s financial health and, simultaneously, its contribution to the state’s policies aimed at developing the kingdom, ‘the rhythms of life continued aboard a slave ship, set surreally against the looming spectre of death’ (Christopher, 2006: 187).
Conclusion
Traditionally, and understandably, the lives of the crews who manned the slave ships have tended to attract only secondary attention from researchers. The impressive number of studies focusing on the transatlantic slave trade, which ‘have sliced and diced New World slavery from almost every conceivable angle’ (Fleischman et al., 2011a: 765) have generally tended to focus on the enslaved, and this is especially true of studies in accounting history. Indeed, if slavery’s ‘accounting implications have tended to go unnoticed even among specialists in the field of accounting’ (Fleischman et al., 2011a: 765), the still very few existing studies have completely ignored the crews. This study aims to help fill this gap in the literature, by highlighting the everyday life of participants in a dark event.
To do so, this study has relied almost exclusively on archival sources belonging to a Portuguese company created in 1755 for the express purpose of slave trading. As the above sections have demonstrated, surviving accounting and related records provided only limited information, since most of the auxiliary records used by the company and its ship captains to control events and expenditure during the triangular voyages have not survived. The several references in surviving documentation evidence that those records would have been precious aids to help reconstruct the daily lives of crews, especially aboard ships. Hence, in spite of all the legislation promulgated during the period under study, including the compulsory identification of crews before the Board of Trade for every ship departing from Lisbon, the truth is that not much is known about the way these men were hired. But, ‘although it is not clear how captains hired sailors, scholars agree that they were not well paid, and were neither well fed nor well treated on board’ (Candido, 2010: 397). Steckel and Jensen (1986: 75) state that ‘the acquisition of crew members for slave ships provides material for the study of employment under very hazardous conditions’. And if it is certain that ‘sailors perpetrated many of the horrors of the trade’ (Rediker, 2007: 325), it might also be recognised that ‘for sailors as for African captives, living for several months aboard a slave ship was in itself a struggle for life’ (Rediker, 2007: 244).
This study contributes to the understanding of the roles, working conditions and comparative socio-economic positioning of slave trade captains and crews, based on the analysis of surviving accounting records and related documents. In this way, the study sheds light on ‘everyday life’ within a dark and abhorrent episode in human history. Further studies could investigate whether there are other examples to be found in surviving records of accounting practices actively contributing to the exploitation of crews during the eighteenth century, whether in Portuguese slave trading or in other settings.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the constructive comments received from attendees at the third Accounting History International Emerging Scholars’ Colloquium, Paris, 8–10 July 2012, and the eighth Accounting History International Conference, Ballarat, 19–21 August 2015. The guest editors, Alessandro Lai and Grant Samkin, who fully managed the journal refereeing process for this submission, and the anonymous referees, provided helpful comments on earlier iterations of this work.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.