A Slaving Voyage to Africa and Jamaica ― The Log of the Sandown, 1793-1794

Captain Samuel Gamble recorded in his ship's log a record of a nearly failed slaving venture to Africa and Jamaica. It is one of the best first-hand narratives of the slave trade to survive. This book presents a faithfully transcribed and carefully annotated edition of Gamble's log, which provides a haunting perspective on slave trading at the end of the eighteenth century. Gamble was Captain of the British merchant Sandown. During 1793-1794, the ship embarked on a commercial venture from England to Upper Guinea in West Africa to buy slaves and to transport them for sale in Kingston, Jamaica. Gamble describes shipping at the beginning of the Anglo-French war in 1793, naval and nautical procedures for the English-African-West Indian trade, and the slave-trading patterns and institutions on the African coast and at Kingston, Jamaica. He recounts as well the beginnings and spread of a yellow fever epidemic that swept the Atlantic and crippled commerce on both sides of the ocean. Bruce L. Mouser's extensive annotations place Gamble's account in historical context and explain for the reader Gamble's observations of commerce, disease, and African peoples along the Upper Guinea coast.

Bruce L. Mouser is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.