The Welsh and American Slavery

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• The Slave Trade
  • Whose ships were Used?
  • Who bought Slaves?
  • Captain Thomas Phillips
  • The Pwllheli Ship
  • The Second Middle Passage
  • The Slaves
  • Slave Owners
  • Abolitionists
  • Places to visit

The Slave Trade

The slave ship from Pwllheli

The history of the "Mary"

In J Geraint Jenkins' book, "Traddodiad y Môr" he quotes the following words from someone who visited Pwllheli in 1801:

This little town seems in a flourishing condition. I saw a large Guineman on the stocks, fitted for 600 slaves

More than 400 ships were built in Pwllheli between the 18th and 19th centuries, and this "Guineman", (namely a ship for trading with Guinea on the coast of Africa) would have been one of the largest ships to sail from the town.

When we look at the list of ships included in "Hen Longau Sir Gaernarfon" by David Thomas, we see that this "Guineman" was probably the "Mary", a 426 ton ship, because:

• she was by far the largest ship to be built at Pwllheli that year.
• she was constructed for a Liverpool owner.

Liverpool was the main centre of the slave trade in that period; on average, a ship left Liverpool for Africa to purchase slaves every three days. In the hundred years before the slave trade was abolished in 1807, approximately 5 thousand slave ships commenced their voyages from Liverpool (compared to about 2 thousand from Bristol and 3 thousand from London).

Mr. Courtenay

According to Lewis Lloyd "Pwllheli - the Port and Mart of Llyn", the first owner was a Mr. Courtenay. But why would he have commissioned a ship from a yard in Pwllheli, when there were so many shipyards so much closer, on the banks of the Mersey itself?

A number of Welsh people lived in Liverpool who were involved in the slave trade. The famous preacher John Elias complained about this when he visited the city in 1806:

we found that some of the brethren worked on the ships involved in this abominable trade, yes, one of them makes the chains to be placed on the poor slaves; we urged him to give up this work at once.

Could it be that a Welshman living in Liverpool was one of Mr. Courtenay's colleagues? Someone who hailed from Llyn, perhaps, and keen to direct business to his friends or family, back in Pwllheli?