LOG BOOK OF A MERCHANT WEST INDIAMAN TRANSPORTING SLAVE-PLANTATION SUGAR: ‘Ship Mercury on her Passage to Tobago under Convoy of HMS Meleager Captain Ogle’

Officer’s log book of a merchant West Indiaman engaged in supplying horses and mules to the enslaved African and African-American servicemen of Britain’s West India Regiments - and on the homeward journey bringing back a cargo of sugar manufactured by their enslaved cousins in the plantations of the Caribbean. Both Atlantic crossings were fraught with difficulty: the log records the frequent alarms caused to Mercury’s convoy partners by enemy vessels during this early phase of the Napoleonic Wars; even on Christmas Day 1798 when ‘the Commodore [set off] in chase of a strange sail’. Rising’s ship the Mercury proved itself wholly unseaworthy, so that in the mid-Atlantic ‘it blew excessive hard and we were obliged to heave to the ship’ with all hands manning the pumps. In Scarborough port in Tobago fever raged among the crew members afflicting Rising himself who was taken ashore. Several crew members absconded; the African American ship’s ‘cook [was] in liquor’ and ‘the Steward ran away this Day after its being discovered that he had plundred the Wine and Porter’ (5 March 1799). Rising’s main preoccupation is with the voyage’s commercial success and he provides valuable testimony about the operation of the sugar economy in the Caribbean with his ‘Account of Negro and Seamen hire[d] to load the Ship Mercury in Tobago’ as well as detailing the shipments brought from England for individual Tobago plantation owners and the arduous process of loading the barrels - or hogsheads - of sugar on board the Mercury, such as the ‘taking of Sugars from ye Courland [Gilbert Francklyn’s slave estate on Tobago by] 4 Negroes, two ditto & Steward at work, wet a Cask of Sugar a little in taking off there being so very much surf.’ Only a decade after this ship’s log was written the slave trade would become illegal across the British Empire and the enslaved members of the West India Regiment who received the Mercury’s cargo of horses would be freed. However in its outward journey and the blood-stained sugar with which it returned to Britain it is hard not to read the log of the Mercury as slavery-adjacent or perhaps complicit without ever being directly involved in the trade in enslaved Africans.

However Rising does have one more gift to the modern reader in his decision to reuse his manuscript some two decades later to sketch a catalogue of his library. And it is noteworthy that by 1820 the former mariner and author of this ship’s log from the 1790s had become the owner of many notable works of travel and exploration, including Lewis and Clarke’s Travels to the Source of the Missouri (probably one of the London editions) and John Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels in 17 volumes. Robert Rising, who states that his home was Great ‘Yarmouth’ seems likely to hail from the East Norfolk family of his name who lived in the villages of Horsey and West Somerton in east Norfolk and who numbered several Roberts during the late 18th century and certainly could have owned a library on the scale described in the manuscript.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: A homemade manuscript volume which alternates pages of a ship’s log for the outward and homeward voyages written on pre-printed pages produced by the bookseller ‘T Parnell’ (1796 watermark) with blank sheets used for periods spent at anchor on the Thames and in Barbados and Tobago. These sections bear a Britannia watermark ‘JC 1797’. Rising has handsewn his log into marbled wrappers which reuse a quire from Christopher Crambo’s Liliputian Poetry published by W Tringham in the 1770s and ‘80s. The print of the first quire of the book is clearly visible through the faded, perhaps amateur, marbling over it. There is drying and chipping along the foreedge of the first few leaves; fingermarking and dog-earring throughout but the manuscript is complete as Rising left it.

The author has written his name on the first flyleaf: ‘Journal Book Rob.t Rising’ and his journal proper starts on the recto of the second leaf after his later two page family library catalogue from 1820 which includes Laperouse’s Voyage in 3 volumes; ‘Homer burlesqued’; Humboldt in 6 vols; Lewis and Clarke in a single volume (presumably Longmans); Charles ‘Burney’s Music’ and Pinkertons Collection in 17 volumes - presumably John Pinkerton’s Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels of 1808.

Riding’s volume comprises 65 pages of manuscript and a further 18 pages of preprinted blanks, arranged thus: [unlined pp] 4; [preprinted pp] 26 [unlined pp] 4 [ preprinted pp] 2 [unlined pp] 12 [preprinted pp] 17 [preprinted pp - without MS entries] 18. There are a few additional stubs and on the final pastedown in a 19th century hand: ‘Mrs G Frederick/ Addlestone/ Chertsey/ Surrey’. (Recent provenance will be available to the buyer of the MS)

In the middle of the manuscript Riding supplies ‘Names of the People and Crew of the Mercury who left London & England with ye ship’, placing himself ‘Rob.t Rising — English Yarm.[ou]th’ at the top of the list with ‘Ja[me]s Taylor - Master - Scotch’ below him; there were 15 crew members in total, including an African American ‘Luke Druggist black cook’, 5 Venetian seamen with three passengers: ‘John Harworth, Welch’, a Spaniard and Genovese and an ostler to look after the horses on board. Opposite this list is an ‘Account of Negro and Seamen hire to load the Ships Mercury in Tobago’ which details payments and employment of both free and enslaved people during the sugar loading in Tobago and overleaf ‘Account of River pay &c for Ship Mercury while loading for Tobago Sept 1798’ that relates to expenses during the ship’s loading on the Thames in London.

NARRATIVE: Rising’s Journal begins with the running headline: ‘Remarks on board Ship Mercury in the River Thames’, setting out from the Port of London on Thursday October 11th 1798, piloted by Nathaniel Purdon and with maintenance to the ship a priority early on: ‘Went on board the Adm.l Nelson w. Southgate and brought from thence 129 plank 12 ft long…’ (8 Nov 1798). The Mercury’s cargo of horses was loaded at Spithead, lifted by horse power: ‘Horses and Mules employ’d in hoisting them on board. The first horse died in coming up. (16 Nov 1798). One of several consultations with Captain Ogle of HMS Meleager (transferring to the Jamaica Station under Admiral Hyde Parker) precedes the Mercury and convoy’s making way on the 20th October 1798. At this point the journal becomes a conventional ships log laid out in tabular fashion, preoccupied as they cross the Atlantic with the position of the commanding officer’s vessel: ‘could not see the Commodore’ the weather, and the occasional reprimand as an ‘impertinent puppy’ for failing to respond to signal (1 Jan 1799).

On arrival in Carlisle Bay, Barbados the log becomes a journal again with an account of rapid ship repairs and mournful tidings from new arrivals alongside the Mercury, notably Sir Charles Lindsay in HMS Daphne ‘the only one out of six [ships] which escap’t being captur’d by three Spanish frigates.’ (Lindsay was drowned while patrolling off Demerara two months later). Having reprovisioned and repaired the ship, Mercury sailed ‘from Barbados towards Tobago’ (Jan 22nd 1799), again in convoy, where the horses were unloaded over several days. Rising oversaw the first loading of the cargo of sugar at ‘Scarbro… Sent the launch again to Rockley Bay for Sugars from whence she returns it at Noon & made a second trip the remainder of the Ships Company empl[oyed]’d on board in making clear to receive them’ (14 Feb 1799). The vessel was them piloted round to Courland Bay where goods were delivered to the plantation owner William Drysdale: ‘loaded the launch for Arnois Vale Bay with Mr Drysdale’s Goods and sent her there’ (27 Feb 1799) and ‘Hugh Ross’s Goods to Mr Jardine’. Rising records his struggles to maintain order on board as he is ‘Employ’d in putting the Hold to rights and beginning to stow the Sugars properly getting the Li, &c &c in tween decks… three Negroes Em.[ploy]d on board, the Steward ran away this Day after its being discovered that he had plundred the Wine and Porter’ (5 March 1799). Fever continued to rage, claiming at least one crew member and Rising describes officiating at the funeral of the ship’s carpenter as well as loading sugar from the Courland Estate: ‘this day 21 H[ogshea]ds & five Tinies’ (1 Apil 1799). Rising notes his employment of American sailors from the Brig Patty before turning for home as part of Commodore Joseph Westbeach’s convoy in the company of ‘Brilliant, Hope, Minerva, Francis and Brickwood’, setting sail on 24th April. While still off St Kitts Rising notes the passage ‘into Basseterre Roads [where we] saw very many Ships there also an American Frigate the Constellation with her prize the French Frigate Insurgent’ off St Kitts (4 May 1799) - a famous naval engagement by the American Captain Thomas Truxton with the French vessel shortly afterwards requisitioned as USS Insurgent. The journal/ log breaks off on Tuesday July 2nd 1799 but even on the straightforward return leg life keeps breaking in as Rising adds the mordant detail: ‘found the green parrot dead’.