African slaves were central to the production of sugar, tobacco and other tropical crops on British plantations in the West Indies and mainland North America during the 18th and early 19thcenturies. Accordingly, the triangular slave trade, comprising the export of textiles and other manufactures from Britain to Africa for the purchasing of slaves, the slaves’ transportation to the Americas (the 'Middle Passage') and finally their exchange for slave-produced goods for sale back home, became a significant feature of Britain's overseas commerce during this period. The promised riches of this commercial enterprise were not lost on those living in Northwest England given the region's favourable position for transatlantic trade. Liverpool's role in the slave trade is well known to many. Indeed, it became Britain's foremost slave-trading port. Less familiar but no less fascinating, however, is the discovery that further north the smaller ports of Lancaster and Whitehaven also participated in the trade albeit on a much more modest scale.

These two ports also shared Liverpool's interest in another branch of transatlantic commerce where ships sailed direct to the West Indian and American colonies, laden with provisions for the plantations, and returned home, like the slave ships, with slave-produced goods. It was an interest that sometimes led to a third link with slavery, plantation ownership itself.

I shall be exploring these three areas of involvement in transatlantic slavery, that is the slave trade, plantation trade and plantation ownership, as well as the impact they had on north Lancashire and Cumbria. The discoveries may challenge modern preconceptions of this quiet rural corner of northern England.

THE SLAVE TRADE
In the course of the 18th century, Lancaster and Whitehaven slave ships would have carried in excess of 29,000 and 14,000 slaves, respectively, out of Africa. Though overshadowed by Liverpool, London and Bristol, these statistics put them at the forefront of smaller operators. Both ports were most actively involved between 1750 – 1775. In this period alone Lancaster ships made 100 voyages to the African coast whilst Whitehaven ships accounted for nearly 60 further slaving voyages. Interestingly, the slave trade started earlier at Whitehaven, the Swift sailing to Africa in 1711, 25 years before Lancaster's entry. However, when Whitehaven quit the trade in 1769, slave ships continued sailing from Lancaster until the 1790s and even then a few Lancaster merchants proceeded to clear their slaving vessels from Liverpool right up to the trade's abolition in 1807.

Identifying a few characteristics of the slave trade for each port is instructive. Investors at Whitehaven, for example, appear to have been established merchants diversifying their commercial activities, especially on facing competition from Scottish merchants in their profitable tobacco trade with Virginia. This happened initially after the Act of Union in 1707 which opened up Irish and Scottish markets to Scottish tobacco imports and again in the late 1740s when Whitehaven merchants faced renewed competition in their French and Dutch markets. Early investors at Lancaster, meanwhile, seem to feature more marginal operators eager to launch themselves through transatlantic trade, with the slave trade providing a more risky but lucrative alternative to direct trade with the colonial plantations, which tended to be dominated by more established merchant families. Whitehaven's slave ships were typically larger than those at Lancaster, no doubt reflecting both the different circumstances of the investors concerned and also the fact that Whitehaven was a seaport and Lancaster a river port. This, in turn, had implications when trading ammunition, textiles, metal ware and other goods for slaves on the African coast. Lancaster merchants focused almost exclusively on the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Windward Coast where river trading and small-scale slaving transactions suited their smaller vessels trading out of the River Lune. Whitehaven ships were typically directed further south to the Gold and Bonny coasts where larger consignments of slaves were generally on offer. There were differences when it came to selling slaves in the colonies too. Most Whitehaven ships confined their sales to the established slave markets of Jamaica and Barbados. Conversely, Lancaster slave ships chose varied destinations across the islands and also South Carolina in mainland America in search of profitable markets and produce for the return voyage. Whilst slave-produced sugar and rum were popular commodities in both homeports, mahogany proved a popular addition in the holds of Lancaster slave ships given the town’s thriving cabinet-making industry.

It may be that Whitehaven's earlier withdrawal from the trade ultimately reflected disappointing returns, especially from the perspective of more established merchants who also faced mounting competition from Liverpool in their preferred African and West Indian destinations. Lancaster's persistence in the trade, on the other hand, may well be attributable to the more marginal status of its operators whose smaller enterprises and rather different slaving destinations allowed them to maintain a satisfactory foothold in the trade for longer.

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Content last updated: 27/09/2006

About our expert

Melinda Elder has taught as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University since 1992. A graduate of Keele and Lancaster universities, her research interests centre on Lancaster's transatlantic trade, including the port's involvement in the slave trade which led to the publication of her book, The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth-Century Lancaster in 1992.

Melinda has also contributed to the Lancaster episode of Radio 4's 'Mapping the Town ' and written local entries for the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Black British History. Current interests include the organisation of Lancaster's transatlantic trade in the Caribbean islands.