Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/117

 To go back to an early period, we find that the negroes imported on the While Horse (the first slaver sent out from New York for the direct trade with Africa) were sold at auction for an average price of $125 each for the choice stock. The negroes had arrived ina bad condition, but they were doctored up for the sale, and brought good prices for that day, so that the slaver made a good profit even though the purchasers afterward lost some of their slaves. The exact profit is not given, but the fact that a profit was made is proved by the act of the directors of the West India Company taking the trade thereafter into their own hands.

When Captain David Lindsay, of the Sanderson, sold the cargo he landed ‘‘in helth and fatt" in 1753 he received £35 each for twenty-five of his slaves, £30 each for three more, while the remainder brought prices ranging down to £21, save one small boy who brought £15. All told, forty-seven slaves sold here brought £1,432. The remaining slaves were carried to Newport, but there is no record of their sale. We may guess that they realized about £250, or, say, a total of £1,680 for the cargo of slaves.

The net profit on this voyage cannot be ascertained now, but Captain George Scott's letter of 1740 says that a prime slave cost £12 in the unsalable dry goods, while other documents show that in 1753 a prime slave cost one hundred and ten gallons of rum, or £11. The gross profit on the slaves sold in Barbadoes was doubtless as much as £900, and the net profit on the whole voyage, after the remaining slaves were sold elsewhere, was at least £900. And yet the Sanderson had been offered for sale several years earlier for £450, and during this voyage, as we have learned already, her