Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/65

 The average New England slaver was much smaller, The sloop Welcome that cleared from Newport for Barbadoes had a capacity of 5,000 gallons of molasses. The Fame, a noted slaver and privateer of Newport, had a Keel seventy-nine feet long. She was just about as long on the water-line as the Newportbuilt defenders of the America's cup. Her beam was twenty-six and a half feet, which was about the width of the widest defender.

The brigantine Sanderson, in which Captain David Lindsay made fame, carried 10,000 gallons of molasses.

A contract made by Caleb Clapp and Stephen Brown, who were ship-builders at "Warren, in the County of Bristole, in the colony of Rhode Island," in 1747, gives some interesting dimensions of a brigantine they had on the stocks. She was to be "sixty feet length of keel, straight rabbet, and length of rake forward to be fourteen feet, three foot and onehalf of which to be put into the keel, so that she will then be sixty-three feet keel and eleven feet rake forward. Twenty-three feet by the beam, ten feet in the hold, and three feet ten inches betwixt decks, and twenty inches waste. Rake abaft to be according to the usual proportions, to have a sufficient false stern. Keel to be sided thirteen inches."

A vessel of 500 tons would have, in these days, a keel no larger than that. The "betwixt decks" space is worth remembering, because the slaves were stowed there.

In 1808 the trade was outlawed, while twelve years later it was declared piracy, and a few war-ships were sent out to suppress it. Two kinds of vessels