By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150, with capacity for 52,557 slaves according to the reduced rating of five slaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of 1788.  About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in the ports of Angola.[26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those of New England, was also large.  The career of the town of Newport in fact was a small scale replied of Liverpool’s.  But acceptable statistics of the American ships are lacking.

[Footnote 21:  Francis Moore, Travels in Africa, pp. 69, 202-203.]

[Footnote 22:  Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564.]

[Footnote 23:  Ibid., p. 471, quoting A General and Descriptive History of Liverpool (1795).]

[Footnote 24:  Ibid., p. 472 and appendix 7.]

[Footnote 25:  Edward Long, History of Jamaica (London, 1774), p. 492 note.]

[Footnote 26:  Corner Williams, Appendix 13.]

The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally received commissions of “4 in 104,” on the gross sales, and also had the privilege of buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on their private account.  When surgeons were carried they also were allowed commissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and “privileges” were often allowed the mates likewise.  The captains generally carried more or less definite instructions.  Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpool ship Marquis of Granby bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered to combine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy 550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo would purchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack.  When laden he was to carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring home according to opportunity sugar, cotton, coffee, pimento, mahogany and rum, and the balance of the slave cargo proceeds in bills of exchange.[27] Simeon Potter, master of a Rhode Island slaver about the same time, was instructed by his owners:  “Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and little or none with the white people if possible to be avoided.  Worter yr Rum as much as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can.”  And again:  “Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Rise by the Rum Standing in ye Son."[28] As to the care of the slave cargo a Massachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows:  “No people require more kind and tender treatment:  to exhilarate their spirits than the Africans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember that on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed by yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment by insurrection, etc.  When you consider that on the health of your slaves almost your whole voyage depends—­for all other risques but mortality, seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for—­you will therefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves."[29]