A Respectable Trade. Philippa Gregory
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sat in judgement and ordered a retrial.’
‘The captain was tried for murder?’ Frances asked.
The look the two of them turned on her was of blank incomprehension. ‘Lord, no!’ Josiah shook his head. ‘It is no crime to kill slaves. This was a civil matter. The insurers refused to pay out. They argued that slaves are insured only against accident, not against deliberate drowning. They won the first round in the courts and then it went to appeal. Lord Mansfield sat on the appeal, I remember. He said that it was exactly the same as if horses had gone overboard, and that the owners should be insured against their goods going into the sea for whatever reason.’
Miss Cole nodded in mild triumph. ‘He said that slaves are property, Lord Mansfield himself said they were the same as horses.’
‘But it has left us with great difficulties,’ Josiah went on. He rubbed his hand across his face and his boyish exuberance suddenly drained away. ‘Because his lordship ruled that all slaves lost at sea are to be paid for by the insurance, there is a fear that all captains running at a loss will simply drown their slaves and claim for them. The insurers do not trust us. I have spent all day trying to find someone to insure a cargo of slaves for me, and they put in so many requirements and conditions that it is hardly worth insuring at all.’
Sarah looked anxious. ‘We dare not sail without insurance,’ she said. ‘What if the ship were to go down and we were to lose all? Or a slave revolt? Josiah, we must insure.’
‘I know! I know!’ he snapped. ‘But now they will only insure against rebellions. They will not compensate for sickness, or for slaves who suicide. If a slave is whipped to death they will not compensate. If a slave starves himself to death they will not compensate. If they kill themselves what can I do? I cannot carry such losses.’
Sarah was grave. ‘Someone must insure us.’
Josiah shrugged his shoulders crossly. ‘They are all in a ring. If I could break into the Merchant Venturers then I could share my insurance with them. On the inside they all insure each other. It is the little fish left on the outside which bob about trying to snap at trifles. If I could get inside the Company then I would be safe.’
He broke off and looked at Frances, his mood lightening. ‘We can do it, I know we can do it. With the house at Queens Square and with you, Mrs Cole, to give me some presence in the world, we will get there. We have been trading for two generations, we are respectable Bristol merchants. They will invite me to join, they must invite me to join soon.’
‘It is an old trade,’ Frances said. ‘Respectable.’ She was thinking of the ship in the drizzling rain. The one hundred and thirty-one men and women thrown over the side into the heaving water, clinging to the ropes and screaming as they went overboard, bobbing in the wake of the ship as it ploughed on without them, trying to swim after it in the buffeting waves, and then seeing, on the edge of their vision, a dark scythe-like fin as it came straight towards them, slicing through the water.
‘Rose is nearly ready to sail,’ Sarah said. ‘We have to have insurance within the week. And we are still two partners short.’
‘I will get it,’ Josiah promised. ‘I will get it in time, and partners for the voyage as well. I cannot have her sitting on the dock eating up my money doing nothing. I will get insurance for her and partners too. Trust me, Sarah, I have never failed before.’
Josiah was trying, but the mood of the city, as sensitive as a flock of little wading birds which scavenge at the edge of the sea, was against him. There was a whisper around Bristol that Josiah was losing his sure touch. He was spending too much time with his new wife, he was seen driving in a hired carriage to the Hot Well, to the Clifton Down. He was negotiating to buy a house on Queens Square. They said he wanted to be a man of leisure, soon he would be too grand to drive a hard bargain. The small traders who haunted the quayside coffee shops with their savings to invest wanted to place their gold with a man who knew the value of money as they did. They wanted a man who admired the chink of a hundred hard-won guineas in a little purse. They suspected Josiah of soaring too high for them. They did not know that he was trapped in the gulf between the two worlds of the hardest city in Britain. The great men, the Merchant Venturers, had no place for him. Their wives might murmur that the new Mrs Cole had been Miss Scott and niece to Lord Scott and long to be her friend; but the new Mrs Cole was seen only at church and she attended St Mary Redclift, not the more fashionable cathedral on the north side of the river, on College Green.
They could not call on her in that dreadful little house on the dockside. The drive to the front door alone was more than most of the ladies could stomach. They sent their footmen to leave their cards, but they did not call in person, and Frances, reading the signs quite correctly, knew that she must wait until they moved into the big house in Queens Square.
At the end of the week Josiah decided to take a gamble. He would send Rose out with insurance only for goods. No insurer would cover him for shipping slaves. Josiah was too desperate for profits to wait. He threw down his hat, took Captain Smedley by the arm as they walked along the quayside and thrust him towards the ship.
‘Go!’ he exclaimed. ‘And sail her as if she were your own. I tell you honestly, Captain Smedley, we have to see a mighty profit on this sailing, and we are taking a mighty risk.’
The captain nodded. ‘I am ready. I will join her at the Kingsroad, when the pilot has brought her down the channel. I will do my best for you, Mr Cole, as I always have done.’
‘There will be a note for you in your cabin.’ Josiah’s face was hungry. ‘We may need to bend the law a little on this voyage, Captain Smedley. You would have no difficulty with that, I take it.’
‘As long as the ship and my crew are safe …’
Josiah nodded. ‘Keep the ship safe, whatever you do. I will see her set sail on the tide at dawn tomorrow. And your orders will be on your chart table in your cabin.’
The captain stooped and picked up Josiah’s hat, and returned it to him with a smile. ‘Cover your head, Mr Cole, I shall see you in the Merchant Venturers’ Company yet.’
Josiah bared his brown teeth. ‘Please God,’ he said tightly.
Next morning Josiah was up early waiting on the quayside in thick cold fog. Rose was loading her final stores, extra boxes of trade goods carried swiftly and efficiently from Josiah’s warehouse: crate after crate of Birmingham muskets with flints and shot and gunpowder. Josiah was pouring munitions into Africa, to feed their need of guns.
Captain Smedley was not aboard; he would join the ship at Kingsroad anchorage, when the pilot had guided her down the Avon gorge, with the rowing boats towing her. Josiah wrote one final letter of instructions to him and left it in his cabin.
4th September 1788
On this Trip above all Others I must stress that we have to show a Profit. To this End select the Very best Negroes you can find; but do not Delay too long off Africa. Ship Women and young children and Pack them very Close. I want you to carry as many as Six Hundred. The Extra deaths in passage will be paid for by the Extra profit in taking So many.
On this voyage, on this one Voyage only, you are to go straight to the Spanish colonies and sell the slaves There, for Bullion. The papers to cover this Voyage make No mention of the Spanish colonies, and you will Destroy this letter when you Have Read it. I know that this is Smuggling and you will see a Bonus on your Return. This will be the only Time I will ask you to Trade with the Spanish, and I will Reward your Success. Buy what Sugar they offer, provided it is of Good quality, but take No notes of Credit. I want nothing but Gold and Sugar. Do not Fail me, Captain Smedley – Ship as many as you can find and Pack them Tight!
The Rose was rocking temptingly on the tide, the waves slapping the quayside. The pilot came aboard as Josiah watched the barges attaching their lines.
‘Take care now,’ Josiah said under his breath. The ship was uninsured for the middle voyage and would be perilously overloaded. He dared not tell Sarah; he hardly