A Social History of the American Negro | Page 6

and took away a few slaves. England really entered the
field, however, with the voyage in 1562 of Captain John Hawkins, son
of William, who in October of this year also went to the coast of
Guinea. He had a fleet of three ships and one hundred men, and partly
by the sword and partly by other means he took three hundred or more
Negroes, whom he took to Santo Domingo and sold profitably.[1] He
was richly laden going homeward and some of his stores were seized
by Spanish vessels. Hawkins made two other voyages, one in 1564, and
another, with Drake, in 1567. On his second voyage he had four armed
ships, the largest being the Jesus, a vessel of seven hundred tons, and a
force of one hundred and seventy men. December and January (1564-5)
he spent in picking up freight, and by sickness and fights with the
Negroes he lost many of his men. Then at the end of January he set out
for the West Indies. He was becalmed for twenty-one days, but he
arrived at the Island of Dominica March 9. He traded along the Spanish
coasts and on his return to England he touched at various points in the
West Indies and sailed along the coast of Florida. On his third voyage
he had five ships. He himself was again in command of the Jesus,
while Drake was in charge of the Judith, a little vessel of fifty tons. He
got together between four and five hundred Negroes and again went to
Dominica. He had various adventures and at last was thrown by a storm
on the coast of Mexico. Here after three days he was attacked by a
Spanish fleet of twelve vessels, and all of his ships were destroyed
except the Judith and another small vessel, the Minion, which was so
crowded that one hundred men risked the dangers on land rather than
go to sea with her. On this last voyage Hawkins and Drake had among
their companions the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, who were then,
like other young Elizabethans, seeking fame and fortune. It is
noteworthy that in all that he did Hawkins seems to have had no sense
of cruelty or wrong. He held religious services morning and evening,
and in the spirit of the later Cromwell he enjoined upon his men to
"serve God daily, love one another, preserve their victuals, beware of
fire, and keep good company." Queen Elizabeth evidently regarded the
opening of the slave-trade as a worthy achievement, for after his second

voyage she made Hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the device of
a Negro's head and bust with the arms securely bound.
[Footnote 1: Edward E. Hale in Justin Winsor's _Narrative and Critical
History of America_, III, 60.]
France joined in the traffic in 1624, and then Holland and Denmark,
and the rivalry soon became intense. England, with her usual
aggressiveness, assumed a commanding position, and, much more than
has commonly been supposed, the Navigation Ordinance of 1651 and
the two wars with the Dutch in the seventeenth century had as their
basis the struggle for supremacy in the slave-trade. The English trade
proper began with the granting of rights to special companies, to one in
1618, to another in 1631, and in 1662 to the "Company of Royal
Adventurers," rechartered in 1672 as the "Royal African Company," to
which in 1687 was given the exclusive right to trade between the Gold
Coast and the British colonies in America. James, Duke of York, was
interested in this last company, and it agreed to supply the West Indies
with three thousand slaves annually. In 1698, on account of the
incessant clamor of English merchants, the trade was opened generally,
and any vessel carrying the British flag was by act of Parliament
permitted to engage in it on payment of a duty of 10 per cent on
English goods exported to Africa. New England immediately engaged
in the traffic, and vessels from Boston and Newport went forth to the
Gold Coast laden with hogsheads of rum. In course of time there
developed a three-cornered trade by which molasses was brought from
the West Indies to New England, made into rum to be taken to Africa
and exchanged for slaves, the slaves in turn being brought to the West
Indies or the Southern colonies.[1] A slave purchased for one hundred
gallons of rum worth £10 brought from £20 to £50 when offered for
sale in America.[2] Newport soon had twenty-two still houses, and
even these could not satisfy the demand. England regarded the
slave-trade as of such importance that when in 1713 she accepted the
Peace of Utrecht she insisted on having awarded to her for thirty years
the exclusive right to transport slaves