further light on archibald dalzel

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Further Light on Archibald DalzelAuthor(s): James A. RawleySource: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1984), pp. 317-323Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/218609 .

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FURTHER LIGHT ON ARCHIBALD DALZEL

JAMES A. RA WLEY

African scholars devoted a fair amount of attention to Archibald Dalzel during the years 1965-1967. Interest centered on his History of Dahomy and new biographical materials. Trained as a surgeon,

Dalzel served as an officer of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa in 1763-1770 and again in 1791-1802, attempted a career as a slave merchant, and wrote The History of Dahomy in 1793.

Observing that "Information concerning Dalzel's life is scarce," Loren K. Waldman asserted that Dalzel's book, relied on by a number of writers, "is a polemic." Waldman pointed to Dalzel's pro-slave trade activities in 1788, references to him in the controversy over abolition in 1789-1791, and Dalzel's description of Dahomeans as people who went to war by their nature and not a result of the slave trade. Waldman's coverage of Dalzel's pro-slave trade activities is less than complete, and he erroneously dates Dalzel's governorship of Cape Coast Castle as from 1785-1790.1

In an article published in the same journal the following year, I.A. Akinjogbin exploited Dalzel's correspondence mainly with his younger brother, which is in the Edinburgh University Library. With these letters he filled in a good many biographical details, especially bringing to light some aspects of Dalzel's career as a slave trader. Even so, details were sometimes sparse and there remained great gaps in Dalzel's career. "For the next nine years after 1783," wrote Akinjogbin, "it is not known what was happening to Dalzel or what he was doing for his livelihood." "Similarly, Dalzel's activities in the last phase of his life, which was the period between his resignation in 1802 and his death (which probably occurred at an advanced age around 1811), are completely obscure."2

J.D. Fage brought out a new printing of The History of Dahomy the next year. Noting that "almost the whole of Dalzel's active career of nearly forty years, from 1763 to 1802, was bound up with Britain's trade in African slaves," Fage largely followed Akinjogbin in writing a biographical account in his introduction to the new printing and in seeing the book as a polemic. At the same time he considered the questions of veracity and usefulness of the book. The

1L.K. Waldman, "An Unnoticed Aspect of Archibald Dalzel's The History of Dahomey," Journal of African History, VI (1965), 185-192.

2I.A. Akinjogbin, "Archibald Dalzel: Slave Trader and Historian of Dahomey," ibid, VII (1966), 67-78.

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318 JAMES A. RAWLEY

gap remains. "Dalzel's career for the next thirteen years is some- what obscure," he observed for the years from 1778. "From 1783 to 1791, it is not clear, indeed, how he managed to maintain himself at all." As for the years after 1802, Fage, amending Akinjogbin's view that the period is "completely obscure," wrote, "In 1802, Dalzel resigned and returned to Britain, where he lived in straitened circumstances until his death some nine years later." Passing over the years from 1783 to 1788 in Dalzel's life, another historian, F.D. Sanderson found a detail: "after the war he moved to Liverpool where he sailed in the African trade for John and Thomas Hodgson."3

It is the aim of this note to fill in some of the gaps in Dal- zel's life and, in the process, strengthen Fage's assertion that almost the whole of his active career was bound up with Britain's trade in African slaves. Materials making this possible are mainly in the Public Record Office, the British Parliamentary Papers, and

Lloyd's Registry of Shipping. Helpful as they are, they by no means provide a complete record of his activities.

We may begin by supplying further information on Dalzel's slaving career at Dahomey. After a period of service as a surgeon at Anomabo on the Gold Coast, Dalzel became governor of the Company of Merchants' fort at Whydah in Dahomey, where he spent nearly four

years. He devoted a good part of his energies to acquiring wealth for himself. Akinjogbin declares that Dalzel was trading with the French and Portuguese, which was prohibited.4 Beyond this, a con- temporary of Dalzel's, Richard Brew, a private trader at Anomabo, asserted that Dalzel imposed heavy charges to insure private traders' goods stored in the publicly maintained company fort and was using his own trade goods - sent him by the company - to buy slaves to be sold by him in the West Indies.

Brew's account, written from Castle Brew, Anomabo, 1 July 1770 to several merchants in Liverpool, relates as a common practice that whenever a governor was preparing to leave the Coast he distributed his goods among the chiefs of the trading posts to buy up the best slaves and make his fortune.

"A striking instance of which we now have at Whydah," Brew wrote, "where the governor is realizing his fortune in slaves, and has sent the surgeon of the fort up to Annamaboe to agree with a captain of a ship to go down there and carry him and his slaves to the West Indies; and he has accordingly agreed with Captain Hamil- ton, of the Jamaica storeship, to go down to Whydah the beginning of June, to carry the governor and one hundred and fifty slaves certain to the West-Indies; so that, till his purchase is made, Captain Norris, of the ship Unity of Liverpool, (who is now there) must lie by or take up with such slaves as he can get, as we are to suppose a

gentleman will ship none but the primest, when they compose the bulk of his fortune.

"Everybody acquainted with this trade must allow, that lodging merchandize of any kind, especially liquor and gunpowder, in a

3J.D. Fage, "Introduction to the Second Edition," The History of Dahomey (London, 1967), 8-9; F.E. Sanderson, "The Liverpool Delegates and Sir William Dolben's Bill," Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for the Year 1973, 124 (1974), 65.

4Akinjogbin, "Archibald Dalzel," 71.




thatched house is attended with a very great risque; so great a one indeed, that I am informed, Governor Dalzel asked Captain Norris of the Unity ten per cent to insure his factory during his stay there; how true this is I cannot pretend to say, however Captain Norris will, no doubt, clear up this point on his arrival in England."5

Dalzel, Akinjogbin tells us, transported only 104 slaves to the West Indies, where he sold them to a planter named Cuthberts. Making a profit of about ?2,000, he accepted a promissory note which was not fully paid, driving Dalzel into bankruptcy in 1773.

We may continue offering more information on three slave ships of Dalzel's mentioned by Akinjogbin, showing that Dalzel was more involved in slave trading than has been previously ascertained. Akinjogbin said, "In 1773, he bought a ship entirely on his own, which he named Little Archie and sent to West Africa under a captain whom he had engaged." This is Akinjogbin's only reference to the Little Archie, but in addition to this voyage of 1773, the Little Archie made a second African voyage in 1775.6

Writing of Dalzel's plans to operate a number of vessels in the slave trade, Akinjogbin tells us that on his way back from a trip to America, Dalzel bought two ships, the Nancy and the Hannah. "He sent the Nancy off to West Africa on 20 September 1775, and in the following November he himself followed in the Hannah. "7 To this we may add information about the African destination of these vessels, the character of them, and records of voyages after 1775. The Afri- can destination of these two vessels in 1775 appears to have been the Gold Coast. The Nancy was classified not as a ship but a schooner, built in New England in 1774; it made not one but three voyages under Dalzel's ownership, in 1775, 1776, and 1778, the last two under Captain A. Anderson. Its tonnage is differently listed for each voyage, respectively 50, 70, and 60 tons.8

The ship Hannah, consistently listed as 150 tons, formerly the

Liberty, was built in Bermuda in 1757, sheathed in 1774, and thor- oughly repaired in 1775. In addition to the 1775 voyage to the Gold Coast, it made two more slaving voyages under Dalzel's ownership. The Hannah, under Captain Dalzel, cleared for Africa in 1776, and again in 1778 under Captain James Gibson. In 1779, now the Union, it cleared from Jamaica for London; and later in the same year, now owned by E. Mesnard, it cleared from London for New York.9 In

5Richard Brew, Castle Brew, Anomabo, 1 July 1770, to several merchants at Liverpool, in An African Merchant, "A Treatise upon the Trade from Great-Britain to Africa, humbly recommended to the Attention of Government" (Londan, 1772), 70. A valuable account of Brew and his family is Margaret Priestley, West African Trade and Coast Society: A Family Study (London, 1969). Captain Robert Norris had a career that paralleled Dalzel's; a slave trader, he became a defender of the trade, giving valuable testimony in the slave trade inquiries at the century's end (together with

Dalzel, as we shall see) and writing his anti-African Memoirs of the Reign of Bosca

Ahadee, King of Dahomey (London, 1789), from which Dalzel borrowed in his The

History of Dahomy.

6P.R.O. BT 6/3; Akinjogbin, "Archibald Dalzel," 71-72.

7Akinjogbin, "Archibald Dalzel," 71.

8P.R.O. BT 6/3; Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1760- (London, 1963), 1775, 1776, 1778.

9P.R.O. BT 6/3; Lloyd's Register, 1776, 1778, 1779.

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320 JAMES A. RAWLEY

August of 1778, while returning to England, Dalzel had fallen prey to a privateer and lost everything he had. The sale of the Hannah was probably necessitated by this misfortune. After these voyages of the Little Archie, the Nancy, and the Hannah, he again went bankrupt and subsequently became a captain of a privateer.10

Further details -about Dalzel's African trading in these years appear in the journals of the Board of Trade. In 1775, the Board approved "the petition of Archibald Dalzel, for leave to export to the coast of Africa certain military stores on board the ship Hannah." In 1777, the Board heard the testimony of Captain Thomas Bennett, master of a vessel in the slave trade, that "a ship sailed from the River [Thames] last November belonging to Mr. Dalzel, late Governor of Whydah, who took part of her cargo in Holland..." Dal- zel's petition, one of many received by the Board at this time, was necessitated by the ban on exports of military stores occasioned by the outbreak of fighting in North America. His taking of cargo for Africa in Holland was a more common practice of London slavers in the eighteenth century than historians have appreciated. The practice, among other matters, complicates analysis of the London- African trade relationship.11

We need no longer be puzzled as to how Dalzel was maintaining himself from 1783 to 1791. He was commanding vessels in the African trade, notably in the slave trade. In the year 1783, Dalzel had returned to the African trade. The cutter Europa, Captain A. Dalzel, cleared London for Africa. Built at Sidmouth in 1779, and raised and

equipped with a new deck in the year of the voyage, the Europa was owned by James Mather, a London slave merchant who had a large number of vessels in the African trade, despatching seven in this

year.12 The Europa apparently was in the direct trade between England

and Africa, for later in the year, too soon for a triangular voyage to have been completed, Dalzel was in command of the ship St. Ann, which after giving bond in London on 13 September, sailed for Africa. Three hundred twenty tons, taken prize from the French, with a crew of sixty men and carrying six guns, the St. Ann entered King- ston harbor in Jamaica, just over one year after she had left Lon- don, 23 September 1784, with a cargo of three hundred thirty Negroes from Africa.13

The following year Dalzel arrived in London at the command of a new ship, also called the St. Ann, three hundred tons, thirty-two men, "from or in the African trade," as the record states. This ship was apparently in the direct trade; the record of seamen's sixpences paid [for the use of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich] shows the first man's entry on 1 July 1785 and the last man's discharge on 2

January 1786.14

10After he had become a bankrupt in 1778, the spelling of the family name was

changed from Dalziel to Dalzel. Nevertheless, the Dalziel spelling frequently appears after 1778. Akinjogbin, "Archibald Dalzel," 71-72.

11Great Britain, Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 1704-82, 14 vols. (London, 1920-1938), 1768-1775, 442; 1776-1782, 138.

12Lloyd's Register, 1783.

13P.R.O. CO 142/19.

14p.R.O. ADM 68/205.




Later in the year 1786, Dalzel was in command of the ship Tartar, owned by the Backhouses of Liverpool, which left Liverpool for Benin. Built in Liverpool in 1772 and given large repairs in 1781, the Tartar "made a very fatal voyage" in 1786. After being detained a year at the coast of Benin, the Tartar lost about one- third of its crew of thirty-seven, and about one-third again of its cargo of about three hundred sixty slaves. There had been a loss of another ten or eleven slaves before leaving the Coast. Dalzel explained the long delay in slaving: "I had a badly assorted Cargo; great Competition; few Slaves in the Country; Provisions Scarce in the Country." He arrived, with diminished crew and cargo, at Domini- ca in the West Indies on 2 March 1787.15

Soon after he returned to England he became an active propagan- dist defending the slave trade against the rapidly rising agitation to abolish it. Under the pseudonym "Vindex," he contributed letters to the Liverpool press assailing the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. When the Privy Council began to take evidence about the slave trade, Dalzel was deputed by the Liverpool African Mer- chants, together with John Tarleton, Robert Norris, James Penny, and John Matthews, to testify. Dalzel gave evidence twice, once on the Gold Coast and again on Whydah and Dahomey, and received the thanks of the Liverpool Council and reimbursement for his expenses.

When it became apparent that the slave trade would not be abol- ished in 1788 but that a bill to regulate the trade might win favor, Dalzel was designated by the African Committee of Liverpool, along with Tarleton, Norris, and Matthews to oppose the bill sponsored by Sir William Dolben. In giving evidence before a committee of the whole house, Dalzel said he did not believe crowding and stowage of Negroes were the causes of mortality, but thought some regulation, such as provision for distilling sea water, would be in order. William Wilberforce, in introducing his motion in the House of Com- mons on 12 May, 1789 to abolish the African slave trade, referred to Dalzel's views. "It is said," Wilberforce remarked, "that Liverpool will be undone - the trade, says Mr. Dalzel, at this time hangs upon a thread, and the smallest matter will overthrow it." Dalzel was, in 1788, together with Norris and Matthews, in correspondence with Lord Hawkesbury about the wording of the Dolben bill.17

By November 1788, Dalzel, according to F. E. Sanderson, "had returned to the slave trade, sailing under Portuguese colours under contract to furnish slaves on the coast on behalf of the ships of Thomas and William Earle." Sanderson leaves the impression that Dalzel continued in this employ until 1791, when on the recommenda- tion of Liverpool merchants, he became governor of Cape Coast Castle.18 His employment by the Liverpool slave merchants could in

15Lloyd's Register, 1786; British Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers, 1789, XXIV (633).

16Sanderson, "Liverpool Delegates," 65, 81 n. 26, 62, 80 n. 14; Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade (Washington, D.C., 1931), II, 578-579. Accounts and Papers, 1789, XXVI (646a).

17Accounts and Papers, 1789, XXIV (633); William Cobbett, The Parliamentary His- tory of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1816), XXVIII, 55; Donnan, Documents, 11, 578 n. 1, 586 n. 3.

18Sanderson, "Liverpool Delegates," 65-66.

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fact not have lasted long, because in 1789 Dalzel was captain of a London slave vessel. The Gosport and Havre Packet, built in the River Thames in 1787, one hundred six tons, carrying a crew of twenty, was owned by William Collow, a leading London slave merchant.19 The years when Dalzel's career has been said to be unknown or obscure came to an end in late 1791 when he was appointed governor of Cape Coast Castle. Not long after he took up this post his testimony that wars and kidnapping were not the sources of Afri- can slaves was cited with approbation by William Fox in his Summary of the Evidence produced before a Committee of the House of Commons,

published in 1793.20 Dalzel continued at this post until 1802. It is interesting that

during these years and later, a vessel called the Governor DalzeZ was, from 1797 on to 1807, a constant trader in the slaving busi- ness, carrying Africans to, among other places, St. Vincent's, Demerara, and the Bahamas.21 The records consulted by this writer do not show whether Dalzel had an interest in this vessel.

Waldman, after referring to the History of Dahomy, wrote "At least one other book written by him, New Sailing Directions for the Coast of Africa (London, 1799), is known." The statement that he

wrote another book is misleading, as the full, lengthy title makes clear.22 While he was in Africa for this second tour of duty, his knowledge of navigation of the African coast was incorporated in a volume with the lengthy title New sailing directions for the coast

of Africa, extending from Cape SparteZ... to the Cape of Good Hope ... and of the African Islands situated in the Atlantic and Ethiopic Oceans ... from the journals, manuscripts, remarks, and draughts of Archibald DaZzel ... Mr. Norris, Mr. WoodviZZe, Captain George Glas, Mr. George MaxweZZ, Mr. Ralph Fisher... and many other navigators ... adapted to the African pilot, a new collection of charts, published in London in 1799.

When we come to the years after 1802, which have been said to be "completely obscure," and a period when he lived in "straitened circumstances," we find that Dalzel was living in London, was con- tinuing to be interested in Africa, and was busily engaged in the slave trade. In 1804, when the African Association - formed to pro- mote the discovery of the interior parts of Africa - was projecting a trip from the coast of Guinea into the interior, it interviewed

persons who had resided at Whydah. On 1 August 1804, Dalzel met with a committee of the Association in the house of a London member. He warned against trying to travel north of Abomey, capital of Dahomey, because the Dahomeans were extremely jealous lest information be carried to the inland Oyo. He advised the prospective traveler to start from Bonny or Old Calabar and keep eastward of Dahomey. The traveler would pass through "countries or tribes of Negroes almost

wholly unknown." Dalzel described the slave trade into this dim interior as a chain whose length the African agents of the coastal

19P.R.O. T64/286; Lloyd's Register, 1789.

20William Fox, Summary of the Evidence produced before a Committee of the House of Commons (London, 1792), cited in Donnan, II, 597 n. 4.

21Lloyd's Register, 1797-1807; British Parliamentary Papers, (Shannon, 1968), vol. 61, 439, 42, 51, 440, 55, 424, 427.

22Waldman, "An Unnoticed Aspect," 185.




merchants did not traverse. The slave drivers, he explained, "have regular stages of one or two days journey to which the European assortments are carried progressively, at each stage taken up by merchants who come no further from the interior, than to meet others nearer to the Coast."23

For the years after 1802, we also find a record that he was a persistent slave trader in these last years of the legal trade. By 1804, he had become the owner of the ship Thames, two hundred twenty-one tons, built at Southampton in 1791. The Thames, under Captain G. Black, who had commanded her under previous owners, cleared London on 22 December 1804 for two hundred fifty slaves. The ship is registered again under Dalzel's ownership in 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1808 for London clearances for Africa. In 1809, by which time the slave trade had been outlawed, ownership passed to Miller and Company, which registered her for a voyage from London to Gra- nada. 24

By 1805 Dalzel had become the owner of a second slaver, the ship ChaZmers, two hundred seventy-one tons, built at Yarmouth in 1802. The ChaZmers cleared London for Africa 1 October 1805, permitted to carry two hundred seventy-three slaves; Dalzel and Co. was registered as the owner. The ChaZmers, under the same ownership, was registered for London to Africa voyages in 1806, 1807, and 1808, when it disappeared from the registry.25

It is clear that Dalzel was far more active in the African slave trade than has been heretofore known. Beyond those few voyages mentioned by Akinjogbin, he was busily engaged as owner and captain of vessels in the African and slave trades. In that period of his life between 1778 and 1791, described by Akinjogbin and Fage as unknown and obscure, he was also active in the defense of the slave trade; and in a second period of obscurity between 1802 and 1811, he was the owner of at least two vessels engaged in the African trade. His career persisted beyond the forty years from 1763 to 1802 that Fage described. Moreover, his career is a commentary on the notion that the slave trade was very profitable. Twice in his lifetime he went bankrupt, and it is said he died a bankrupt. Yet he persevered in the trade for nearly half a century. It is interesting as well that the vessels in which he was concerned nearly all cleared from the port of London, although historians traditionally have tended to associate him with Liverpool as well as to dismiss London as a port of consequence in the slave trade in the late eighteenth century.26 Further research may indicate that Dalzel may have been even more deeply implicated in the African slave trade than we have been able to report here.

23Robin Hallett, ed., Records of the African Association 1788 - 1831 (London, 1964), 193-195.

24LZoyd's Register, 1804-1809; 1801, 1802, 1803 for earlier voyages under Black.

25British Parliamentary Papers, Slave Trade, vol. 61, 450; Lloyd's Register, 1806, 1807, 1808.

26James A. Rawley, "The Port of London and the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade: Historians, Sources, and a Reappraisal," African Economic History, 9 (1980), 85-100.

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