What was advertised in a colonial newspaper 250 years ago today?

“JUST arrived in the Brigantine ANTELOPE … directly from the River GAMBIA and SIERRALEON.”

Inglis and Hall announced that they would auction “A CHOICE CARGO of ONE HUNDRED PRIME SLAVES” that had arrived in Georgia “directly from the River GAMBIA and SIERRALEON.”

Thanks to the recent work of Gregory E. O’Malley, I questioned the accuracy of this claim. Had the Antelope and its human cargo actually arrived directly from Africa? Or had it made other stops in the Americas before disembarking slaves in Georgia? Was the “CHOICE CARGO” comprised of all the slaves who had survived the transatlantic voyage? Did local buyers get to choose from among the best specimens of enslaved men, women, and children that had been forced aboard this vessel in Gambia and Sierra Leone? Or had the Antelope first landed in other ports in the Americas? Had Captain Paley already sold the best slaves in other locations? Were Inglis and Hall peddling whatever leftover captives remained and made it to Georgia?

In Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1817, O’Malley demonstrated that the famous Middle Passage was not the final stage of the voyage for captive Africans. Instead, many experienced transshipment within an intercolonial slave trade: they arrived in one port in the Americas but then underwent subsequent journeys before being sold and ending up on a plantation, in an urban household, or whatever their fate happened to be. This prompted my question about the accuracy of the claim that the Antelope had arrived “directly” from Africa.

Readers of the Georgia Gazette could have asked around or consulted the shipping news to verify that the Antelope had (or had not) arrived directly from Africa. Modern historians, on the other hand, have access to Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. The year (1766) and the name of the vessel (Antelope) was sufficient to identify the voyage from this advertisement; other information from the advertisement verified that this was indeed the correct entry. The database (which drew from records that included, but were not limited to, the advertisement) confirmed that Savannah was indeed the “first place of slave landing” in the Americas.

It also reported that 111 enslaved people had been boarded on the vessel, but only 97 survived the transatlantic voyage.

You can examine other details about this particular shipment of human cargo, including a map, at Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. (I’m inserting a map here, but the database allows visitors to zoom in on the map for greater detail.) O’Malley has recently received a major grant to augment the database with data on the intercolonial slave trade.