Slaves girls discaharge cargo

In the French islands of the West Indies from whence we had come slavery was still in vogue, and our cargo of coal at Martinique was discharged by a party of slave girls, who seemed the very reverse of being miserable. Their shoulders were bare, as were their arms and feet, but they were all well nourished, and full of life and laughter. The coal they carried in baskets upon their heads - about 90lbs in each load - passing in single file over a long staging from the ship to the jetty singing merrily as they went. Each company of the girls was in charge of a French slave driver, who had a long whip which he flicked and cracked in the air, harmlessly. It would not have been good for his health had the lash fallen upon the girls when our English crew were there, though I must say he appeared to be a perfectly good humoured sort of person, and the lot of the French slaves was not particularly hard.



OTHER ARTICLES
• Dennis Allen - stories from the sea
• The Harwood and Bullamore fishing family history in Scarborough
• A shipload of single girls
• Watching for ships by the harbour walls in Scarborough
• Tragedies in the Jenkinson fishing family in Filey
• The Allen and Truman Scarborough fishing families
• Filey fishermen in 1862 - yawls and cobles
• Gristhorpe Bay - privateers, rights to wrecks and periwinkles
• The Womens work in the Filey fishing industry
• Runswick Bay superstitions - caves and a landslip
• The Home Guard and coastal defences in WW2 Scarborough
• A common ancestry - The Filey Jenkinsons
• Article by the granddaughter of James Ruffen Bayes
• The Allen family history - Scarborough fishing family
• Women working in the Scarborough fishing industry
• Scarborough's harbour and the coal trade. Thomas Hinderwell
• The history of the Graham Sea Training School
• The Filey Flither girls - truth or fiction
• The port of Scarborough in the late 15th Century