Abstract
This chapter provides detailed evidence to prove that the Sharp letter in the British Library is a fair copy—and therefore the most definitive version—of Sharp’s letter to the Admiralty, while the National Maritime Museum copy is a draft. However, since the National Maritime Museum copy has been the only known manuscript of Sharp’s Admiralty missive to this point, it has been treated as the most authentic version of it, if not the version actually sent to the Admiralty; several features of the National Maritime Museum document show that it is not the original missive, this chapter reveals. It also establishes the following original claims: that the letter Sharp actually sent to the Admiralty is now lost or destroyed, that Hoare’s transcription is based on the National Maritime Museum draft, and that Hoare altered several aspects of Sharp’s original draft.
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Notes
- 1.
Granville Sharp, Letter to the Duke of Portland , 18 July 1783, repographic scan of REC/19, National Maritime Museum, 111–14, 113, downloaded July 14, 2015. It is possible that the two-part Admiralty missive in REC/19 at the NMM (a transcription of which is in Granville Sharp’s Cases on Slavery by Lyall ) is what Sharp “inclosed” with his letter to Portland—meaning that the NMM’s Admiralty missive is Portland’s copy—but, given its rather messy editorial state, I argue that it was, rather, Sharp’s personal draft of the missive. I purchased from the NMM a high-quality “repographic” scan of everything but the “Vouchers” in REC/19; my claims about these holdings are therefore based on solid evidence. Incidentally, REC/19, or the NMM’s two-part missive to the Admiralty that parallels the BL document, is paginated; in my references to it, I cite these page numbers and term it the “NMM document.”
- 2.
Anita Rupprecht , “‘A Very Uncommon Case’: Representations of the Zong and the British Campaign to Abolish the Slave Trade,” The Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 329–46, 336; Prince Hoare , Memoirs of Granville Sharp , Esq. Composed from His Own Manuscripts, and Other Authentic Documents in the Possession of His Family Authentic Documents in the Possession of His Family and of the African Institution (London: Henry Colburn, 1820), 246, Google eBooks, accessed June 25, 2015–August 30, 2017, https://books.google.ca/books?id=PrUEAAAAIAAJ.
- 3.
Quoted in Hoare , Memoirs , 246.
- 4.
Hoare , Memoirs , 242–4, xvii–xxi.
- 5.
See Chapter 3, footnote 2, for the other examples of Sharp’s handwriting to which I compared the NMM manuscript.
- 6.
Ian Baucom , “‘Signum Rememorativum, Demonstrativum, Prognostikon’: Finance, Capital, the Atlantic, and Slavery,” Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture, ed. Nancy Henry and Cannon Schmitt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 35 n4, 22; see also Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 335 n1. In his replication of Sharp’s index of documents in the NMM, however, Baucom repeats Sharp’s word “copy” before the first item in the packet: “Copy of a Letter to the Lords of the Admiralty” (Baucom, Specters, 125).
- 7.
Granville Sharp, “Copy of a Letter to Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty ,” Old Jewry London, MS, 2 July 1783, repographic scan provided by the National Maritime Museum (NMM; REC/19), downloaded July 14, 2015, 100.
- 8.
The issue of the “Vouchers” is also confusing. Sharp repeats in the BL and the NMM documents that they accompany his missive to the Admiralty, and that only one copy of this expensive, large packet of documents exists; even today the only known transcription of the hearing in May is at the NMM, which suggests it could be Sharp’s only copy. However, as I note above, the NMM document announces about itself that it is not the original sent to the Admiralty (it is marked “copy”), which suggests that the “Vouchers” included with it are not the originals, either, since they appear to be in the same handwriting—probably that of the shorthand writer whom Sharp hired to transcribe the hearing proceedings. To be clear: my research reveals that the letter and “Vouchers” at the NMM did not come from the Admiralty, and, yet, Sharp insists that there exists only one iteration of the “Vouchers,” which he sent to the Admiralty; thus, it must be the case that, without Sharp’s knowledge, someone made a copy of the (letter and) “Vouchers” and these are the documents now at the NMM.
- 9.
Sharp, NMM document , 96; Granville Sharp, [BL document, Copy of a Letter to Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty] “Paper by Glanville [sic] Sharp on the Case of 132 Murdered Negroes,” in Tracts 35 (Old Jewry London, MS: n.p., July 2, 1783), 3.
- 10.
Sharp, NMM document, 95, 100.
- 11.
Graham Thompson , emails to the author from the National Maritime Museum, June 22, 26, 2015.
- 12.
Portland would appear to be the most likely original owner of the Admiralty missive in the NMM, given that Sharp’s letter addressed to Portland is part of the same holdings, but several unique features of the Admiralty missive in the NMM indicate strongly that it is Sharp’s own copy of it, since these features are replicated in Hoare’s Memoirs , which were “Composed from His [Sharp’s] Own Manuscripts,” as Hoare’s long title attests.
- 13.
George Hay , email to the author from The National Archives , Kew, June 25, 2015. Please see note 10 on page 6 for the details of the Kelsall affidavit in TNA.
- 14.
James Walvin , The Zong: A Massacre, the Law & the End of Slavery (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 168.
- 15.
Sharp, NMM document, 101; Sharp, BL document, 5. Here, Sharp omits his underlining of the place names in the BL document.
- 16.
Sharp, NMM document, 102.
- 17.
Sharp, BL document, 6; Sharp’s double underlining.
- 18.
Baucom, “‘Signum,’” 22–3. For more on REC/19 in the NMM, see also Rupprecht , “‘Uncommon,’” 336; Walvin, Zong, 217; and Andrew Lewis , “Martin Dockray and the Zong: A Tribute in the Form of a Chronology,” Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 357–70, 366, Taylor and Francis, accessed July 17, 2015.
- 19.
Baucom, Specters, 4.
- 20.
Sharp, BL document, 3.
- 21.
Sharp, BL document, 3; Baucom, Specters, 10; Lewis, “Dockray,” 358; Michael Lobban , “Slavery, Insurance and the Law,” The Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 319–28, 323; F. O. Shyllon , Black Slaves in Britain (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), ix, 525. Baucom states that Collingwood earned “the sale price of two slaves (for which he could expect something in the range of 30 pounds . . .),” but Lobban comments that “the slaves were valued in the policy at £30 a head. This [sum] reflected the expected sale price in Jamaica , rather than the African purchase price”; quoting Roger Anstey’s, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810 (1975), Lobban later adds, “The average price in the 1780s of newly-landed slaves in the West Indies has been estimated at £36, which was indeed the price at which the Zong ’s surviving slaves were sold” (323 n22). In other words, Collingwood could expect to make at least 60 pounds from the sale of his two “privilege slaves,” should he choose to sell them, not 30 pounds. Since Collingwood died shortly after landing at Jamaica, he probably did not sell these Africans. Finally, Lewis notes that Collingwood ’s actual wage was 95 shillings a month, which was about five pounds (Lewis, “Dockray,” 358).
- 22.
Anon., “Inhuman Traffic: Granville Sharp and the Sharp family,” Gloucestershire Archives Online Catalogue, unpag., accessed July 3, 2015, http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/learning-for-all/online-exhibitions/inhuman-traffic/, unpag.
- 23.
Hoare , Memoirs , 242–4, xvii–xxi.
- 24.
Leaving aside articles and other short works, the most notable books that cite Hoare’s Memoirs have already been mentioned in the present study; these include those by Brown , Carey (Sensibility), and Carretta (Self-Made). Other books that use Hoare’s Memoirs include: Paul Michael Kielstra , The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–1848: Diplomacy, Morality and Economics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Peter Hogg , The African Slave Trade and Its Suppression: A Classified and Annotated Bibliography of Books, Pamphlets and Periodical (1973; Abingdon: Routledge, 2013); Frank N. Magill , The 17th and 18th Centuries: Dictionary of World Biography (Volume 4. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 1999. 10 vols); Dean Rapp , Samuel Whitbread (1764–1815): A Social and Political Study (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987); and Jeannine Marie DeLombard , Slavery on Trial: Law, Abolitionism, and Print Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
- 25.
Christopher Leslie Brown , Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 171.
- 26.
See, for example, Walvin , Zong, 216; Parry , emails, 3, 8, 16, July 2015. I bought copies of the GA ’s holdings of all Sharp manuscripts relating to the Zong and confirm that they are not parallel to the BL or NMM documents.
- 27.
Hoare , Memoirs , 243.
- 28.
Sharp, BL document, 2.
- 29.
Sharp, NMM document, 103.
- 30.
Sharp, BL document, 7.
- 31.
Sharp, NMM document, 103; BL document, 8. Here and in subsequent references to both documents—in which I quote from only one manuscript (from either the NMM or BL, whichever appears first in the citation), but then also provide the page number for the parallel passage in the other manuscript—the reader should be aware that the formatting and exact wording is frequently different in the passage to which I refer with the second reference.
- 32.
Sharp, BL document, 13; NMM document, 108.
- 33.
Rupprecht , “Uncommon,” 336.
- 34.
Walvin, Zong, 166.
- 35.
Sharp, BL document, 11–12; NMM document, 107, wherein “Impunity,” “Liverpool,” “murders,” and “English” are also underlined.
- 36.
Sharp, BL document, 12; NMM document, 107.
- 37.
Hoare , Memoirs , xix.
- 38.
Sharp, BL document, 12, 13; NMM document, 107, 108.
- 39.
Sharp, BL document, 7; NMM document, 102.
- 40.
Sharp, NMM document, 102.
- 41.
Sharp, BL document, 3; NMM document, 98; Hoare , Memoirs , 244.
- 42.
Sharp, BL document, 7; NMM document, 103.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Sharp, BL document, 2.
- 45.
G. M. Ditchfield , “Sharp, Granville (1735–1813),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 2012), unpag., accessed June 16, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25208; David Brion Davis , The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 391.
- 46.
Davis , Problem, 391.
- 47.
Ditchfield , “Sharp,” unpag.
- 48.
Shyllon , Black Slaves, 136.
- 49.
Sharp, BL document, 2; NMM document, 96–7. As I note in the Appendix, opening quotation marks should appear before the word “with.”
- 50.
The Holy Bible , Containing the Old and New Testaments Translated Out of the Original Tongues and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised by His Majesty’s Special Command. Appointed to be Read in Churches. Authorized King James Version, 1611 (Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers, [n.d.]).
- 51.
Ditchfield , “Sharp,” unpag.
- 52.
Brown , Moral, 174.
- 53.
Sharp, BL document, 15.
- 54.
Walvin , Zong, 178.
- 55.
Sharp, BL document, 8; NMM document, 103.
- 56.
Hoare , Memoirs , xix; Sharp, BL document, 9; NMM document, 105.
- 57.
Sharp, NMM document, 98; BL document, 3.
- 58.
Hoare, xvii; Sharp, NMM document, 98.
- 59.
Hoare, 244; Sharp, NMM document, 98.
- 60.
Qtd. in Hoare , Memoirs , 236; Jane Webster , “The Zong in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade,” Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 285–98, 295. Incidentally, here Webster identifies Heseltine and Lushington as Sharp’s lawyers, but, as I note in Chapter 2 (page 46), they are identified as partners connected to the “British High Court of Admiralty” in the official records of the Parliamentary debates from 1812 (Anon., The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time, ed. T. C. Hansard (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown , 1812), vol. 23, 777, Google eBooks, accessed 23 April 2018, https://books.google.ca/books?id=twlAAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false).
- 61.
Sharp, BL document, 1.
- 62.
Hoare , Memoirs , xvii, 242, 244; Sharp, NMM document, 95, 98, 99.
- 63.
Please see the discussion of the ship’s name on page 14.
- 64.
Ditchfield , “Sharp,” unpag.
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Faubert, M. (2018). The British Library Document: The Definitive Version of Sharp’s Letter on the Zong to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. In: Granville Sharp's Uncovered Letter and the Zong Massacre. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92786-2_4
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