Conceiving the Venture

By the standards of Rhode Island merchants, the Brown brothers were not major slave traders, but they were not strangers to the business either. In 1736, their father, Captain James Brown, had dispatched a ship, the Mary, to Africa. It was the first slave ship to sail from Providence. The family returned to the trade in 1759, when Nicholas and John Brown joined their uncle, Obadiah, and several smaller investors in dispatching a rum-laden schooner, the Wheel of Fortune, to Africa. [1] With war raging between Britain and France, it was a risky venture and it ended in failure. According to Obadiah's insurance book, the ship was "taken" a French privateer. [2]

In 1763, the Brown brothers, now trading jointly under the name Nicholas Brown and Company, began planning another voyage. The initial impetus for the venture seems to have come from Carter Braxton, a Virginia merchant with whom the Browns had recently done business. "I am told there is a great Traid carried on from Rhode Island to Guinea for Negroes," Braxton wrote in February, 1763, "and I should be glad to enter into Partnership with some Gentlemen for a Voyage or two and have [the Negroes] sent here where I believe they shall sell as well as any where." [3]

While nothing ultimately came of Braxton's offer of a partnership [4], the Browns were clearly receptive to the idea of a slaving voyage. [5] With the colonial economy mired in recession – "the Prospect of all Business Seems to weare a Gloom not before seen in America," Nicholas Brown complained – an African voyage offered the promise of a substantial profit. [6] All of the brothers consented to the venture, though Moses, who would later become a leader of the movement to abolish the transatlantic trade, placed the onus chiefly on his brother John. John's "Love of Money and Anxiety to Acquire it, Drew his Brothers with him into a Voyage in that Unrighteous Traffic," he explained. [7] The result was the voyage of the Sally.