Communicating with the Sally

Communicating with a ship at sea was an uncertain business in the eighteenth century. Owners and captains committed letters to other ships traveling back and forth across the Atlantic, hoping that they would eventually find their destination. The Brown brothers dispatched at least a dozen letters to Esek Hopkins during the fifteen months that the Sally was away, though it appears that few if any ever reached him. Some were sent to Africa on outbound slave ships. Others were sent to the West Indian island of Barbados, where the Browns expected the Sally would first make landfall after its return. Most offered information, often little more than vague rumors, about the fluctuating state of slave markets in the Caribbean, the Carolinas, and Virginia, all with an eye to ensuring that the Sally's cargo was sold to "best advantage." [1] In a letter of December 30, 1764, [2] the Browns enclosed a copy of a treatise, The Rights of Colonies Examined, published by Hopkins's brother, Stephen, to protest against the recent attempt by the British Parliament to impose new taxes and duties on American colonists. Writing with no deliberate irony, Stephen Hopkins denounced the proposed taxes as an attempt to reduce the colonists to "the miserable condition of slaves." [3]

Eight months passed with no word from Hopkins. In May, 1765, a returning slave ship reported having seen the Sally on the Gambia River in December, with "all well on board." A month later, however, another returning ship reported, erroneously, that the ship had been lost with all its hands. [4] As the Browns tried to confirm the rumor, a letter belatedly arrived from Hopkins, safe on the River Grande. [5] The letter reported the death of one crewman and severe losses of the rum cargo due to leakage, but it still provoked "Transports of Joy" in Moses Brown, who was in Newport when the letter arrived. He immediately wrote to Hopkins in reply. [6] [7] He also shared the news with other captains in the Browns' employ, as well as with his brothers. [8] The financial prospects of the voyage were "Doubtless Spoil'd by the Leakage," he told his brothers, "however If Capt. Hopkins & people Return Safe with the Brigt. I shan't be any great Disapointed what Else he Brings, after Ingaging in So Disagreeable a Trade." [9] This remark offers the only contemporary evidence of Moses's ambivalence about the venture.