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In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /351334t 1 A KEY PORT • The sloop Warwick was an insignificant vessel even by eighteenth century maritime standards. And her commander was hardly a man who in that day would have attracted much attention. But when the Warwick sailed into the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, on a mid-summer day in 1770, the little ship was helping to link that city to a fortuitous destiny. She was taking her master, Captain Joseph Vesey, on the first leg of a trading route which, through his instrumentality , would have a portentous bearing on the history of the South Carolina port and indirectly on the history of the nation. In the early days of the American nation port cities located at points where rivers met the sea were naturally key centers of cultural and mercantile commerce. Linked to the interior by the most convenient mode of transportation and to the transoceanic world by the only means of contact, ports were much more vital conduits in the exchange of commodities and ideas than are trading centers in an age of multiple methods of movement and communication. There were only a few such cities in eighteenth century America. Charleston was one of them. As late as 1774 an English visitor said, after a tour of the United States, that in all the southern states Charleston was the only town worthy of notice.! Captain Vesey was not then a Carolinian. He was a Bermuda islander. But in the period 1770-1775 his real home was the sea, as he commanded a series of no less than five vessels and conducted a lively shipping business between trading points ranging from Carolina to Barbados, a distance of some 1,900 miles. Charleston during these years was one of his regular ports of call.2 As a Bermuda islander, Captain Vesey had chosen the In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /351334t 6 DENMARK VESEY'S REVOLT calling which attracted most of the inhabitants of that British colony during his day. The Bermudians in this period built sloops and brigs-as many as sixty in one year-and sold them in the West Indies or North America. Along with the occupation of ship-building went that of navigation. From eighty to a hundred Bermuda vessels were constantly at sea, each manned by a skeleton crew of two whites and four Negroes. In this way fully half of the able-bodied men of the islands became expert mariners. Though some of the ships were owned by their captains, a good many were the property of the better-off Bermudians, who employed the crews. In the case of the Vesey family, several members were masters of vessels which had been acquired as prizes.3 During the early months of the year Bermuda's maritime traders often repaired to the Tortugas and to Turks Island. (The latter especially was one of Joseph Vesey's rendezvous.) Here the Bermudians raked salt for sale to passing American vessels or for use as cargo. And from these points they would proceed to South Carolina or Virginia in search of com, or to Philadelphia or New York in order to exchange their salt or money for such necessities as salt pork, beef, flour, peas, lumber, and candles. Some of the islanders sailed directly home from the continent, while others proceeded to the sugar islands and disposed of their American merchandise there for cash. They reserved part of their receipts for new cargoes to the mainland and put the rest into bills of exchange to be used for purchases in England. By these means Bermudian mariners made a living, and some of them became wealthy. It may have been on one of his early visits to Charleston that Captain Vesey first considered how he would settle down from the rigorous life of a mariner. A month's visit in port in 1770 gave him ample time in which to view the town as a place to secure permanent moorings.4 Charleston in 1770 was the fourth largest city of British America, being exceeded in size only by New York, Boston, and...

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