Respectable Trade Read online

  “I don’t know,” Frances said unwillingly. “I have never learned about money before.”

  Sarah smiled in triumph. “Well, you are a merchant’s wife now,” she said. “It is right that you should know where the money comes from. When you hire the carriage or want a new silk dress, it all has to be paid for.” She smoothed the pages lovingly with the flat of her hand. “It all comes from here.”

  She turned the page. “Now, this is the record for the transactions in Africa,” she went on. “I compose the books when the captain shows me his log on his return. See here: purchased over six months on the Africa coast—three hundred and twelve—at an average of fourteen pounds each. Wastage on voyage—sixty-two. Price in Jamaica, average fifty pounds each. First profit—£12,500, minus the cost of buying—£8,132.” She waited for Frances to speak.

  “Very profitable,” Frances said.

  “Apparently so,” Sarah said sourly. “From this profit we buy sugar, tobacco, and rum to the cost of £4,830. We extend credit to the planters to the cost of £1,750, and we pay off half of the crew at a cost of £130.” She ran her finger down the columns, Frances followed it with her eyes. All she could see was the neat fingernail and the black-ink numbers spooling away.

  “Now you see,” Sarah Cole went on. “When the ship comes into port, she has to pay for a pilot up the Bristol Channel and then another pilot up the Avon. She has to pay a fee to every lighthouse, she has to pay a fee for the new bridge, she has to pay the rowing boats to tow her up the gorge, she has to pay a fee to the mayor and to the quay warden, and a docking fee.”

  “Gracious,” Frances said weakly.

  “No wonder the Liverpool merchants steal our trade,” Sarah Cole muttered to herself. “They sail straight into a deep-water dock with cheap quay rates. No wonder they build bigger and bigger ships.” She turned her attention back to Frances. “So can you see the profit which is made at the end of the voyage?”

  Frances looked wearily at the final page. “Here, £2,513.”

  “Divided among the partners—five partners including ourselves,” Sarah prompted.

  Frances looked at the final figure. “That’s £502 each.”

  Sarah Cole nodded at her, waiting for some response.

  “After all that work and worry?”

  “And we own the ship and keep the warehouse and allow credit to the planters in Jamaica and all the other costs that the partners do not see,” Sarah added.

  “It does not seem very much for us when you put it like that,” Frances said.

  Sarah got up from the table and went over to the window. “It’s a good profit on a two-year investment for the partners,” she said. “For a little man with little savings, it is good business. But the scale of it is not big enough for my brother now. He can double his money every five years on these figures, but he wants to advance in six months, by tomorrow. I do not see how we are to do it. I show you these figures because you should know our business, but you can see for yourself that we are not making the profits we need.”

  “Why not?”

  The woman shrugged. “Rising prices all around us. It costs more and more to repair and equip a ship. The price of sugar is falling as more and more planters increase their land and grow a bigger crop each season. The American war made it dangerous even for civilian shipping and increased the cost of insurance. The French can import their own sugar from their own colonies, and now they are selling in England. I heard that a man is finding a way to make sugar from vegetables called beets. When they make sugar from carrots, we are ruined indeed.”

  She stepped toward the table and shut the ledger gently, passing her hand over the ship’s name, Daisy, engraved on the front of the leather-bound book. “The Liverpool merchants have ships twice the size of the Daisy,” she said. “And they do the trip in half the time. That means they can make four times our profits. Just think of it! Twice the amount of trade in half the time!

  “The big Bristol merchants are members of the Royal Africa Company, and they do not have to wait off the coast, trading up and down at all the little stations, buying here and selling there. They anchor at a Royal Africa Company fort, and they load food and water that is waiting for them, and the trade that is ready and waiting for them. They halve the loss of life for the crew because they are away from West Africa within a month, while we delay for six months gathering cargo.

  “When they arrive in the West Indies, they have an agent waiting on the quayside to greet them. He has already bought the cargo for loading, he has already arranged the sales. He has agreed prices while they were still at sea. They deal with the best planters, and they have contracts arranged. When they give credit to the planters, they bring home bills which are honored in London at once, by the planters’ agents, as soon as they are presented. So they get their money within the quarter. But we have to give credit and then wait until our ship is in the West Indies again, sometimes as long as two years before we are paid! The people we trade with do not have a London agent. They are the smaller planters, and they demand credit from us. It is no business for the little men anymore.”

  “Yet Josiah seems so confident,” Frances demurred.

  Sarah’s face was grim. “Yes,” she agreed. “He is very confident. He sees sugar in the storerooms of the Redclift; his bond is filled with tobacco and rum. He can see the gold coming in from one little sale after another, and he is down on the quayside doing as well as other small traders. But I spend my day with the books, and I can see that the profits are slowly falling as the costs rise. The world is changing, and we will have to change, too.”

  “My uncle thought that Josiah was a prosperous man,” Frances protested, clinging to hope.

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “What would he know?” she said disrespectfully. “I imagine he has never seen a set of accounts in his life. He would see his rent rolls and nothing more. But I have spent my life with these books, and I can read them as you would read a novel. And I can see that each voyage out, and each voyage back, is less and less successful. It costs more every day; the risks are greater all the time.”

  “What can we do?” Frances asked. “Can’t we build a bigger ship? Or take up a different trade?”

  Sarah Cole measured Frances. “No,” she said with a little smile. “We can never leave the trade. It is the only thing we know. It is the foundation of our fortunes, and it is our inheritance. Whatever anyone says, I will never countenance that we leave the trade. We must stay with it—but do it in a new way.”

  “What way?”

  “We import slaves direct,” Sarah said very softly. “We bring black slaves into England. We put a black slave in every household in England. We call them Scott slaves—named in honor of you—and we make our fortune.”

  There was a loud crash from the quayside as something was dropped, followed by half a dozen shouts. Neither woman heard them.

  “What?”

  “We ship slaves already,” Sarah said sharply. “You saw the accounts with me. You saw the figures. You saw that we bought three hundred and twelve on Daisy’s last voyage; you read it yourself. You saw wastage on voyage—sixty-two; you knew that meant that sixty-two of them had died during the passage. You saw how they sold in Jamaica—they went for fifty pounds each. My idea is to bring a sample of them on to England. To train them here to be house servants, to sell them for households in England. Isn’t it the fashion?”

  “Yes,” Frances said slowly. Lady Scott had a little black boy to carry her fan and run her messages, and every lady in London had a black maid or a handsome black footman to ride behind the carriage and a little black girl to play with the children. But all the slaves that Frances knew had been imported singly from the West Indies, brought over by returning planters, sold by slaving captains. “Can you train them in large numbers and sell them in large numbers?”

  “Why not?” Sarah demanded. “It was done in the past. In the last century, people imported slaves direct from Africa. I have heard of a