In 1765, enslaved Africans aboard a slave ship called the Sally revolted against their captors while being transported from West Africa to the Caribbean to be sold into slavery. Their attempt to resist captivity was met with deadly force from the ship’s crew.
The Sally had left Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764. It was owned by Nicholas Brown and Company, a business run by four brothers: Nicholas, John, Joseph and Moses Brown. The ship’s captain was Esek Hopkins. The owners sent him to West Africa with trade goods, which he was to exchange for captured Africans and then sell in the Caribbean.
Along the African coast, the arrival of European ships created a cruel trap. Local kingdoms faced a terrible choice: take part in the slave trade to buy European guns, or refuse and risk being attacked and destroyed by rivals who were already armed. European demand fueled this cycle, dragging communities into a trade that devastated lives across the continent.
The ship reached the West African coast in November 1764. Hopkins spent more than nine months there, buying people and trading with local merchants and intermediaries. By the time the Sally prepared to leave in August 1765, he had acquired 196 Africans. At least 21 had been sold to other traders before the ship departed. Nineteen had already died, and another woman was left behind because she was close to death. These losses happened before the Atlantic crossing had properly begun.
The Sally left Africa on 21 August 1765, bound for the West Indies. Conditions aboard were harsh, and deaths continued during the voyage. Four more captives died in the first week at sea. On the seventh day, the enslaved Africans rose against the crew.
Hopkins recorded the revolt in his account book, writing that the crew had been forced to fire on them and had “destroyed 8,” while several others were badly injured. His brief entry offers little detail about how the revolt began or who took part, so many of the captives’ own experiences remain unknown.
The crew’s violence did not end the suffering. Hopkins later reported that some captives drowned themselves, some refused food, and others became ill and died.
By the time the Sally reached Antigua in the Caribbean in early October, 68 Africans had died during the crossing. Another 20 died in the days after arrival. A further captive later died while being taken back to Rhode Island. In total, at least 109 of the 196 Africans acquired by Hopkins perished during the voyage and its aftermath.
The survivors were sold in Antigua. Many were sick and severely weakened, and they fetched low prices at auction. The Brown brothers had expected to make money from the voyage, but the Sally became a financial disaster as well as a human tragedy.
Today, the Sally’s voyage is unusually well documented. Brown University preserves the captain’s account book, letters, invoices and other papers that help historians reconstruct what happened. These records are valuable, but they were created by slave traders, not by the Africans who endured the voyage. The names and personal stories of most captives remain unknown.
Sources:
https://cds.library.brown.edu/projects/sally/
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:303409/
