New England, Rum, and the Slave Trade
In the correspondence regarding these cargoes, the owner literally measures a human’s worth in gallons of rum: “toutching first upon the Windward Coast, where I would have you dispose of your Cargo if PoSsible. & purchase your Slaves, even sopose you give One Hundred + fifty Gallons Per head [sic]” The letters even use the word “to slave” meaning to fill the ship’s hold with a cargo of humans.