Ninfa do Mar (1822)

Voyage Overview

The Portuguese Schooner, Nymfa do Mar, left Bahia on 14 August 1821 and purchased 3 enslaved people at Ouidah by 13 June 1822. The captain, Francisco Veloso, sailed the vessel back toward Brazil when Captain Robert Mends of HMS Iphigenia captured the vessel at an unspecified location off the coast of Africa. Although the ship’s owner, Antônio de Paula Barbosa, was never formerly charged, the British and Portuguese Court of Mixed Commission, Sierra Leone condemned this vessel and registered 2 Liberated Africans by 22 August 1822. For more information, see Map of 1822.

Archival Resources

1822-08-28 Nymfa do Mar V2916 Register1 SLR15767-15768

1822 Extracts from the Sierra Leone Gazettes FO-84-26 f20-21v

Creator

Verger, Pierre, Trade Relations Between the Bight of Benin and Bahia, 17th to 19th Century (Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press, 1976), 421-423, 568-575.

Description

This ship list derives from Pierre Fatumbi Verger's footnotes on slave voyages leaving the Bight of Benin for Bahia. Verger (4 November 1902, in Paris – 11 February 1996, in Salvador, Brazil) was a photographer, self-taught ethnographer, and babalawo (Yoruba priest of Ifà) who devoted most of his life to the study of the African diaspora — the slave trade, the African-based religions of the new world, and the resulting cultural and economical flows from and to Africa. Verger continued to study and document his chosen subject right until his death in Salvador, at the age of 93. He was a professor at the Federal University of Bahia since 1973. He was responsible for the establishment of the African-Brazilian Museum in Salvador; and served as visiting professor at the University of Ifé in Nigeria, too. The non-profit Pierre Verger Foundation in Salvador, which he established to continue his work, holds more than 63,000 photos and negatives, as well as his papers and correspondence. For more information see Fundação Pierre Verger http://www.pierreverger.org/en/homepageen-2.html.

Creator

Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia (APEB), Maço 456, “Alvarás de navegação (registros),” 1789-1822, f. 288-308v.

Description

The available metadata on this archival resource includes: type of vessel, date and place of departure from Bahia, and names of the captain and owner (if known). However, there is much missing data since the record refers to outbound vessels and not inbound arrivals; hence, totals for number of enslaved people on board is absent. The Voyages database provides estimates for these ship totals based on the type of vessel, which denotes tonnage and ship capacity. This record contains sparse details about Yoruba speakers beyond usages of "Costa da Mina," which is an ambiguous geographic slave trading term for the Gold Coast and Bight of Benin.

As Referenced in Voyages

Parliamentary Papers, PP, vol. 10 (1830), 124.

Verger, Pierre, Trade Relations Between the Bight of Benin and Bahia, 17th to 19th Century, (Ibadan, 1976), 568.

Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers: Slave Trade, IUPST, 9/B1 (Shannon, 1969-74), 66-77.

Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers: Slave Trade, IUPST, 10/B2 (Shannon, 1969-74), 64-65.

Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers: Slave Trade, IUPST, 11/A (Shannon, 1969-74), 8.

Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers: Slave Trade, IUPST, 11/B1 (Shannon, 1969-74), 66-77.

NA, FO84/26, Sierra Leone Gazette, 22.08.31.

Meyer-Heiselberg, R., Notes from the Liberated African Department in the Archives at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone (Uppsala, 1967), 16.

Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia (Salvador da Bahia, Brazil), APEB, cod 456, p. 302v.