The register, every person
Three thousand
Between April 23 and November 30, 1783, British clerks at New York wrote down 3,009 Black people as they boarded ships for Nova Scotia, Quebec, the Bahamas and Europe. Each dot below is one of them. Scroll to sort them.
One dot, one person
In the order the clerks wrote them: the first ships on April 23, the last, L’Abondance for Port Mouton, on November 30. Colour marks what the register marks: men in red, women in gold, children in blue. Hover or tap any dot to see the name.
1,340 men, 919 women, 750 children
The register’s own count, and the breakdown Board 1 uses. More than a third of the people who sailed were women; a quarter were children. Families left together, not only soldiers.
Ages, as recorded
Each column is one year of age. The spikes at 20, 25, 30 and 40 are a sign of guessing: many people did not know the year they were born, and the clerks wrote round numbers. The youngest were a few weeks old; the oldest, Peter French, was written down as 93.
Where the ships were bound
More than a third went to Port Roseway, where Birchtown became the largest free Black town in British North America. Port Mouton took 559; the Saint John River, in what became New Brunswick, 481; Annapolis Royal 309. A hundred and twenty-three went to the Bahamas, 88 to England and Germany with the departing troops, 32 to Quebec.
About a hundred vessels
188 sailings. The naval transport L’Abondance, under Lieutenant Phillips, carried 507 people on at least two voyages, including Boston King in July. The Clinton carried 268; the Nesbitt, with the Field family of Piscataway and John Longstreet of Princeton aboard, 163.
The twenty-nine from around Franklin Township
Scattered through the year on fourteen ships: the Sparrows on the London in the spring, the McIntires on The Brothers, Peter Pharo on L’Abondance, the Fields on the Nesbitt in November. Tap a large dot for the name; each links to a page about that person. Read their stories.
What the dots cannot show
The register counts the people who got aboard. It does not count those seized at the wharf under Article VII, like Judith Jackson’s child, or those who left without being written down, or who died in the crossing. It records a name, an age, a ship, and sometimes a line about who had claimed them. Search the 3,009 names, or watch the sailings.