The Troubled Voyage of the Rainbow
A tale of kidnapped Africans and an abortive trading voyage casts light on the uneasy relationship between conscience and commerce in New England argues Larry Gragg.
In February 1645, three ships’ captains, Robert Shopton, Miles Causon, and James Smith came to terms on a shipping agreement in Boston, Massachusetts. They would sail to the Cape Verde Islands in the eastern Atlantic, to Guinea in West Africa, to Barbados in the West Indies, and then back to Boston. Incidents during the voyage aboard Smith's ship, the Rainbow, resulted in a series of court actions in Massachusetts. The documents generated by the affair offer a rare glimpse into the early efforts of New Englanders to profit from transatlantic commerce, specifically the slave trade. The episode also reveals the ambiguous view Puritans had of the morality of the slave trade.
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