Betsey (1791 ship)

For other ships with the same name, see Betsey (ship).

History
Great Britain
Name	Betsey
Owner	R.Leigh & Co. (1798) [1]
Launched	1791, Bermuda [2]
Captured	3 June 1798
General characteristics
Tons burthen	142 [3] [2] (bm)
Complement	1793: 100 [3] 1798: 25 [3] 1798: 25 [3]
Armament	1793: 16 × 6-pounder guns [3] 1798: 12 × 6-pounder guns [3] 1798: 12 × 6-pounder guns [3]

Betsey was launched in Bermuda in 1791. She never appeared in Lloyd's Register . On 11 April 1793 Captain William Doyle acquired a letter of marque. ^[3] The size of her crew indicates that the intent was to sail her as a privateer. Lloyd's List for 1793 and 1794 makes no mention of a privateer Betsey.

Because Betsey is a common name and she did not appear in Lloyd's Register it had not yet been possible to discover what she did between 1793 and 1798.

Captain Daniel Hayward acquired a letter of marque on 13 March 1798. Two weeks later, on 27 March 1798, Captain James Barrow acquired a letter of marque. ^[3] Barrow, ^[2] or Hayward, ^[1] sailed from Liverpool on 22 April 1798, bound for the Windward Coast. Betsey was a slave ship, engaged in the triangular trade in enslaved people. However, the French captured Betsey before she had embarked any slaves. ^[2]

Lloyd's List reported that on 3 June, the French frigate Convention had captured Betsey, Hayward, master, off the coast of Africa. Betsey had been on her way from Liverpool to Africa. ^{[4] [a] [b]}

Notes

1. There is no record of a French frigate with the name Convention. The 74-gun Sceptre bore the name Convention between 1792 and 1800. ^[5]
2. Hayward died on 6 March 1800 while on his second voyage on the slave ship Active. ^[6]

Citations

1. Williams (1897), p. 682.
2. Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database – Betsey voyage #80352.
3. "Letter of Marque, p.52 – Retrieved 25 July 2017" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 October 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2018.
4. "The Marine List". Lloyd's List. No. 3032. 18 September 1798.
5. Winfield & Roberts (2015), p. 86.
6. Behrendt (1990), p. 157.

References

• Behrendt, Stephen D. (1990). "The Captains in the British slave trade from 1785 to 1807" (PDF). Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. 140.
• Williams, Gomer (1897). History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque: With an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade. W. Heinemann.
• Winfield, Rif; Roberts, Stephen S. (2015). French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786–1861: Design Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN   978-1-84832-204-2.