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Pewter Discovered on Shipwrecks of Early Eighteenth Century Slave-Trade and Pirate Vessels

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Excavating the Histories of Slave-Trade and Pirate Ships

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Abstract

Things made of pewter, an alloy of tin with other metals, were widely used by all social classes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In the historic record there is much evidence and information for pewter manufacture, makers, trade, value, and widespread domestic use. Pewter is rarely found, however, in the archaeological record, at least from land sites. By contrast relatively large quantities of pewter have been found at historic shipwreck sites, including those identified as slave-trade and/or pirate vessels. Objects made of pewter recovered from such shipwrecks include flatware (plates, dishes), hollowware (basins, tankards, porringers), and medical instruments (such as urethral and clyster syringes). In this chapter the author follows clues from both the archaeological and historical record for an understanding of how pewter made by identified English makers might have come to be aboard three vessels wrecked off the Atlantic coast of America in the first quarter of the eighteenth century: Henrietta Marie (1700); Whydah (1717); and La Concorde/Queen Anne’s Revenge (1718).

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  1. East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

    Sarah C. Watkins-Kenney

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  1. Prog Maritime Studies, History Dept, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

    Lynn Brenda Harris

  2. School of Arts, Sciences, Humanities, Shaw University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Valerie Ann Johnson

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Watkins-Kenney, S.C. (2022). Pewter Discovered on Shipwrecks of Early Eighteenth Century Slave-Trade and Pirate Vessels. In: Harris, L.B., Johnson, V.A. (eds) Excavating the Histories of Slave-Trade and Pirate Ships. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96233-3_7

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