Parr (1797 ship)

Lloyd's Register for 1797 had a Parr, 450 tons (bm), of Liverpool, Christian, master.^[4]

Captain David Christian acquired a letter of marque on 5 December 1797,^[5] and sailed for the Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea Islands on 5 February 1798; he acquired captives at Bonny Island.^[1]

Lloyd's List reported that Parr, Christian, master, caught fire and blew up in 1798, off the coast of Africa as she was sailing from there for the West Indies. At the time she had the full complement of captives aboard.^[7] Twenty-nine of her crew and some 200–300 captives were saved.^[8][9] Christian died in the explosion.^[10] (Two or three years earlier he had been master of Othello when she too had caught fire while gathering captives.^[7]) Other records indicate that Parr had a crew of 97 men and had embarked some 200 captives.^[1] The surviving captives were shipped on other vessels.^[1]

In 1798, 25 British slave ships were lost. Twelve of the losses occurred on the coast of Africa.^[11]

• 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.
• Craig, Robert; Jarvis, Rupert (1967). Liverpool Registry of Merchant Ships. Series 3. Vol. 15. Manchester University Press for the Chetham Society.
• Crow, Hugh (1830). Memoirs of the late Captain Hugh Crow, of Liverpool; comprising a narrative of his life, together with descriptive sketches of the western coast of Africa; particularly of Bonny ... To which are added, anecdotes and observations illustrative of the Negro character. Compiled chiefly from his own manuscripts, etc. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green.
• Inikori, Joseph E. (1996). "Measuring the unmeasured hazards of the Atlantic slave trade: documents relating to the British trade". Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer. 83 (312): 53–92. doi:10.3406/outre.1996.3457.
• Rediker, Marcus (2007). The Slave Ship: A Human History. U.K.: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-01823-9.