Editing Bermuda sloop (section)

==Slavery and the Bermuda sloop==
The commercial success of the Bermuda sloop must be credited to the contribution of Bermuda's free and [[slavery|enslaved]] Blacks. For most of the 17th century, Bermuda's agricultural economy was reliant on indentured servants. This meant that slavery did not play the same role as in many other colonies, though privateers based in Bermuda often brought enslaved blacks and Native Americans who had been captured along with ships of enemy nations. The first large influx of blacks was of free men who came as indentured servants in the middle of the century from former Spanish colonies in the West Indies (the increasing numbers of black, Spanish-speaking probable-Catholics alarmed the white Protestant majority, who were also alarmed by native Irish sent to Bermuda to be sold into servitude after the [[Cromwellian conquest of Ireland]], and measures were taken to discourage black immigration and to ban the importation of Irish). After 1684, Bermuda turned wholesale to a maritime economy, and slaves, black, Amerindian, and Irish (the various minorities merged into a single demographic group, known as ''coloured'', which included anyone who was not defined as entirely of European extraction), played an increasing role in this. [[Black Bermudian]]s became highly skilled shipwrights, blacksmiths and joiners. Many of the shipwrights who helped to develop shipbuilding in the American South, especially on the [[Virginia]] shore of the [[Chesapeake Bay|Chesapeake]] (Bermuda, also known as ''Virgineola'', had once been part of Virginia, and had maintained close connections ever since), were black Bermudian slaves, and the design and success of the area's schooners owes something to them, also.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TIjfAAAAMAAJ|title=Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner|last=Footner|first=Geoffrey M.|date=1998|publisher=Tidewater Publishers|isbn=9780870335112|language=en}}</ref>

Due to the large number of white Bermudian men who were away at sea at any one time (and possibly due as much to fear of the larger number of enslaved black Bermudian men left behind) it was mandated that blacks must make up a percentage of the crew of every Bermudian vessel.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sLrqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA526|title=In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783|last=Jarvis|first=Michael J.|date=2012|publisher=UNC Press Books|isbn=9780807895887|language=en}}</ref> By the American War of Independence, the use of many able black slaves as sailors added considerably to the power of the Bermudian merchant fleet due to their highly needed skill set, and these included the crews of Bermudian privateers. When the Americans captured the Bermudian privateer ''Regulator'', they discovered that virtually all of her crew were black slaves. Authorities in Boston offered these men their freedom, but nearly all of the 70 captives elected to be treated as [[Prisoner of War|prisoners of war]], claiming slavery was all they knew and out of fear for their families who were still in Bermuda. Sent to New York on the sloop ''Duxbury'', those who were left seized the vessel and sailed it back to Bermuda.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |url=http://jefferson.library.millersville.edu/reserve/ANTH458_Trussel_MaritimeMasters.pdf |title=''Maritime Masters and Seafaring Slaves in Bermuda, 1680–1783'', by Michael J. Jarvis. The Jefferson Library. |access-date=15 September 2012 |archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20120130185639/http://jefferson.library.millersville.edu/reserve/ANTH458_Trussel_MaritimeMasters.pdf |archive-date=30 January 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=":1" />

Slavery was not abolished in Bermuda until ordered by the British Government in 1834, though the Royal Navy had already made frequent use of Bermuda sloops in suppressing the trans-Atlantic slave trade (having formed the [[West Africa Squadron]] to this end in 1808, following passage of the [[Slave Trade Act 1807]]).<ref name=":1" />