secretary, had been the second.

As Poole was a great place for carrying on the trade to Newfoundland, I
determined to examine the assertion of the Earl of Sandwich in the House of
Lords, when he said, in the debate on Sir William Dolben's bill, that the
Slave-trade was not more fatal to seamen than the Newfoundland and some
others. This assertion I knew at the time to be erroneous, as far as my own
researches had been concerned: for out of twenty-four vessels, which had
sailed out of the port of Bristol in that employ, only two sailors were
upon the dead list. In sixty vessels from Poole, I found but four lost. At
Dartmouth, where I went afterwards on purpose, I found almost a similar
result. On conversing however with Governor Holdsworth, I learnt that the
year 1786 had been more fatal than any other in this trade. I learnt that
in consequent of extraordinary storms and hurricanes, no less than five
sailors had died and twenty-one had been drowned in eighty-three vessels
from that port. Upon this statement I determined to look into the
muster-rolls of the trade there for two or three years together. I began by
accident with the year 1769, and I went on to the end of 1772. About eighty
vessels on an average had sailed thence in each of these years. Taking the
loss in these years, and compounding it with that in the fatal year, three
sailors had been lost, but taking it in these four years by themselves,
only two had been lost, in twenty-four vessels so employed. On a comparison
with the Slave-trade, the result would be, that two vessels to Africa would
destroy more seamen than eighty-three sailing to Newfoundland. There was
this difference also to be noted, that the loss in the one trade was
generally by the weather or by accident, but in the other by cruel
treatment or disease; and that they, who went out in a declining state of
health in the one, came home generally recovered, whereas they, who went
out robust in the other, came home in a shattered condition.