The annual diminution of British seamen by all the foregoing causes, is what next claims attention, and upon due investigation will be found, I fear, to be much more considerable than it is generally supposed to be. As this is a question of great national importance, and cannot fail to evince the necessity of an abolition of the slave trade; in order to convey to the public some idea of the destructive tendency of it, I will give an account of the statement of the loss of a ship, to which I belonged, during one of her voyages. And though this statement may not be considered as an average of the loss upon each voyage, which I have before estimated, as I would not wish to exceed the mark, at one fourth, and oftentimes one third. I have known instances where it has been greatly exceeded, as I shall presently shew. The crew of the ship I speak of, upon its departure from England, consisted of forty-six persons, exclusive of the captain, chief mate, and myself. Out of this number, we lost on the coast eleven by desertion (of whom only two, and those in a very infirm state, ever arrived in England) and five by death. Three perished in the middle passage, of whom one was a passenger. In the West-Indies, two died, one of which was a passenger from Bonny. Five were discharged at their own request, having been cruelly treated, and five deserted, exclusive of two who shipped themselves at Bonny; of these ten, several were in a diseased state; and probably, like most of the seamen who are discharged or desert from the Guinea ships in the islands, never returned to their native country. One died in our passage from the West-Indies to England; and one, having been rendered incapable of duty, was sent on board another ship while we lay at Bonny. Thus, out of the forty-six persons before-mentioned, only fifteen returned home in the ship. And several, out of this small number, so enervated in their constitution, as to be of little service in future; they were, on the contrary, reduced to the mournful necessity of becoming burthensome to themselves and to others. Of the ten that deserted, or were discharged in the West-Indies, little account can be taken; it being extremely improbable that one half, perhaps not a third, ever returned to this country. From hence it appears, that there was a loss in this voyage of thirty-one sailors and upwards, exclusive of the two sailors who were passengers, and not included in the ship’s crew. I say _a loss of thirty-one_, for though the whole of this number did not die, yet if it be considered, that several of those who returned to England in the ship, or who might have returned by other ships, are likely to become a burthen, instead of being useful to the community, it will be readily acknowledged, I doubt not, that the foregoing statement does not exceed reality.