Accession Number

1986.008.1388

Creation Date

circa 1700

Description

Twenty-eight iron bars have been recovered from the site, ranging between 26.5 - 58.0cm long; their average weight is 1.58 kg. Iron bars, called “voyage iron,” were shipped in large volume in the African trade and often served as the currency standard around which trade negotiations with West Africans were based. The Henrietta Marie carried a cargo of 33 tons of iron, and, assuming that the load was composed of this type of bar, the ship would have carried more than 18,000 of them. Iron bars were traded for people, and in June of 1699, an English trader noted that iron traded at a rate of “thirteen bars for men and nine for women, and proportionally for boys and girls, according to their ages” in the Calabar region of Nigeria.