Category:Camden, Calvert & King

The London partnership of Camden, Calvert & King won the contracts for the Second and Third Fleets and the Surprize (1794). They are usually described as slave traders, but they were a large firm involved in a wide range of markets - the West and East India trades, south-sea whaling, naval contracting, privateering.

- Gary L. Sturgess, 24 February 2016

Basic Profile

Anthony Calvert had been raised at Wapping, a maritime community at the east end of London. He would have gone to sea as a young man, but the earliest date on which we can confidently identify him is December 1758, when he had command of the Susannah, a 100 ton brig that was about to sail from London to Jamaica with a crew of eight. He was then 25 years old. The next eight years were spent sailing to and from Jamaica, carrying out plantation stores and returning home with sugar and rum, mahogany and pimento. It was far from routine – two of these vessels, part-owned by him, were wrecked on their way home. He took his first voyage to Africa in 1766, serving the next decade as the master of slave ships and retiring from the sea around the outbreak of war in 1775. In that time, he commanded at least four slaving voyages, possibly as many as six; Thomas King, his later business partner, undertook 10, eight of them as captain. Death and disease, disgust and discomfort caused most men to walk away from the Africa trade long before this – the average number of voyages for the master of a slave ship was a little more than two.

It is not known when Calvert was recruited by the Camden brothers, but he was certainly involved with them by 1760, as master and joint-owner of the Marquis of Granby. William and John Camden had taken over their father’s sugar refinery at Wapping ten years earlier and it was not long before they were sending their own ships to Jamaica, importing the raw material on their own account. Having discovered in Calvert a gifted manager, they brought him into their shipping concern and by 1777 at the latest, he was their managing partner. John Camden passed away three years later, and when William withdrew from active involvement in 1783, Calvert offered a partnership to Thomas King, who had sailed on the Camdens’ ships for almost twenty years.

These three men worked together in one way or another for 40 years, but the house of Camden, Calvert & King operated for only 17 years, from 1783 to 1800, and it was actively managed by Calvert and King, with William Camden a silent partner. In 1783, a counting house and a small warehouse were established at 11 The Crescent, a fashionable address on Tower Hill, close to Trinity House, the Navy Office and the Victualling Board. They also leased a wharf and yard at Limehouse, where their ships were moored when they were in port and their stores were warehoused.

Calvert lived in a six-bedroom home in front of the counting house, and while he never had a family of his own, there is nothing to suggest he lived a Scrooge-like existence. At his death, his wine cellar included 120 dozen bottles of ‘fine old port’ and a pipe (475 litres) and 50 dozen bottles of Madeira, as well as unspecified quantities of sherry, burgundy and spirits. His sisters’ children were an integral part of life at the Crescent: he referred to his nieces as ‘our girls’ and business associates sent their greetings to ‘the Crescent family’ and ‘Mr Calvert and all his family’. Indeed, Camden, Calvert & King was to a large extent, a family concern. Thomas King married one of Calvert’s nieces in 1776 (although she died the following year of consumption). One of Calvert’s brothers-in-law had shares in the Marquis of Granby, and at various times, three of his nephews had command of their ships. One of these three – Thomas Morton, who was also King’s brother-in-law – remained with the firm for many years, initially as a mariner, then as a senior clerk in the counting house, and finally, after the dissolution of Camden, Calvert & King in 1800, as his uncle’s partner.