# Africans on Portuguese merchant ships  
According to Table 1, which presents a sample of about 1,000 men born in Africa and engaged as sailors on Lusitanian merchant ships in the second half of the eighteenth century, the distribution among the different regions of the continent is uneven.  
The data in Table 1 show unequal proportions of individuals from three major African regions. The data do not reflect the chronological age of the contacts between Portuguese and Africans; nor do they serve as reliable indicators of the commercial relevance of the West Atlantic, Central Atlantic and East India regions during that period. The sampling clearly indicates the persistence of the tradition of hiring West African men as sailors on Portuguese vessels. The small number of men from the Indian coast certainly does not demonstrate the increased commercial importance of the region in the colonial context, at the beginning of the nineteenth century in particular. Nor does it indicate how long the people born in this region had been involved in trade in the Indian Ocean or the length of their stopovers in East Africa, where crew from Portugal or Goa inevitably replaced them, as the long journey left the men burdened by death, illness and a wide range of adversities faced during the crossing of the Cape of Good Hope. The stories contained in the História Trágico-Marítima, meaning 'tragic maritime history' and covering the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are convincing in this context (Peres, 1942-1943, vol. 1, p. 20, p.146, vol. 2, p. 69, vol. 3, pp. 48-49, p. 89, vol. 4, p. 38, vol. 5, pp. 34-48, pp. 133-134).  
Although the majority of the sample were sailors or enslaved young men, this was not the case of all of the African crew members. Dozens of those in the sample were free or freed and worked as barbers, caulkers, chaplains, ${ }^{2}$ carpenters, captains, ${ }^{3}$ foremen and cooks.