Hesketh, which sailed out of Liverpool and delivered slaves to Saint Kitts in 1761, to the 566-ton
Parr, another Liverpool ship that sailed in the 1790s. Ships comparable in size to the
Hesketh were designed to carry as few as six pleasure passengers; refitted as a slaver, the
Hesketh transported a crew plus thirty Africans. The
Parr, on the other hand, carried a crew of 100 and a cargo of as many as 700 slaves. Most ships—nicknamed Guineamen, after the Gulf of Guinea on the west coast of Africa—were sized somewhere in between, growing in tonnage over time as the Atlantic trade itself grew. American traders preferred somewhat smaller ships than their British counterparts: two-masted sloops (25 to 75 tons) and schooners (30 to 150 tons) required smaller crews and shorter stays on the African coast, where tropical diseases were a constant threat to crew and cargo alike.