South Sea Company
The South Sea Company established slave reception factories at Cartagena, Colombia, Veracruz, Mexico, Panama, Portobello, La Guaira, Buenos Aires, La Havana and Santiago de Cuba, and slave deposits at Jamaica and Barbados. Despite problems with speculation, the South Sea Company was relatively successful at slave trading and meeting its quota (it was unusual for other, similarly chartered companies to fulfill their quotas). According to records compiled by David Eltis and others, during the course of 96 voyages in 25 years, the South Sea Company purchased 34,000 slaves, of whom 30,000 survived the voyage across the Atlantic. (Thus about 11% of the slaves died on the voyage: a relatively low mortality rate for the Middle Crossing.) The company persisted with the slave trade through two wars with Spain and the calamitous 1720 commercial bubble. The company's trade in human slavery peaked during the 1725 trading year, five years after the bubble burst. Between 1715 and 1739, slave trading constituted the main legal commercial activity of the South Sea Company.