Grand Lahou

Grand Lahou was known to eighteenth-century Dutch mariners as Caap Lahoe, an anchorage on the Ivory Coast where boats carried people and goods between shore and ocean-going vessels. The voyage of the Middelburg Commerce Company's Eenigheid gives a particularly close view of this traffic. From 9 to 22 February 1762 the ship remained off Caap Lahoe, purchasing enslaved Africans in groups much larger than those obtained at its earlier stops. Other Dutch vessels, including the Jacob Maria from Vlissingen, also lay in the roadstead.

Trade here was reckoned in gold, and a sailor's effects included scales and weights alongside textiles and kettles intended for private exchange. He drowned while trading from a boat on 16 February. The ship's account joins coastal brokerage, hazardous boat journeys and the confinement of captives within the same anchorage. Grand Lahou's overseas connections included this concrete role in the Atlantic slave trade, conducted through transactions and shore-to-ship transport rather than a European territorial administration.