This book tells the life story for the first time of the eighteenth-century Cornish mariner Captain Joseph Banfield. It includes a transcript of Joseph Banfield's memoir. Banfield's memoir can be compared with published writings of other transatlantic slave trade captains including abolitionists. Banfield also worked on whalers and a variety of merchant trading ships completing Atlantic and Mediterranean voyages in over forty years at sea. His experiences can be compared with those of other eighteenth-century Cornish mariners. Readers interested in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, eighteenth-century maritime history, and the history of Cornwall will all find items of interest in this book.