Can anyone point out, preferably online, a sample manifest of goods that a ship (or small fleet of ships) sent to found a new colony during the 15th-17th centuries would be carrying? I would imagine at least a couple manifests such as this would exist.
I'm curious for things like lists of tools, supplies, food, maybe even a list of desired colonist skills / professions (such as "two blacksmiths, one tailor", etc).
To be honest this came to mind while watching the new show Utopia and thinking of how something like this should have been done--drop them off on an uninhabited island with the equivalent of a colony ship's manifest.
(If I got the wrong subreddit for this please let me know and I'll repost it there ASAP, thanks!)
Well if you can settle for the 18th century, Australia was initially colonised by a fleet of eleven ships in all in 1788. A large proportion of the colonists were convicts and the soldiers sent to control them. They had insufficient farmers among the colonists, so as well as reading the manifests of personnel and supplies available here:
http://www.jag10.freeserve.co.uk/1788.htm
you should read up on the early history of the colony to see what problems they had with the supplies that accompanied them. http://gutenberg.net.au/first-fleet.html