Slave Ships and Maritime Archaeology: An Overview
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Slave Ships and Maritime Archaeology: An Overview Jane Webster
Published online: 3 January 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract This contribution collates information about wrecked slaving vessels discovered or sought by maritime archaeologists since 1972. To date, only a handful of firmly identified, active slave ships have been subject to excavation, but additional work has been carried out on wrecks of former slaver ships and possible slavers. The impending 200th anniversaries of the abolition of the British and US slave trades (2007 and 2008, respectively) appear to have stimulated a new wave of interest in slaver wrecks, and these new initiatives are also discussed. Keywords Slave ships . Excavation . Wrecks
Introduction Few floating seventeenth- nineteenth-century wooden ships of any sort survive today, and none of these are former slave ships. Wreck data necessarily, therefore, play a key role in the archaeological study of slave shipping. Yet to date, only a handful of slaver wrecks have been located, and only two of these, Henrietta Marie (Moore and Malcom, this volume) and Fredensborg (Svalesen 2000) have been subject to sustained programs of fieldwork. The paucity of fieldwork may appear surprising, since in theory, the wrecks of slave ships should not be especially hard to find. A total of 825 documented losses at sea are recorded among the 27,000 entries in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (Eltis et al. 1999), with 183 of these losses occurring either whilst slaving or after embarkation (that is, with African captives almost certainly aboard). Further, undocumented, examples must be envisaged. Yet as noted already, very few slaver wrecks have been located to date. Before going further, it is important to ask why.
J. Webster (*) School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK e-mail: [email protected]
Int J Histor Archaeol (2008) 12:6–19
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The Ephemeral Slave Ship A vessel engaged on a slaving venture was not, for much of its voyage, a “slave ship” at all. In illustrating this point I will simplify matters by focusing on the British trade, but many of these points apply to vessels of other European countries. On the outward journey to Africa, the hold of an intending slaver would be laden with trade goods that would later be exchanged for African captives. At this stage, therefore, the vessel was not easily distinguishable from other categories of merchant ship carrying trade goods to Africa, but not intent upon the purchase of slaves. A few tell-tale signs, such as open gratings (rather than the more usual closed hatches), and air holes at the point where slave decks would later be inserted, did distinguish some slavers (ventilation holes of this type can be seen just above the waterline in William Jackson’s painting “A Liverpool Slave Ship,” dating to ca. 1780: Quilley 2000, pp. 79–92; Tibbles 1994, p. 141). These ships would also be carrying significant quantities of water casks, shackles and handcuffs, along with lumber, whose eventual u
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