5fish
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We have all seen this picture of a slave ship and I have the story behind it and more...
www.historytoday.com
Snip... it was an anti-slavery poster....
One of their most effective actions was to commission an illustration of the Liverpool slave ship the Brookes, named after its owner, Joseph Brookes, and present it to the nation in poster form, appearing in newspapers, pamphlets, books and coffee houses. The horror it showed quickly established the illustration as a hugely influential part of the abolitionists’ anti-slavery campaign.
The architect of the use of the Brookes as political propaganda was the Quaker abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. In The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), he wrote that the ‘print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and was therefore instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured Africans’.
snip... The Brookes record...
Over 25 years, Brookes’ ship made ten Atlantic crossings, carrying in total 5,163 captured Africans. Of those, 4,559 survived, meaning that over ten per cent of its prisoners died. Records from The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database show that on its 1785-86 voyage it carried 740 enslaved Africans, 258 more than the 1788 poster showed. In 1788 The Regulated Slave Trade Act had been passed, the first British legislation to regulate slave shipping. It limited the number of slaves an individual ship could transport.
snip... Liverpool was the center of slave ship building...
Although Liverpool was late entering the slave trade, by 1740 it had surpassed Bristol and London as the slave-trading capital of Britain. In 1792 London had 22 transatlantic sailing vessels, Bristol had 42 and Liverpool had 131. The Brookes was built at the height of Liverpool’s slave-trading empire and, by that time, the city’s shipbuilders had mastered the art of constructing custom-built slave ships: in the early 18th century the average size of a slave ship was 70 tons; by the end of the century this had tripled to 200 tons.
snip...
Such was Liverpool’s dominance of the North Atlantic slave trade that one in five African captives crossing the ocean was carried in a Liverpool slave ship. The city had the capacity to build bespoke ships to the exact specifications and requirements of the slave merchants. Consequently, the industry employed 3,000 shipwrights, alongside other ancillary trades, such as rope makers, gun makers and those who supplied comestibles to be carried on board.
The article goes into more about Liverpool and slavery like the Beatles song "Penny Lane"... You may not want to learn about its history...
Liverpool’s Slave Trade Legacy | History Today
www.historytoday.com
Snip... it was an anti-slavery poster....
One of their most effective actions was to commission an illustration of the Liverpool slave ship the Brookes, named after its owner, Joseph Brookes, and present it to the nation in poster form, appearing in newspapers, pamphlets, books and coffee houses. The horror it showed quickly established the illustration as a hugely influential part of the abolitionists’ anti-slavery campaign.
The architect of the use of the Brookes as political propaganda was the Quaker abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. In The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), he wrote that the ‘print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and was therefore instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured Africans’.
snip... The Brookes record...
Over 25 years, Brookes’ ship made ten Atlantic crossings, carrying in total 5,163 captured Africans. Of those, 4,559 survived, meaning that over ten per cent of its prisoners died. Records from The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database show that on its 1785-86 voyage it carried 740 enslaved Africans, 258 more than the 1788 poster showed. In 1788 The Regulated Slave Trade Act had been passed, the first British legislation to regulate slave shipping. It limited the number of slaves an individual ship could transport.
snip... Liverpool was the center of slave ship building...
Although Liverpool was late entering the slave trade, by 1740 it had surpassed Bristol and London as the slave-trading capital of Britain. In 1792 London had 22 transatlantic sailing vessels, Bristol had 42 and Liverpool had 131. The Brookes was built at the height of Liverpool’s slave-trading empire and, by that time, the city’s shipbuilders had mastered the art of constructing custom-built slave ships: in the early 18th century the average size of a slave ship was 70 tons; by the end of the century this had tripled to 200 tons.
snip...
Such was Liverpool’s dominance of the North Atlantic slave trade that one in five African captives crossing the ocean was carried in a Liverpool slave ship. The city had the capacity to build bespoke ships to the exact specifications and requirements of the slave merchants. Consequently, the industry employed 3,000 shipwrights, alongside other ancillary trades, such as rope makers, gun makers and those who supplied comestibles to be carried on board.
The article goes into more about Liverpool and slavery like the Beatles song "Penny Lane"... You may not want to learn about its history...
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