Social, Cultural, and Economic Histories of Ships Connected to the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Session Abstract
The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (www.slavevoyages.com) has in recent years contributed to a radical transformation of our understanding of the Middle Passage, not only by registering known slave voyages between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also by providing detailed information about them. This panel takes inspiration from this digital resource and offers four social, cultural, and economic studies of particular vessels that are either recorded by the Voyages database, or connected to it in a direct manner. Three of the vessels featured were slave-trading ships that carried Africans to Brazil and the Caribbean, while the other was a ship used by the British Navy to suppress this human traffic in the nineteenth century. Put together, these four studies present an in-depth overview of the specific histories of these ships, their crews, their owners, and of the Africans that were taken on board during their involvement with the transatlantic slave trade.