Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807

by Emma Christopher

Despite the vast literature on the transatlantic slave trade, the role of sailors aboard slave ships has remained unexplored. This book fills that gap by examining every aspect of their working lives, from their reasons for signing on a slaving vessel, to their experiences in the Caribbean and the American South after their human cargoes had been sold. It explores how they interacted with men and women of African origin at their ports of call, from the Africans they traded with, to the free black seamen who were their crewmates, to the slaves and ex-slaves they mingled with in the port cities of the Americas. Most importantly, it questions their interactions with the captive Africans they were transporting during the dread middle passage, arguing that their work encompassed the commoditisation of these people ready for sale.

Genres: History

260 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Emma Christoper is the author of "A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa and How it Led to the Settlement of Australia," and "Slave Ship Sailors and their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1808." She is also the co-editor, with Marcus Rediker and Cassandra Pybus, of "Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World."

Emma gained her PhD from the University College, London in 2002 and now holds an Australian Council Research Fellowship at the University of Sydney.

Emma is currently writing the history of a small west African slave trading factory and also involved in making a documentary about this story. She has traced slaves from the factory to Cuba and Sierra Leone and the slave traders to the USA and Australia. Because of the unique set of documents related to the case it has, remarkably, been possible to find descendants of both groups today and so to reveal some of the global legacy of one small outpost of the transatlantic slave trade. Emma is researching and filming this story in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cuba, the USA and Australia.



Emma lives in Sydney, Austratlia.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emma Christopher has an incredible ability to explore the variability of persons involved in the slave trade, while not diminishing the heinousness of the act, nor diminishing the experience of the true victims of this trade. Her research offers an alternative approach to this period of history, and how it can be documented and understood. She also shows how intrinsically tied the enslaved are to the sea, once they are taken from Africa, and how the formerly enslaved find themselves often returning to ships, with limited options for how to make a life for themselves at this time.

[Royce Ratterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the exact research work I needed to commence my fiction work. I found the information very useful in pointing into numerous directions for addition reading.
Very well written, not dull in the least, and full of rich documented facts relating to this facet of the slave trade industry.