1. Slavery and the Slave Trade mp

2. Plan of the slave ship Brookes, carrying 454 slaves. (orig 609)
Slave Trade Act 1788: Limited numbers per tonnage: 1.67 p.t. to a max of 207; then 1 slave per ton.

7. Turk Island
On arrival at “Grand Quay” (Grand Turk) she was handed over to her new Master, Mr D and was valued at 100 pounds. It was clear that life on Grand Turk was harsh. Mary was given a half-barrel and shovel and was expected to work from 4 in the morning. A quick breakfast was taken at 9 am and the she continued working until midday when she was given lunch and then had to return to the salt ponds until dusk. Even then the day’s work was not finished. The salt pond workers were not allowed to work in the ponds between dusk and dawn, but this did not mean they couldn’t work. The salt had to be heaped up, carried to the deposits, bagged up for shipping etc. Mary recalled how hard the life was:
“We slept in a long shed, divided into narrow slips, like the stalls used for cattle. Boards fixed upon stakes driven into the ground, without mat or covering, were our only beds. On Sundays, after we had washed the salt bags, and done other work required of us, we went into the bush and cut the long soft grass, of which we made trusses for our legs and feet to rest upon, for they were so full of the salt boils that we could get no rest lying upon the bare boards”.
It is impossible to think about sugar production in the West Indies without thinking about slavery. The labor of enslaved Africans was integral to the cultivation of the cane and production of sugar. Slaves toiled in the fields and the boiling houses, supplying the huge amounts of labor that sugar required. Overall some four million slaves were brought to the Caribbean, and almost all ended up on the sugar plantations. Conditions were harsh, and mortality rates were extremely high through all stages of slaves' lives. In some sugar colonies the slave population was ten times that of Europeans, and slave uprisings were an ever-present fear for the planters.
Slave trading was part of a highly profitable triangle of trade that spanned the Atlantic. Manufactured goods were traded to the West African coast for slaves, who were shipped to the sugar colonies (the infamous middle passage) and sugar, molasses, and rum were shipped from the islands to England. Slavery in England itself had been deemed illegal since The controversy over slavery in the sugar colonies was vigorously pursued in Parliament and in publication throughout the last quarter of the eighteenth century and up to the time of abolition of the trade in 1807 and emancipation in 1833.

9. Lord Mansfield: Somerset vs Stewart 1772
The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.

10. Dido Elizabeth Lindsay 1761-1804/Mansfield

12. Before the Slave Trade Act 1788, the Brookes had transported 609 slaves and was 267 tons burden, making 2.3 slaves per ton. The Zong carried 442 slaves and was 110 tons burden—4.0 slaves per ton.

13. Zong (Voyage 1781: 442 slaves emb. 208 disemb
Zong (Voyage 1781: 442 slaves emb disemb. (54, 42, and 36: Nov 29, Dec 1, Dec 2nd)
March 1783 – Jury found in favour of the owners under an established protocol of maritime law that considered slaves as cargo
May 1783 King’s Bench Appeal, under Mansfield – who summed the first verdict as the jury having… ‘no doubt (though it shocks one very much) that the Case of Slaves was the same as if Horses had been thrown over board ... The Question was, whether there was not an Absolute Necessity for throwing them over board to save the rest, [and] the Jury were of opinion there was…’
New trial ordered; Mansfield rules that insurers not liable for losses arising from mistakes by the crew.

14. Luisa Calderon/Gov Thomas Picton/the picquet (1803-8 trials)

16. Luisa Calderon