The Slave Trade and the Caribbean

The plan for the slave ship Brookes.

Now that you've gotten to look around the Slave Voyages database on your own, we'll complete a practice search together.

Notice: We will use specific facts and data to form our search criteria.

• The slave ship Brookes is one of the most famous on record.
• The ship was designed to carry 454 humans as cargo
• Instead, the ship carried as many as 609 people in its cargo hold at once, as the diagram shows (click for a larger image if you are interested)
• The ship was so notorious that abolitionists used its diagram to help force the end of the slave trade
• Thomas Molyneux owned and captained the ship
• The ship purchased slaves on Africa's Gold Coast region
• It landed in Jamaica

Students at Durham University lay down in the form of the
slave ship Brookes. Although they match the approximate
plan of the ship, the students have far more space than
the slaves would have.

Find the entry for the ship on the slave trade database site.

When you do this search on your own, you will use any of the following to find information about specific ships:

• Ship names
• Captain names
• Number of slaves embarked
• Number of slaves disembarked
• Names of places

Important vocabulary words:

• Query -- search criteria
• Vessel -- ship
• Embark -- get onto a ship
• Disembark -- get off of a ship
• Tonnage -- the weight of a ship (in tons)
• Middle Passage -- the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Caribbean