Atlantic Worlds

"Imagine how an enslaved person would have felt, finding themselves staring down the barrel of a blunderbuss like this one, with their legs in chains, surrounded by hostile sailors and a shark-infested ocean," says author and historian Stella Dadzie. "It would take some courage to plan a mutiny in face of such hopeless odds. Yet amazingly, many captives were prepared to take the risk.

"We now have access to a Transatlantic Voyages database that identifies 485 acts of resistance by captive Africans on slave ships between 1698 and 1807, including 382 cases of shipboard revolt and attacks from the shore," Stella continues. "More than 360 ships – that’s as many as one in ten - experienced some form of violent insurrection. Given what we know about the debilitated condition of the captives on board, these numbers are nothing less than staggering."

Hear more of Stella's responses to the gallery by listening to the 'Freedom Fighters' audio guide.

Artist Joseph Ijoyemi is a Swedish-Nigerian artist, whose practice focuses on illuminating African history from a contemporary viewpoint.

His work Sovereign Strength is a double-sided acrylic painting celebrating female rules from pre-colonial Africa.

“I want women, especially young Black women, to look at this artwork and feel inspired, empowered, and to realise that there were dominant women before the transatlantic history,” he says. 

Olaudah Equiano, a key figure in the fight to end the slave trade within the British Empire in the 18th century, once lived just around the corner from what would become the National Maritime Museum.

In his bestselling book, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, published in 1789, Equiano described being kidnapped as a child in Benin, and the horrors of the voyage across the Atlantic.

Sold to a Royal Navy captain, Equiano was forced to work on warships, and then on trading ships in the Caribbean. In his early 20s he was able to buy his freedom and came to London. In sharing his own story Equiano became a public figure, and alongside many others played an important role in campaigning for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

The Liverpool ship the Brooks (also known as 'Brookes') was used in the slave trade from 1783. Abolitionists in Britain commissioned a drawing of how people were squeezed on board the Brooks to raise awareness of the inhumanity of the slave trade.

Elgin Cleckley, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia, used the drawing to create a new art installation for the gallery. Brookes (Revisited) features 740 cardboard 'memory markers', each representing an individual held on board.

“Perhaps works like Brookes (Revisited) can offer a new way to think about the images we’ve seen associated with the slave trade,” he says: “It’s important for people to look at works like this, and think about how to develop their own ways to create and use art to tell untold stories.”

John Hawkins was the first English slave trader, who made four voyages to Sierra Leone between 1564 and 1569, taking a total of 1200 Africans across the Atlantic to sell to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

On his first voyage he described capturing 300 Africans 'by the sword and partly by other means'. In the Caribbean he sold them to the Spanish for 'hides, ginger, sugars, and some quantity of pearls, but he freighted also two other hulks with hides and like commodities'.

"The campaign to abolish slavery was long and protracted. Traditionally associated with the efforts of men like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, it is only recently that other names have begun to be acknowledged," explains Stella Dadzie.

"Mary Prince, who was born into slavery in Bermuda in 1788, led a life that was fairly typical of many enslaved women. Across the West Indies, they were over-worked, flogged and abused on a regular basis. But Mary refused to be beaten into submission. Like many other enslaved women, she fought tooth and nail for her right to be free.

"Much of what we know about Mary’s life comes from her published narrative, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, which was published in 1831, three years before the British finally abolished slavery on 1 August 1834," Stella continues. "Mary’s poignant testimony stands as an example of the resilience and resistance of generations of enslaved women throughout the West Indies." To hear more about Mary Prince and other black revolutionary women, listen to the Freedom Fighters audio guide.

In this image, the artist avoided depicting any sign of harsh plantation conditions. Instead, he has shown enslaved people at leisure and dancing.

"It was purposefully done to create this false sense of what it was like," explains artist Sharon Walters. "That ability to lie and share these images that, years and years later, we’re still looking at [as] representations of that time, is both upsetting and sickening."

To hear the full discussion about this image and others in the Museum collection, listen to the Seeing Ourselves podcast.

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