• Description of a Slave Ship. London: Printed by James Phillips [for the London Committee of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade], 1789. Two broadsides.

Curatorial note:

Published by British abolitionists in April 1789, the printed broadsides of the Description of a Slave Ship provided the most recognizable, shocking, and unforgettable of all images associated with the Atlantic slave trade. The plans and sections diagram in painful detail how the slave ship Brooks was intended to stow its full capacity of 482 men (in chains), women, and children. In reality, the inhumanity was even worse: up to 609 people were imprisoned within the ship during its two-month journeys to the West Indies. The accompanying text refuted the rationalizations of “the well-wishers to this trade” with facts, statistics, and a doctor’s gruesome eyewitness report that invoked the reader’s moral duty to take action against “one of the greatest evils at this day existing upon the earth.”

and

Two variants of the Description of a Slave Ship are known. Princeton acquired the engraved version in 2016 as a welcome counterpart to the woodcut version purchased in 2006 with matching funds given by Sidney Lapidus, Class of 1959.

Collections:
  • Welcome Additions
  • Rare Books
  • Collections Donated to Princeton University Library
  • The Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution
  • African American Studies
  • Treasures of Rare Book Division
Title:
  • Description of a slave ship.
Language:
  • English
Call number:
  • South wall 10, Lapidus 4.21e
  • Oversize 2016-0001E
Extent:
  • 1 sheet : ill. ; 64 cm.
Format:
  • Book
Description:
  • Two variants are known, one illustrated by wood cuts and the other illustrated with a copper plate engraving. The broadside was first published between 21 and 28 April 1789. According to minutes of the London Committee of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the printing orders are recorded on 28 July 1789 as follows: '1,700 Description of a Slave Ship with copper plate; 7,000 ditto with wood cuts.' Cf. Cheryl Finley, Committed to memory : the slave ship icon in the black Atlantic imagination (Ph. D. dissert., Yale Univ.) 2002, p. 94, footnote 119.
  • Princeton copy 1 (Ex 2006-0018E) Illustrated with woodcuts.(ESTC T137749)
  • Princeton copy 2 (Ex 2016-0001E) Illustrated with copper plate engraving, including title 'Plan and sections of a slave ship.' (ESTC N11615)
Publisher:
  • London : Printed by James Phillips, 1789.
Subject:
  • Brooks (Slave ship)
  • Antislavery movements—Great Britain
  • Slave trade—Africa
  • Broadsides—Specimens
  • Broadsides
  • Woodcuts—England—London—18th century
Created:
  • 1789-01-01T00:00:00Z
Date:
  • 1789
Location:
  • Special Collections South wall 10, Lapidus 4.21e
  • Special Collections Oversize 2016-0001E
Identifier:
  • ark:/88435/qj72p788s
Edm rights:
  • No Known Copyright
Source acquisition:
  • Princeton copy 1 Purchase; Acquired with matching funds given by Sidney Lapidus, Class of 1959, 2006.
  • Princeton copy 2 Acquired from John O'Mara (via. B. Quaritch) 2016.
References:
  • ESTC T137749
  • ESTC N11615
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