Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship

The slave ship Brooks was originally drawn in 1788 by William Elford for the Plymouth chapter of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It was arguably the most effective image in the British effort to abolish the slave trade. Here it is published as part of Carl Bernhard Wadstrom's An Essay on colonization... Created shortly after passage of the Dolben Act, an act which regulated the number of slaves on British vessels based upon their tonnage, the image shows 482 slaves packed tightly in the hold; that being the maximum allowed according to the new legislation. The accompanying text points out that on her last voyage before the passage of the Dolben Act the Brooks carried 609 slaves from Africa to America. The reader is left to imagine how such a scene would have looked.

The image showing an insurrection on a slave ship was added for Wadstrom's publication. The crew of the ship can be seen firing down onto the slaves from behind a barricado which was a standard defensive barrier erected on slaving vessels.