The Wanderer Slavery

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Many African Americans were captured and enslaved, while others were taken and enslaved. In the 1860s, ships were built to transport Africans to America. There were about three hundred recorded slave ships throughout the 1800s. Only about forty, of those three hundred, were infamous and well worth researching. Three of the most merciless and inhumane slave ships of all time were The Wanderer, The Hannibal, and The Henrietta Marie.
Upon ending the slave trade in all British colonies in 1808, the British began pressuring other nations to end their slave trades. Built in 1857, The Wanderer was built as a cargo ship (Grets). Once the ship was built, architects noticed the precise structure of the ship and recommended racing (Grets). The ship was measured 114 feet and weighing over 234 tons (Grets). Around 1858 William Corrie bought the ship out of greed then transformed The Wanderer into a slave ship (Grets). The vessel transported approximately 490 slaves from Africa, all the way to Cumberland Island, Georgia (Grets). The ship was one of Georgias last recorded slave ship (Grets). An outrage in the North caused the federal government to convict the owner of The Wanderer. The Union produced the ship as multi used ship during the Civil War. The six-week journey across the Atlantic caused many of the slaves to parish from sickness and torture (Grets). “The slaves who arrived in the United States on the Wanderer gained a celebrity status that spread beyond the south to newspapers in New York, Washington, and London.” (Phillips) Because of the ship they arrived on, the slaves were immediately indentified with the ship (Grets). Newspapers and private corresponders took the time to identify each individual slave and graphed the likely hood o...

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... (Lukee 3). Not one survivor emerged from the wreckage and the fate of the ship lasted unknown for almost three centuries (Lukee 2). The wrecked slave ship was found in 1972, during a magnetometer survey, operated by a subsidiary of Mel Fisher's Treasure Salvors, Inc (Lukee 4). Some artifacts were collected from the wreck that included bilboes and iron shackles that were used to restrain slaves (Lukee 4). When they realized that the wreck was most likely a slave ship and not a treasure ship, the company reburied the ancient findings and pieces of the ship hull that they had exposed and left the site.
Slave ships were not at first exposed as hell ships, but after marine biologists and geologist found some of these ships wreckage the secrets could no longer be held in. The most inhumane slave ships of all time were The Wanderer, The Hannibal, and The Henrietta Marie.

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