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For our discussion in week five, we were to pick a slave ship for our discussion. For my chosen slave ship, I researched the slave ship called, Antelope. The Antelope was a slave ship, with many trips from London, Bristol, Lancaster, Cadiz, and Havana. To different parts along the coast of Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. The Antelope was part of many countries as there were different variations of the ship itself. Two countries; Great Britain and Spain.
From the website we were given to use, the Antelope ranged from the years 1701 to 1825. Many of the slaves, who were embarked to either the mainland North America or the Caribbean, were summed up together being over eight thousand (Total on the website was 8,015). Most of the slaves were shipped to the Caribbean, and the prominent years were in the years between 1726 to 1775. There were several captains of the Antelope ship for both the countries of Great Britain and Spain.
Overall, for the Antelope, and other slave ships, the slave trade was important to their economy. In Great Britain, an article by David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain, proclaimed how the slave trade was important to the British Caribbean and Great Britains economy. A very prominent company, The Committee of Merchants Trading to Africa said,
the effects of this trade to Great Britain are beneficial to an infinite Extent
[and]
there is hardly any Branch of Commerce in which this Nation is concerned that does not derive some advantage from it. Further, were this country to agree that [the slave trade] shall be abolished, it would deprive us of the Benefit of fitting out annually, a great number of Ships, to a very great Detriment to our Manufacturers, and terminate in the Ruin of our British Settlements in the West Indies, (Eltis, 1). The slave trade sector of Great Britain
, and the country of Spain, will suggest by researchers that the slave trade provided benefits.
Included with the previous statement by the Committee of Merchants Trading to Africa, Great Britain was divided into the abolition of the slave trade in general. However, the committee and merchants who thrive on the institution would argue against abolition. Which will suggest the people who work and are the captain of the Antelope ship will want the institution to stay alive.
The Antelope had different variations, some have sunk or been captured. One of the slave ships with the name Antelope was famously captured off the coast of Georgia, in Savannah, where it had a trial. It was captured by a privateer, who also enslaved Africans on his ship along the coast. The extended research was done by Jonathan M. Bryants Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope.
In conclusion, the Antelope had different variations throughout the years of the slave trade along the coasts of Africa, the Caribbean, and the mainland of North America. The slave trade was vital to the countries of Great Britain and Spain, who had their ship named, Antelope. Different merchants and government officials who make money off of the enslavement of Africans would not want the abolition of the slave trade. Lastly, it had a diverse and interesting history as one variation of the Antelope was captured by a privateer. Later having an intriguing case all around the United States over the captured ship of two hundred Africans.
Bryant, Jonathan M. Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope. First edition. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
Eltis, David, and Stanley L. Engerman. The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain. The Journal of Economic History 60, no. 1 (2000): 12344. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2566799
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