Resources

This section of the Voyages website provides resources for putting information in the databases into historical context. The materials presently consist of a database of images contemporary to the slave trade and a database of names of Africans rescued from slave vessels in the nineteenth century, during the period of suppression.

Images

African Names Database

Representations of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, an activity that lasted for centuries, changed over time. With permission from various archives and libraries, selected images enable one to picture people, places, artifacts and vessels of the slave trade era. Links are provided to relevant voyages in the Voyages Database.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade culminated in the age of abolition. In the nineteenth century, mixed-commissioned courts created around the Atlantic basins adjudicated cases of vessels detained for illegally engaging in the slave trade. The African Names Database was built with documents from the Foreign Office, Series 84 and 313, held by the British National Archives. It offers a compilation of lists of liberated Africans from slave vessels captured by British cruisers between 1819 and 1845, and taken for adjudication in the courts established in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in Havana, Cuba. Links are provided to ships in the Voyages Database from which the liberated Africans were rescued.