Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 30

Price Realized: $ 420
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
FORCED CANNIBALISM (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.)--BRITISH GOVERNMENT PAPERS. Copy of the Report of Hall Pringle and Alexander Campbell, Esquires, Associate Justices of the Peace, relative to Certain Atrocities of Slave Traders, laid before the Secretary of State for the Colonies. . .at [St Lucia.] 18 pages, tall folio, original printed self-wrappers, stitching loose; some later inventory (?) numbers on reverse. London: Ordered by the House, 1839

Additional Details

The blood-chilling transcript of the testimony of a number of slaves from the Portuguese slave-ship Arrogante, captured by the British warship Snake. According to theses slaves from Angola--most of whom were between 12 and 14 years of age--at least one of their men was murdered and his flesh cooked and fed to the captives. When seized, the Arrogante had on board 332 of the original cargo of 470 slaves. Corroborating testimony tells how members of the crew killed a light-skinned black man, chopped off his head, feet and hands, tossed them overboard and then cut him into small pieces and cooked him in the slaves' cooking pot.
An article on slave ships and slaving appearing in the New York Times of December 21, 1902 states that the Arrogante, once called the Urraca, had carried the largest number of slaves of any ship of the trade. In 1839, she was captured and auctioned off by the Crown. Her new owners immediately returned her to the slave trade and she was once again captured, but this time burned and sunk by the British off the West Coast of Africa.