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Description: | Print depicting the wreck of the slave ship 'Nancy' on the Bahama Banks in 1767. This print is signed 'Atkins del.' and 'Barnes & Co. Sc' and is presumed to be by Atkins, who is not known to have been working as early as 1767 but from the mid-1780s.
The Caribbean waters were dangerous to sail in, and many slave ships were wrecked on sunken reefs and in sudden squalls. Mostly, the slaves on board, who were shackled together, would have drowned. Sometimes, however, they survived. On St Vincent shipwrecked Africans intermarried with the islanders, and fought against French and British colonisation until the end of the 18th century.
The work is quite a rare representation of a slave ship before Abolition. It was used as an illustration in Olaudah Equiano's 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa the African, written by himself' published in 1789.
Box Title: Yachts 1730-1850. | Publisher: | "http://collections.rmg.co.uk/" | Rights holder: | "Royal Museums Greenwich" | Subjects: | Nancy 1760 Other non-Michael Graham-Stewart collection prints | Source: | Royal Museums Greenwich | Identifier: | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections... | Go to resource |
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