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Description: | This pen and ink drawing with watercolour depicts a group of Royal Navy officers drinking and smoking around a table in the company of a black female attendant. A contemporary inscription gives a more precise account of the time and place: ?Officers of HM Brig Bonetta on Board a Hulk, Sierra Leone, Africa in ?37?.
The 'Bonetta' (1836) was a fast and manoeuvrable brigantine designed to suppress the recently outlawed slave trade in British colonies around the west coast of Africa. The hulk identified as the setting for this drawing was probably the Conflict, which appears to have been used as a floating brothel for the crews of British ships visiting Sierra Leone. The black female figure on the right is likely, therefore, to be a slave in all but name, kept aboard the Conflict for the sexual satisfaction of British sailors. The drawing was probably made by one of the naval officers from the Bonetta, and can be dated reasonably precisely between 15 and 22 March 1837 when, according to the Bonetta?s Master?s log (ADM 51, 3071), the ship?s company spent a week on board the Conflict.
The individuals represented are identified, with greater or lesser certainty, from the Bonetta's Muster Roll (ADM 37, 8778-8781) in a modern account of the image pasted to the back of the frame. They include, from left to right: ?L-k-r? (Nelson Locker, mate); ?Sh-a-a-t? (unidentified sailor); ?P-l? (Henry Pulling, able seaman [doubtful]); ?Jolley? (Charles Robert B. Jolley, assistant surgeon); ?Wimms? (either John or George Williams, able seaman [doubtful]); ?B-r-r-w? (Arthur Barrow, mate); ?St-t? (Robert Stewart, midshipman); ?Paule? (William Paul, clerk-in-charge); ?Robertson? (William Robertson); ?Paul ---? (Henry Paul, second master); and ?L-t-h-r A-s-e? (unidentified name or nick-name of the black African woman).
caption: Record Shot - Do not reproduce.
caption: Officers of H.M. Brigantine Bonetta on board a hulk - 1837 | Publisher: | "http://collections.rmg.co.uk/" | Rights holder: | "Royal Museums Greenwich" | Source: | Royal Museums Greenwich | Identifier: | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections... | Go to resource |
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