Slaves Packed Below and on Deck. Click on the image to expand its view.
When a slave ship named Zeldina was blown off course, near the Cuban coast, the ship and its 370 surviving slaves (of 500 who had originally boarded forty-six days earlier) were captured by the Royal Navy. The ship was brought to Port Royal where onboard conditions were discovered and reported (by a letter to the editor) in the 20 June 1857 issue of the Illustrated London News.
This is one of five drawings, accompanying that letter, which was apparently written in Kingston (Jamaica) and dated the 11th of May (1857). This passage, at pages 595-96 of the News, provides context for the picture:
"The poor captives were in a wretched condition - all of them naked; and the greater part seemed to have been half starved. They were packed closely together, and covered with dirt and vermin ... The slave-schooner had two decks and between them the captives were packed in such a manner that they had scarcely room to move. During each day of the voyage they sat in a painful posture, 18 inches only being allowed for each to turn in ... in a deck room of 30 feet in length ... [they were] brought up in platoons once every day to get a small portion of fresh air ..."
Credits
From The Illustrated London News (June 20, 1857), vol. 30, pp. 595-96.
Digitized image iln595c, courtesy slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library.
