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HIST 308
Sofia Clark
Spring 2020
Research Paper
Sample Outline:
1) Introduction
2) Story of capture
3) Background on British antislavery
4) Background on Royal Navy
5) Background on this specific Royal Navy vessel
6) Story of what treaty was used to condemn the slave ship
7) Background on treaty
8) Background on British relations with treaty country
9) Background on slave trade in this particular region
10) Story of what happens to the captives removed from this
particular slave ship
11) Background on the general treatment of liberated Africans

12) Explanation of how the story of your ship exemplifies the
broader history of slavery and anti-slavery
Bibliography
1) The slave trade in general (i.e., either the Transatlantic slave
trade or Indian Ocean slave trade depending on your ship)
Article (JSTOR): Alkalimat, Abdul. "Slave Trade." In The
African American Experience in Cyberspace: A Resource Guide
to the Best Web Sites on Black Culture and History, 34-42.
LONDON; STERLING, VIRGINIA: Pluto Press, 2004. Accessed
May 30, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183q64x.8.
Article (JSTOR): JUNKER, CARSTEN. "Containing Bodies—
Enscandalizing Enslavement: Stasis and Movement at the
Juncture of Slave-Ship Images and Texts." In Migrating the
Black Body: The African Diaspora and Visual Culture, edited
by RAIFORD LEIGH and RAPHAEL-HERNANDEZ HEIKE,
13-29. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2017.
Accessed May 30, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnj4v.5.
2) The slave trade in the specific area of Africa in which your
ship embarked enslaved African captives (e.g., Bight of Benin,
Senegambia, Angola).
Book (JSTOR): Strickrodt, Silke. "The Atlantic Connection:
Little Popo & the Rise of Afro-European Trade on the Western
Slave Coast, C. 1600 to 1702." In Afro-European Trade in the
Atlantic World: The Western Slave Coast, C. 1550- C. 1885, 65-
101. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer,
2015. Accessed May 30, 2020. doi:10.7722/j.ctt7zst5n.9.
Article (JSTOR): Graham, James D. "The Slave Trade,
Depopulation and Human Sacrifice in Benin History: The

General Approach." Cahiers D'Études Africaines 5, no. 18
(1965): 317-34. Accessed May 30, 2020.
www.jstor.org/stable/4390897.
3) Slavery in the region to which your ship was heading (e.g.,
Cuba, Bahia, Pernambuco).
Book (One Search): Schneider, Elena Andrea. The Occupation
of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World.
North Carolina Scholarship Online. Williamsburg, Virginia :
Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History
and Culture ; University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
Article (Project Muse): Garrigus, John. "Cuba, Haiti, and the
Age of Atlantic Revolution." Reviews in American History 44,
no. 1 (2016): 52-57. doi:10.1353/rah.2016.0012.
4) British antislavery policy toward the country your ship was
from (e.g., Portugal, Spain, USA)
Book- page 14(Academic Search Premiere- also works for #3):
Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. 1999. Empire And Antislavery :
Spain Cuba And Puerto Rico 1833-1874. Pitt Latin American
Series. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.calpoly.edu/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=5840&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Article (Page 184- Academic Search Premiere): Berquist,
Emily. 2010. “Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish
Atlantic World, 1765-1817.” Slavery & Abolition 31 (2): 181–
205. doi:10.1080/01440391003711073.
5) The history of the Royal Navy’s anti-slave-trade campaign in
the particular region in which your ship was captured (e.g.,
West Africa, Indian Ocean, Caribbean).

Article (JSTOR): Ferrer, Ada. "Cuban Slavery and Atlantic
Antislavery." In Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic
Empire, edited by Fradera Josep M. and Schmidt-Nowara
Christopher, 134-57. Berghahn Books, 2013. Accessed May 30,
2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qd02x.10.
Book (JSTOR): Childs, Matt D. "Cuba, the Atlantic Crisis of the
1860s, and the Road to Abolition." In American Civil Wars: The
United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the
1860s, edited by DOYLE DON H., 204-21. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Accessed May 30,
2020. www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469631103_doyle.14.
6) The history of liberated Africans in the particular area in
which the captives from your ship were released (e.g., Sierra
Leone, Cape of Good Hope, Saint Helena, Caribbean).
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HIST 308 – Spring 2020
Dr. Matthew S. Hopper
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Slave Ship Research Paper Guidelines

This quarter, every student in HIST 308 will complete a
research paper on the history of a slave ship
from the nineteenth century. Essays are required to cite both
primary and secondary sources. They
must be a minimum of 10 double-spaced pages (excluding
bibliography) in 12-pt. font with one-inch
margins and may not exceed 20 pages. The following
guidelines will help you research and write
your essay.
Background
The British Royal Navy captured more than 1,500 slave ships in
the course of its anti-slave-trade
patrols in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean between 1808 and 1896
and released nearly 250,000
enslaved Africans from captivity aboard these vessels. The
voluminous records of these captures
preserve a massive amount of information about the slave trade
and the struggle to end it, but very
few of these captured slave ships have ever been explored in
detail by historians. This quarter, you
will have the opportunity to select one captured slave ship and
thoroughly research it and tell its
story, including the ultimate outcome for the enslaved Africans
held captive on board. Your
research paper has the potential to fill an important gap in the
scholarship on slavery and abolition,
and it may even become a publishable article, particularly
because many of the primary sources you
will use for this paper have been underutilized by historians,
and many details of these stories remain
to be uncovered.

If done well, a microhistory of a single slave ship can
effectively illustrate the horrors of the slave
trade while demonstrating the complexity and nuances of
slavery and abolition by using the various
stages and locations of a particular journey to illustrate patterns
of the slave trade in general. Some
experienced scholars have even turned the story of a single
slave ship or a single journey into an
entire book. Excellent examples include: Robert Harms, The
Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds Of
The Slave Trade (2002); Sylviane Diouf, Dreams of Africa in
Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story
of the Last Africans Brought to America (2009); James Walvin,
The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of
Slavery (2011); Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion (2013);
Bruce Mouser, A Slaving Voyage to Africa
and Jamaica: The Log of the Sandown, 1793-1794 (2002), and
Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon (2018).
Robert Harms, for example, famously used a single journal from
one journey of one specific French
slave ship, the Diligent, as the launching point to illustrate the
complexities of the entire transatlantic
slave trade.
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Selecting a Ship
The ship you choose to research may be any one of the hundreds
of ships captured by the British

Royal Navy in the nineteenth century. A list containing the
majority of the ships captured between
1808 and 1840 can be found in “Appendix A – List of
Captures,” in Peter Grindal, Opposing the
Slavers (2016), which is available as an eBook through the
library under HIST 308 course reserves.
To select your ship, you may begin by exploring secondary
sources. You might start with the three
classic accounts of the Royal Navy and the slave trade:
Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave
Trade (1968), W.E.F. Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers
(1969), and Raymond C. Howell, The Royal
Navy and the Slave Trade (1987), which are on reserve in the
library. In addition to these classic
accounts, there are three newer books on this subject: Sian
Rees, Sweet Water and Bitter (2011), Peter
Grindal, Opposing the Slavers (2016), John Brioch, Squadron
(2017). Grindal’s book is particularly
detailed at a whopping 863 pages. Each of these books contains
an index listing the ships covered
in the text, but you may have the most success by reading
selected chapters that relate to periods and
regions that most interest you and selecting your ship from
among those discussed in those chapters.
Ships may be of particular interest to you based on your
knowledge or experience with particular
regions in Africa or the Americas or your interest in particular
areas of history. Ships may interest
you because of their country of origin (i.e., flag), the places
they embarked enslaved Africans, the
number of captives they had aboard, the destinations they were
sailing to, the British ship that
captured them, the circumstances of the capture, the outcome of
the trial of the slave ship, etc.

Select a ship that sounds interesting to you based on your own
particular interests. The only
requirement is that the slave ship is one of the majority of ships
that contained a number of enslaved
Africans at the time of capture (rather than one of the ships
condemned for being “fitted out” for
the slave trade but were otherwise empty of captives). Since
our class is primarily interested in the
fates of the Africans caught up in the transatlantic slave trade,
your focus should not be on the ship
itself or the enslavers but rather on the enslaved Africans
themselves.
Another good option for selecting a ship is to explore the
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database at
www.slavevoyages.org. After reading the introductory
materials, click on “Transatlantic” and select
“Database” from the dropdown menu. You can limit your
search under the field “Outcome” to
“Outcome of voyage if ship captured” and select “British.”
This will give you a list of more than
1,800 captured slave
ships, although it is
important to note that
many of these are
before the nineteenth
century; we are
interested in the
period between 1808
and 1897, for which
we have the most
primary sources.
Keep in mind that
documentation tends
to be most extensive
after about 1820.

Select “Outcome”
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Alternatively, you may browse the 95 volumes of the
Parliamentary Papers related to the slave trade in
the library (HT 1161.I73) or browse the FO 84 files from the
National Archives (UK) online (we
will look at these sources together as a class) and find
individual ships described in the
correspondence in these files. Further information about these
two sources is found below in the
section on Primary Sources.
We also have another source unique to our class here at Cal
Poly. Further information on it is
below under Primary Sources. On the course website, I have
posted a spreadsheet listing the
complete contents of several volumes of the HCA 35 series that
I have photographed over the past
few years. You are welcome to browse the multiple sheets in
the Excel workbook to view the ships
contained in these volumes. The spreadsheet will give you an
idea of how many pages of
documentation are contained for each ship in these volumes
(note that some ships appear in
multiple volumes), where the ships were captured, their
nationality, now many enslaved Africans
were aboard, where the ship was condemned, and other details.
Once you have identified the
appropriate volume(s) and pages, you can view the specific

pages in the sub-folders of the HCA 35
folder in the shared OneDrive. This collection is explained in
the Primary Sources section below.
Secondary Sources
Once you have selected your ship, you will need to first identify
secondary sources you can use to
contextualize the history of your ship and its voyage.
There are several good reasons for historians to begin with
secondary sources. First, it is helpful to
have some historical background before you begin looking at
archival sources. You will be better
equipped to encounter vocabulary, events, and concepts in the
primary sources if you first explore
what historians have already written about your topic. Second,
a solid background in the secondary
sources can save you from the embarrassment of belatedly
learning that something you believed to
be a new discovery is actually already well established in the
historical literature. Additionally, having
a strong knowledge of the secondary sources can help you be
more efficient in your work with
primary sources as you will be more likely to recognize the
important aspects of your primary
sources if you already understand the important themes explored
by other historians.
Some History majors have already mastered the art of finding
secondary sources in their Research &
Writing Seminar (HIST 303) and Historiography Seminar (HIST
304), but most majors in this class
have not yet taken these courses. The following description
may be a refresher of those research

methods for more experienced students but a helpful
introduction for many others. If you have
taken other research courses in other majors, you are welcome
to return to your notes from those
classes for additional support as many of the research methods
may be similar.
To find secondary sources, login to the Cal Poly portal and
click on the “Library” tab, then click on
“Research Guides” and select the general “History” research
guide to access the main databases.
(You can also find them from the library’s homepage under
“Databases A-Z.”) Using Boolean
searches in the “keywords” and “subject” fields of the
“advanced” search pages of JSTOR, Project
Muse, and Academic Search Premier, identify articles; and
using OneSearch, Ebook Central, Wiley
Online Library, SpringerLink, and WorldCat, identify books
related to your research project in the
following six categories:
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1) The slave trade in general (i.e., either the Transatlantic slave
trade or Indian Ocean slave
trade depending on your ship)
2) The slave trade in the specific area of Africa in which your
ship embarked enslaved African
captives (e.g., Bight of Benin, Senegambia, Angola).
3) Slavery in the region to which your ship was heading (e.g.,

Cuba, Bahia, Pernambuco).
4) British antislavery policy toward the country your ship was
from (e.g., Portugal, Spain, USA)
5) The history of the Royal Navy’s anti-slave-trade campaign in
the particular region in which
your ship was captured (e.g., West Africa, Indian Ocean,
Caribbean).
6) The history of liberated Africans in the particular area in
which the captives from your ship
were released (e.g., Sierra Leone, Cape of Good Hope, Saint
Helena, Caribbean).
For each of these six categories identify a minimum of two
secondary sources (books and articles).
List them under each category using the proper
Turabian/Chicago citation style (for either footnotes
or bibliography). Essays should ideally include at least one
book and one article in each category,
although there may be a different number of books and articles
in each category provided the total
number of sources for each category is at least two (i.e., a
minimum of 12 secondary sources in total
for the essay).
Here is an example of a potential entry under category 6:
Padraic X. Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in
Sierra Leone in the
Age of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2017).
Here is another example of a potential entry under category 4:
Maeve Ryan, “The price of legitimacy in humanitarian

intervention: Britain, the
right of search, and the abolition of the West African slave
trade,” in Brendan Simms
and D.J.B. Trim, Humanitarian Intervention: A History
(Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 231-255.
It is not necessary to find books or articles that mention your
specific ship by name (such specific
mentions are rare), but if you do find your ship mentioned
somewhere, be sure to make a note of
where you found that reference as it is likely to be very helpful
to you as you write your essay.
Primary Sources
Now that you have identified your secondary sources and have
begun to read them, you are
prepared to conduct your primary source research. This step is
the longest and most rewarding part
of the research process, so be sure to leave yourself a
substantial amount of time to delve into these
sources. Although we will not have time to travel directly to
archives during this term, we have the
next best thing in the form of extensive photographs of
documents from archives and other sources.
Your final essay must contain at least five different primary
sources. The ideal research paper will
use printed and handwritten manuscripts from various archival
record groups. This quarter, we will
have access to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
volumes relating to the slave trade reprinted
in 95-volume set by Irish University Press, in addition to digital
copies of the original records of the

5
High Court of Admiralty (HCA 35) photographed from the
National Archives (UK) in Kew. We
also have full digital access to the entire, massive 2,000+-
volume Foreign Office records group
relating to the slave trade (FO 84) via the National Archives
(UK) website. Through the
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database website
(www.slavevoyages.org) we can also access the African
Names Database and the full Transatlantic Slave Trade
Database. In class, we will conduct training
exercises in how to make use of historical newspapers (NEH),
Parliamentary debates (Hansard), the
U.S. Serial Set (LOC), the English Admiralty Reports (Hathi
Trust), and the Registers of Liberated
Africans from the Sierra Leone Archives (via
www.liberatedafricans.org). (For select cases, I have
also photographed additional records from the office of the
Admiralty (ADM) and High Court of
Admiralty (HCA) including appeals case records and prize
papers. If you are interested in going
“above and beyond” with your essay this term by using these
additional sources, please see me about
this possibility.) And new this quarter we now have access to
the most exciting resource of all,
ProQuest’s UK Parliamentary Papers database.
We will spend time in class going over how to access each of
these sources. The following is a
supplemental guide to accessing them.

HCA 35
The main primary sources for this research paper will come
from the HCA 35 series in the National
Archives (UK). This record group includes 89 handwritten
volumes which reproduce the
correspondence between Admiralty and Treasury regarding all
slave ships seized by the Royal Navy
between 1821 and 1891 and several additional cases beyond this
date range. In part because these
volumes have never been indexed or digitized and because they
reproduce correspondence archived
elsewhere, these records have received little attention from
historians. Lloyd and Ward do not cite
HCA 35 and Howell cites only the later volumes (76-89). The
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database does
not cite HCA 35, although it does cite the subsidiary record
group – HCA 37 – in the cases of about
22 ships. This quarter we have the opportunity to work with
these volumes without traveling all the
way to the National Archives. Over the past three years on
multiple research trips to Kew, I have
photographed these 89 volumes, and a team of graduate students
has been working with me to
index them. So far, about 24 of the 89 volumes have been
indexed, and our team is continuing our
work this quarter to fully index the remaining volumes.
About HCA 35
The following is the description of HCA 35 from the National
Archives (UK) Discovery Catalog:
In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in all British possessions

and after that date many
examples of the navy’s enforcement of this are to be found,
especially in HCA 49/97, cases
adjudicated in the court of vice-admiralty for Sierra Leone.
In 1821 William Rothery was appointed by the treasury to
report on all cases involving
slavery in admiralty, vice-admiralty and mixed commission
(held jointly with representatives
of the other country involved) courts. In 1860 he was
succeeded by his son Henry, who
remained in the post until 1888, by which time the work was
greatly diminished. Their
reports are to be found in HCA 35, 1821-1891.
6
Reference: HCA 35
Title: Slave Trade Adviser to the Treasury: Report Books
Description:
This series consists of entry books, known as 'Government
Reports',
which contain reports of the slave trade adviser on questions
referred to
him by the Treasury for report. They concern matters arising out
of
cases in the Admiralty, Vice-Admiralty, and Mixed Commission
courts
under the Proceeds of Captured Slavers Act 1821 and other
measures

relating to the suppression of slavery. Down to 1848 they also
contain
entries of associated papers. There is also a volume containing
Treasury
minutes referred to in the reports, 1860 to 1869.
Date: 1821-1891
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal
status:
Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical
description:
89 volume(s)
How to cite HCA 35
The National Archives may be described or cited as:
The National Archives website requests: “We recommend using
a capital T on ‘The’ when writing
our name, whether or not it comes at the beginning of a
sentence.”
Cite the department code (HCA) then the series number (35)

followed by the volume number.
Example: The National Archives of the UK (TNA), HCA 35/1
The following abbreviations may be used, without punctuation
and not italicised:
or ff for folio or folios
Example: TNA, HCA 35/1 pp 15-16
How to use HCA 35
First, access the online resources from the “HCA 35” folder
(available in your OneDrive under
“Shared Files”) to identify your ship and find original 19th-
century documentation for your particular
case. You may search for your specific ship in the index in the
“HCA Index” sub-folder and view
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the Excel spreadsheet titled “HCA Volumes.” If you are in the
process of selecting a ship (see p. 2
above), you can browse the various subfolders for a case that
interests you (each folder represents a
different volume in the HCA 35 series and contains between 200
and 400 images representing 400
to 800 pages) or browse the “HCA index.”

The pages of the specific volume you are looking at will
provide your first primary source. Note
that records for some ships can be very lengthy and detailed
containing correspondence about
“bounties” paid to the Royal Navy, dramatic details about the
pursuit and capture of the slave ship,
and in certain rare cases, a full “register” of the liberated
Africans removed from the ship. Other
records may be short, in which case be sure to double check the
entire “workbook” rather than one
“sheet” for other references to your ship.
You can use the “Control+F” feature in Microsoft Excel to
search the document, but be sure to
click on “Options” and select “workbook” because the search
will otherwise default to “sheet,”
which will only search a single volume. The most interesting
research papers will use the most
detailed records, so keep an open mind and be willing to change
ships if you find more detailed
records for a different ship that turns out to
be more interesting during your research.
Once you have found your ship look at the
corresponding files in the HCA 35 file in
the OneDrive. Each folder contains one
volume.
For periods with volumes that have been
photographed but have not yet been
indexed, it may be necessary to browse

Each tab or “sheet” is a new volume. Start and end pages for
each case.
8
multiple volumes. Below is a list of the approximate date
ranges covered in each volume. Again,
keep in mind that ships appear in multiple volumes and
correspondence frequently spans multiple
years, so you may need to do some old-fashioned detective work
to find the full correspondence on
your ship.
Approximate Dates of HCA Volumes (from the National
Archives Discovery Catalogue)
HCA 35/1 1821-1822
HCA 35/2 1822-1823
HCA 35/3 1823-1839
HCA 35/4 1823-1824
HCA 35/5 1824
HCA 35/6 1823-1825
HCA 35/7 1825-1826
HCA 35/8 1825-1832
HCA 35/9 1825-1826
HCA 35/10 1826-1827
HCA 35/11 1826-1827
HCA 35/12 1827-1828
HCA 35/13 1828-1829
HCA 35/14 1827-1829
HCA 35/15 1829-1841
HCA 35/16 1829-1830

HCA 35/17 1829-1830
HCA 35/18 1830-1841
HCA 35/19 1830-1831
HCA 35/20 1831-1832
HCA 35/21 1831-1832
HCA 35/22 1831-1842
HCA 35/23 1832-1833
HCA 35/24 1832-1833
HCA 35/25 1832-1841
HCA 35/26 1832-1833
HCA 35/27 1833-1834
HCA 35/28 1833-1834
HCA 35/29 1833-1834
HCA 35/30 1834-1839
HCA 35/31 1834-1839
HCA 35/32 1834-1836
HCA 35/33 1835
HCA 35/34 1835-1836
HCA 35/35 1835-1837
HCA 35/36 1836-1837
HCA 35/37 1836-1838
HCA 35/38 1836-1837
HCA 35/39 1837-1839
HCA 35/40 1837-1838
HCA 35/41 1837-1838
HCA 35/42 1837
HCA 35/43 1836-1837
HCA 35/44 1838
HCA 35/45 1838-1840
HCA 35/46 1839-1842
HCA 35/47 1839
HCA 35/48 1838-1840
HCA 35/49 1839-1841
HCA 35/50 1840
HCA 35/51 1840-1841

HCA 35/52 1840-1842
HCA 35/53 1840-1852
HCA 35/54 1840-1843
HCA 35/55 1840-1841
HCA 35/56 1840-1842
HCA 35/57 1840-1852
HCA 35/58 1841-1843
HCA 35/59 1841-1843
HCA 35/60 1842-1843
HCA 35/61 1841-1854
HCA 35/62 1842-1843
HCA 35/63 1842-1844
HCA 35/64 1843-1850
HCA 35/65 1843-1845
HCA 35/66 1843-1845
HCA 35/67 1844-1850
HCA 35/68 1845
HCA 35/69 1845-1847
HCA 35/70 1845-1846
HCA 35/71 1845-1847
HCA 35/72 1846-1848
HCA 35/73 1846-1848
HCA 35/74 1848-1849
HCA 35/75 1849-1851
HCA 35/76 1854-1857
HCA 35/77 1857-1860
HCA 35/78 1860-1863
HCA 35/79 1863-1864
HCA 35/80 1864-1865
HCA 35/81 1865-1868
HCA 35/82 1868-1871
HCA 35/83 1872-1874
HCA 35/84 1874-1876
HCA 35/85 1876-1878
HCA 35/86 1878-1881

HCA 35/87 1881-1886
HCA 35/88 1887-1891
HCA 35/89 1860-1869
For tips on how to read the documents in the HCA series, please
see the “Working with the HCA
35” appendix below at the end of these guidelines.
Slave Voyages
Next, find your ship in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database
(www.slavevoyages.org) using the
“Vessel Name” query field from under the “Ship, Nation,
Owners” basic variables and limiting the
date range to a few years around your ship’s capture date.
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Record the specific Voyage ID number for this exercise. But
don’t stop here. Look at the very
bottom of the page under “Sources” and identify which
Parliamentary Papers (PP) volumes (e.g.,
XLIX) or Irish University Press (IUP) slave trade volumes the
Slave Voyages database used to create
this page. Make a note of the specific volume and page
numbers of this reference and head to the
Kennedy Library to view these documents in person.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database will allow you to make
comparisons between your ship’s

voyage and more than 36,000 other voyages. You will be able
to determine how common your
ship’s itinerary was and make comparative observations about
its size, the number of captives
aboard, and the frequency with which similar voyages were
made. You may also be able to draw
conclusions about the ratio of adults to children, and males to
females aboard the ship in
comparison with other ships in the same period. You can also
explore the African Names database.
Irish University Press Parliamentary Papers Volumes
Your next step is to visit the third floor of Kennedy Library and
locate HT 1161.I73. In recent
years, Cal Poly has acquired nearly all of the 95 volumes in the
Irish University Press Parliamentary
Papers - Slave Trade series. These volumes reprint facsimiles
of the documentation related to the slave
trade ordered to be published by the House of Commons in the
nineteenth century.
In the easiest cases, the Slave Voyages
“sources” field will give you the precise
volume and pages of the reference to you
need preceded by the abbreviation “IUP.”
However, in other cases, you will need to
find the specific reference by exploring
the Irish University Press volumes by date
and series. Note that when an IUP
volume number is not given, a PP volume
may be along with a date. Browse the
IUP volumes corresponding to your date
range and check the table of contents for
your particular PP volume.

This may take a while, but don’t lose heart
– you may discover some interesting
related material during your search. These volumes may be
checked out like regular library books.
However, please take good care of them if you choose to take
them out of the library. You may
need to inquire of your classmates if your desired volume is
checked out.
In addition, on the website, I have scanned into a PDF file a full
copy of the 55-page subject set
description, which was published as a separate volume in 1969.
If you have the PP number from
Slave Voyages but not the Irish University Press volume and
page number, it may be helpful to
consult this important reference, which is available on the
course website. This PDF is fully
searchable, so you may be able to quickly identify the
appropriate volume of the IUP series by using
“Control+F” in this file and searching for the Roman numeral
corresponding to the Parliamentary
Paper you need.
10
For example: If Slave Voyages gives the reference “PP 1939
XXXI (162),” you could search for
“XXXI” in the scanned PDF of the IUP Slave Trade volumes
guide and be directed to Vol. 68.
Liberated Africans

Next, search Dr. Henry Lovejoy’s Liberated Africans database
(www.liberatedafricans.org) and try to
find the “registers” of liberated Africans taken from your ship.
The database is most thorough for
ships taken to Sierra Leone, but the website is constantly being
updated to include sources from all
around the world. From the homepage do a keyword search in
the main search field using the name
of your ship.
Documents about ships
typically are listed as a
“case,” which when
clicked will take you to
“historical documents”
including registers of
liberated Africans.
Note that there may be
multiple records for
each ship. In general,
sources described as
“event” or “individual”
will be less helpful for this essay than the sources that are
labeled “historical documents.”
Treaties
Now that you have found a wealth of primary sources on
your ship, try your hand at identifying the international
treaty or law that allowed your ship to be captured.
You may start by reviewing the HCA, PP, or IUP
documents you have already found to see which laws that
the slave ship was condemned for violating. Look for

words such as “in violation of” or “in contravention of”
before the names of specific treaties or international
agreements. If the ship is Spanish, Portuguese, or
Brazilian, there will be a bilateral treaty of mutual search
or a treaty to set up a “Court of Mixed Commission.”
For this research paper, you will need to find at least one
primary source related to the particular treaty or law that
permitted your ship to be seized. To do this, try
searching the following online sources linked through the
course website: Hertslet's Treaties (via Hathi Trust), English
Admiralty Reports (via Hathi Trust), Slavery in America and
11
the World (via Hein Online), and Hansard (UK Parliamentary
Debates). At least one of these
databases should help you find the original text of your treaty
and any debate surrounding it. If you
get stuck, try Appendix B or C of Grindal’s Opposing the
Slavers, a PDF of which is on the website as
“Grindal – Appendix B-C – List of Laws & Treaties.” It gives a
chronological list of laws and
treaties. Or see Maeve Ryan’s chapter cited above under
Secondary Sources.
The best source for most of the ships you will research this term
will be Hertslet’s Treaties in Hathi
Trust (see the link on the course website). Although his source
is deceptively called “commercial
treaties” most of the major anti-slave trade treaties negotiated
between Britain and major slave
trading countries are contained in these volumes, since the slave

trade was considered a form of
“commercial” activity. See especially Volumes 2 and 3. Each
volume has a helpful table of contents
arranged by country and lists the treaties covered in that
particular volume.
Newspapers
Next, using the newspaper research skills you developed in
HIST 303, identify any newspapers that
may have reported the capture of your ship or may report
information related to the Royal Navy
vessel that captured your ship or any of the names of people
associated with your case. If you are
unable to find any reports on your specific ship, try searching
for the name of the capturing ship
(e.g., HMS Sybille) using the same databases (Chronicling
America, etc.). Any articles you may find will
help you contextualize the broader Royal Navy anti-slave trade
project and will add to your primary
sources. …
Poetry Is Not a Luxury (1985)
Audre Lorde
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has
direct bearing upon the product
which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring
about through those lives. It is
within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue
our magic and make it realized.
This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we
give name to those ideas which

are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be
birthed, but already felt. That
distillation of experience from which true poetry springs
births thought as dream births
concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes)
understanding.
As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny, and to flourish
within it, as we learn to use the
products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those
fears which rule our lives and form
our silences begin to lose their control over us.
For each of us as women, there is a dark place within where
hidden and growing our true spirit
rises, "Beautiful and tough as chestnut/stanchions against our
nightmare of weakness" and of
impotence.
These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because
they are ancient and hidden; they
have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these
deep places, each one of us
holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of
unexamined and unrecorded emotion
and feeling. The woman's place of power within each of us is
neither white nor surface; it is
dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.
When we view living, in the european mode, only as a problem
to be solved, we then rely
solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these were
what the white fathers told us were
precious.
But as we become more in touch with our own ancient, black,

non-european view of living as
a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn
more and more to cherish our
feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from
where true knowledge and
therefore lasting action comes.
At this point in time, I believe that women carry within
ourselves the possibility for fusion of
these two approaches as keystone for survival, and we come
closest to this combination in our
poetry. I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation
of experience, not the sterile
word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word
poetry to mean — in order to
cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of
our existence. It forms the
quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes
and dreams toward survival and
change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more
tangible action.
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can
be thought. The farthest external
horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems,
carved from the rock experiences
of our daily lives.
As they become known and accepted to ourselves, our feelings,
and the honest exploration of
them, become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds
for the most radical and daring
of ideas, the house of difference so necessary to change
and the conceptualization of any

meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten
ideas I would have once found
intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they
came after dreams and poems.
This is not idle fantasy, but the true meaning of "it feels right to
me." We can train ourselves to
respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them
into a language that matches those
feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does
not yet exist, it is our poetry
which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it
is the skeleton architecture of
our lives.
Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is also not easy to
sustain belief in its efficacy. We
can sometimes work long and hard to establish one beachhead
of real resistance to the deaths
we are expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted
or threatened by canards we
have been socialized to fear, or by the withdrawal of
those approvals that we have been
warned to seek for safety. We see ourselves diminished or
softened by the falsely benign
accusations of childishness, of non-universality, of self-
centeredness, of sensuality. And who
asks the question: am I altering your aura, your ideas, your
dreams, or am I merely moving
you to temporary and reactive action? (Even the latter is no
mean task, but one that must be
rather seen within the context of a true alteration of the texture
of our lives.)
The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black
mothers in each of us-the poet-
whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry

coins the language to express and
charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the
implementation of that freedom.
However, experience has taught us that the action in the now is
also always necessary. Our
children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless
they are nourished, and who
else will feed them the real food without which their dreams
will be no different from ours?
Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The
head will save us. The brain
alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas still
waiting in the wings to save us as
women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new
combinations, extrapolations
and recognitions from within ourselves, along with the renewed
courage to try them out. And
we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to
attempt the heretical actions our
dreams imply and some of our old ideas disparage. In the
forefront of our move toward
change, there is only our poetry to hint at possibility
made real. Our poems formulate the
implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare
make real (or bring action into
accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished
terrors.
For within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by
institutional dehumanization, our
feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable
adjuncts or pleasant pastimes,
feelings were meant to kneel to thought as we were meant to
kneel to men. But women have
survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt

them all already. We have hidden
that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power.
They lie in our dreams, and it is
our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made
realizable through our poems that
give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to
dare.
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and
directly toward and through
promise, is a luxury, then we have given up the core-the
fountain-of our power, our
1
womanness; we have give up the future of our worlds.
For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making
them felt, of examining what
our ideas really mean (feel like) on Sunday morning at 7 AM,
after brunch, during wild love,
making war, giving birth; while we suffer the old longings,
battle the old warnings and fears of
being silent and impotent and alone, while tasting our new
possibilities and strengths.
2

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