These photos of Africans aboard the HMS Daphne taken circa 1868 came down the HarmMovement listserv a few weeks ago – just had time to post. (Thanx Bryan!)

Apparently, the HMS Daphne was an anti-slaving ship that rescued these boys from Indian Ocean slave traders who captured people from “mainland East Africa and sold [them] in markets in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.” In the photo at the top of this post you can see people who are probably the slave traders in the left part of the photo, but this info is unconfirmed.

Here are some sketches of slave ships and anti-slaving ships capturing them.

It is my guess that when the HMS Daphne captured the slaving ships they destroyed them and took everyone – slaves and slavers — on board. Read more about the photos at CarlaGirl’s blog. Indeed a very interesting look at another system of African slave trading (besides the trans-atlantic slave trade).

Here’s an article about what it was like to be human cargo.

Son of the South is collecting, and has a very interesting collection of, slave photos. Or photos of ex-slaves and some still in slavery at the time the picture was taken. I am a little put off however by the captions under the pictures. They say stuff like “slave with his dog” and “slave sitting on steps” as if “enslaved man” etc. would be so hard to write? A subtle difference, but an important one I think in terms of the perceived dignity of the subjects in the photos.