File:Paquito de Cabo Verde Portuguese Slave Brig.tif

This image depicts the liberated Africans being taken from the slave ship to a British naval vessel. The hand-written caption in English under the drawing states "Paquito de Cabo Verde Portuguese slave brig captured by boats of the H. M. S. Scout on 11th Jany. 1837 in the Bonny River. She had mounted 2 18 prs. [guns] with a crew of 35 men and 576 slaves on board; TF Birch (engraver)." This drawing of a large canoe was taking people to an off-shore European vessel at Bonny in the Bight of Biafra region. The Peabody Essex Museum purchased a photograph of the illustration in 1941. The PEM has no record of where it purchased the photograph. Research in London demonstrates it was obtained from the National Maritime Museum, London (neg. PU5861) which has many drawings of British naval vessels and captured slaving ships. Shipping records show that the Paquete de Cabo Verde was, in fact, detained in Bonny on the above date and was bound for Cuba; although nominally registered as Portuguese, it probably belonged to owners in Spanish Havana. Daniel Mannix published suggested the people in the canoe were slaves being taken to a waiting slave ship (see Black Cargoes (New York, 1962), after p. 146).