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At Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (YouTube)
From David Dabydeen's poem "Turner"
Notes on poem by David Dabydeen
George Landow
Albert Boime
The Zong Massacre
Lyme Regis Museum
Dorset Connections with the slave-trade
The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840
"The intensity of Turner's painting is such that I believe the artist in private must have savoured the sadism he publicly denounced"- David Dabydeen, from his preface.
Thomas Fowell Buxton (MP for Weymouth) on the 1783 incident which inspiired Turner's painting:
The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (1839; 1840). From Chapter II, "Mortality":
The History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, Thomas Clarkson, 1808
Vols 1 and 2, Facsimile pdf
http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1071/0591-01_Bk.pdf
http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1072/0591-02_Bk.pdf
from Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, vol. 1 CHAPTER III.
In this year, certain underwriters desired to be heard against Gregson and others of Liverpool, in the case of the ship Zong, captain Collingwood, alleging that the captain and officers of the said vessel threw overboard one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, in order to defraud them, by claiming the value of the said slaves, as if they had been lost in a natural way. In the course of the trial, which afterwards came on, it appeared, that the slaves on board the Zong were very sickly; that sixty of them had already died; and several were ill and likely to die, when the captain proposed to James Kelsall, the mate, and others, to throw several of them overboard, stating “that if they died a natural death, the loss would fall upon the owners of the ship, but that, if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the underwriters.” He selected accordingly one hundred and thirty-two of the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea; but the rest with a noble resolution would not suffer the officers to touch them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.
The History of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, vol. 1 CHAPTER III.
But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence of the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an account of it by Mr. Sharp in the newspapers, made such an impression upon others, that new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find Thomas Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured Africans. He had lived to see his poem of The Dying Negro, which had been published in 1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had written a letter to a friend in America, who was the possessor of slaves, to dissuade him by a number of arguments from holding such property. And now, when the knowledge of the case of the ship Zong was spreading, he published that letter under the title of Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes.
The History of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, vol. 1 CHAPTER III.
In the year 1784, Dr. Gregory produced his Essays Historical and Moral. He took an opportunity of disseminating in these a circumstantial knowledge of the Slave-trade, and an equal abhorrence of it at the same time. He explained the manner of procuring slaves in Africa; the treatment of them in the passage, (in which he mentioned the case of the ship Zong,) and the wicked and cruel treatment of them in the colonies. He recited and refuted also the various arguments adduced in defence of the trade. He showed that it was destructive to our seamen. He produced many weighty arguments also against the slavery itself. He proposed clauses for an act of parliament for the abolition of both; showing the good both to England and her colonies from such a measure, and that a trade might be substituted in Africa, in various articles, for that which he proposed to suppress. By means of the diffusion of light like this, both of a moral and political nature, Dr. Gregory is entitled to be ranked among the benefactors to the African race....
The History of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, vol. 1 CHAPTER IV.
But I must now take my leave of the Quakers as a public body* , and go back to the year 1783, to record an event, which will be found of great importance in the present history, and in which only individuals belonging to the Society were concerned. This event seems to have arisen naturally out of existing or past circumstances. For the Society, as I have before stated, had sent a petition to Parliament in this year, praying for the abolition of the Slave-trade. It had also laid the foundation for a public distribution of the books as just mentioned, with a view of enlightening others on this great subject. The case of the ship Zong, which I have before had occasion to explain, had occurred this same year. A letter also had been presented, much about the same time, by Benjamin West, from Anthony Benezet before mentioned, to our Queen, in behalf of the injured Africans, which she had received graciously. These subjects occupied at this time the attention of many Quaker families, and among others, that of a few individuals, who were in close intimacy with each other. These, when they met together, frequently conversed upon them. They perceived, as facts came out in conversation, that there was a growing knowledge and hatred of the Slave-trade, and that the temper of the times was ripening towards its abolition. Hence a disposition manifested itself among these, to unite as labourers for the furtherance of so desirable an object. An union was at length proposed and approved of...
Aspects of Slavery
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A much more coherent poem than David Dabydeen's (by John Wain), about the "beauty-in-terror" of another Turner painting, "The Shipwreck", can be found in "Voices in the Gallery, Poems and Pictures Chosen by Dannie and Joan Abse", The Tate Gallery, 1986.
Available here, John Wain, Selected Poems and Memoirs (pdf), page 151
A commentary on the Dabydeen poem (David Dabydeen and Turner’s Sublime Aesthetic, by Sarah Fulford)
Wikipedia article:
"J. M. W. Turner was inspired to paint "The Slave Ship" in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Although slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire since 1833, Turner and many other abolitionists believed that slavery should be outlawed around the world. Turner thus exhibited his painting during the anti-slavery conference, intending for Prince Albert, who was speaking at the event, to see it and be moved to increase British anti-slavery efforts. Placed next to the painting were lines from Turner's own untitled poem, written in 1812:
"Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying – ne'er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?"
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Turner and The Sea Exhibition, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (Telegraph, with video)
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