When Did The Brookes Slave Ship Sail?

The Brooks, also known as the Brook, was a British slave ship launched in 1781 in Liverpool. It became famous after prints of her were published in 1788. Between 1782 and 1804, she made 11 voyages from Liverpool in the triangular slave trade, carrying enslaved people to England, Africa, and the Gold Coast. The Brooks had already made four voyages to the Gold Coast between 1782 and 1787.

The Brooks was a model of a real slave ship owned by slave trader Joseph Brooks (1746-1823). Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson commissioned two models of the ship as part of the fight against the slave trade. The image of the enslaved in the Brookes is the iconic photograph of the slave ship Brookes. This was the first time that Western audiences in the 18th century were introduced to the grim reality of the Brooks.

Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as “Brooks.” The Brookes was built in 1781 and operated until 1804 as a slaver, being first registered by Lloyds as the Brook and then the Brooks owned by J. Brooks. The ship was legally entitled to carry 450 slaves under the new Bill.

In 1787, the Brookes embarked 609 enslaved Africans from what is now Ghana in West Africa, with nineteen of whom died during the passage. Built in Nantes, the ship was launched in October 1764 under the name Dannecourt. The image of the enslaved in the Brookes symbolized the cruelties of the trade in enslaved Africans of the 18th and 19th centuries and the struggle to abolish that trade.