Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship.

Description:

Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship. London: James Phillips, 1789.
Large-format broadside with an engraved illustration on the left, and the text, Description of a Slave-Ship, printed typographically on the right; rare, ESTC locates only five copies in American libraries; large fold between the sections, chipping to edges, slight mat burn, faint water stain in upper left corner, printed on heavy rag paper, 27 x 21 in.
This broadside represents an indelible image of enslaved people bound and stowed like cargo aboard the ship Brooks, which carried between 400 and 600 captives. The point of view inspiring this document is abolitionist. "To persons unacquainted with the mode of carrying on this system of trading in human flesh, these plans and sections will appear rather a fiction, than a real representation of a slave ship."
Estimate $600-800


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