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Capture of a suspected slave ship...
Capture of a suspected slave ship...
Item # 707053
June 19, 1859
NEW YORK TIMES, June 19, 1859
* Slaver - slave ship Orion
* African Slave Trade Patrol
The front page has two-thirds of a column headed: "The Suspected Slaver - Description of the Belssel--Manifest of her Cargo...". The text notes in part: "The bark Orion...which arrived in this port...from the coast of Africa...been seized...upon suspicion of intention to engage in the slave trade..." with much more.
Eight pages, a bit irregular at the spine from disbinding, nice condition.
background: The Orion was an illegal American slave ship, a 453-ton three-masted bark built in 1846 on the Sheepscot River in Maine, which began making clandestine slaving voyages from New York in 1859 despite the U.S. ban on the transatlantic slave trade since 1808. In April 1859, she sailed to the West African coast, taking on board hundreds of captured Africans at locations such as Cabinda (present-day Angola), intending to transport them to markets in the Caribbean or Cuba. Her activities were part of the last decades of the illicit trade, occurring under constant threat of interception by British and American naval forces patrolling against illegal slavers. On 30 November 1859, the Orion was seized by the British warship HMS Pluto off the African coast and brought to St. Helena, where surviving captives were freed. The ship’s crew and officers were later prosecuted under U.S. law, receiving fines and prison sentences, highlighting both the persistence of illegal slavery and the growing international enforcement efforts against it.
Category: Pre-Civil War
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