The horrors of the transatlantic slave trade

An example of one of the more potent images in the early days of the Abolitionist Movement. On the left are versions of Captain Parry's famous diagrams of how slavers 'stowed' the most slaves in a single ship, here augmented with a vignette, ''Representation of an Insurrection on board a Slave-Ship'', illustrating how the ship was defended. On the right is letterpress relating Parry's report to a House of Commons committee. Parry was sent to report on slave ships in the wake of the Slave Trade Act of 1788, the first English law regulating the trade, which limited the number of slaves per ship. Parry states by following the plans, the ship (the Brooks) should carry 482 men, women and children, but actually carried 609. The last sentence concludes that is is a moral and religious duty to end 'one of the greatest evils at this day existing upon the earth'. This version was published in ''An Essay on Colonisation Particularly Applied to the Western Coast of Africa'', by Swedish abolitionist Carl Bernhard Wadström (1746-99). In this work he argued that a colony would profit more from trade with the locals than exploited them as slaves.