The Fearless Benjamin Lay

Freedom Ship is a gripping history of the enslaved African Americans who stowed away on vessels that carried them to liberty. Up to 100,000 fugitives successfully fled the horrors of bondage in the American South. Many moved northwards through a network of secret routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. Thousands of others, most of them completely unknown, escaped by sea. Their dramatic accounts of whispered conspiracy and billowing sails make Freedom Ship essential and en­thralling reading.<BR><BR>From the docks of Savannah and Charleston to Boston Harbor and beyond, Freedom Ship traces the seekers who turned their sights to the sea. Stowaways regularly arrived in Britain aboard cotton ships bound for Liverpool. Moses Roper, one of the most determined runaways in American history, travelled 350 miles through slave coun­try before boarding the Napoleon and sailing for England. He became the first self-emancipated bondsman to lecture in the cause of abolition in Britain. Legendary abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman both saw the shipping lanes as paths to freedom.<BR><BR>Marcus Rediker displays a prodigious command of ar­chival research to embark on a thrilling journey along the Atlantic seaboard, following those who risked everything in a maritime pursuit of freedom.

Mehr als drei Jahrhunderte lang brachten Sklavenschiffe 14 Millionen Menschen von den Küsten Afrikas über den Atlantik in die Neue Welt. Etwa fünf Millionen sind in Afrika, auf den Schiffen und im ersten Jahr der Sklavenarbeit gestorben. 'Das Sklavenschiff' ist eine Geschichte der Tragödie und des Schreckens, aber auch ein Epos der Widerstandsfähigkeit. Der Autor hat mit ihm ein Standardwerk über eines der erschütterndsten Kapitel des Kolonialismus und der Menschheitsgeschichte geschaffen, das in zahlreiche Sprachen übersetzt wurde.