slave ship
Noun: * A vessel specifically designed or used for transporting enslaved people: A "slave ship" refers to a ship whose primary function was the forced transportation of enslaved Africans, primarily across the Atlantic Ocean, from their homelands to the Americas and other colonies during the transatlantic slave trade.
The term "slave ship" is used to describe the historical vessels central to the transatlantic slave trade. It carries heavy connotations of human suffering, brutality, and a specific period of colonial history. * The conditions aboard a slave ship were notoriously inhumane and overcrowded. * Historians study the logs of slave ships to understand the scale of the trade. * The museum exhibit featured a model of an 18th-century slave ship.
- Metaphorical Use: The term can be used metaphorically to describe any situation or system characterized by extreme confinement, forced labor, and a lack of freedom.
- The factory was run like a slave ship, with workers given no breaks.
- Historical Scholarship: In academic contexts, the term is precise and refers to a distinct class of vessel within maritime and economic history.
- Slaver (noun): This is a synonym for "slave ship." It can also refer to a person who dealt in or owned slaves.
- The naval squadron was tasked with intercepting slavers.
- Middle Passage: This is the specific term for the sea journey undertaken by slave ships from West Africa to the West Indies.
- Millions died during the Middle Passage.
- Slaver: A direct synonym for the vessel.
- Guineaman: A historical term for a ship trading along the Guinea coast of Africa, often involved in the slave trade.
- Blackbirder: An archaic term for a ship or person engaged in kidnapping people to sell into slavery, especially in the Pacific.
- The Transatlantic Slave Trade: The broader historical system in which slave ships operated.
- Human Cargo: A dehumanizing term historically used to refer to the enslaved people transported on these ships.
- Slave Trade: The commercial enterprise of capturing, selling, and transporting enslaved people.
-
a ship used to transport slaves from their homes to places of bondage