Liverpool Packet - Canadian Privateer

Canadian Privateer

The Liverpool Packet was originally the American slave ship Severn, which HMS Tartarus captured in August 1811. The Halifax Vice Admiralty Court condemned Severn as an illegal slave ship as both Britain and the United States had recently outlawed the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The court then ordered her sold at auction. Enos Collins and other investors then purchased her in October 1811. They renamed her Liverpool Packet, although she sometimes bore the nickname The Black Joke, a name of several infamous slave ships. At first her owners used the small and fast schooner as a packet ship carrying mail and passengers between Halifax and Liverpool, Nova Scotia.