The Slave Ship - History

History

J. M. W. Turner was inspired to paint “The Slave Ship” in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Although slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire since 1833, Turner and many other abolitionists believed that slavery should be outlawed around the world. Turner thus exhibited his painting during the anti-slavery conference, intending for Prince Albert, who was speaking at the event, to see it and be moved to increase British anti-slavery efforts. Placed next to the painting were lines from Turner’s own untitled poem, written in 1812:

“Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;

Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds

Declare the Typhon's coming.

Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard

The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains

Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!

Where is thy market now?"

While the impact of the painting cannot be accurately measured, it may have contributed to the passing of an 1843 law in which the British Empire pledged to more effectively suppress slavery and the slave trade. Once that law had been passed, a cascade of anti-slavery laws from many other Atlantic countries were passed, dramatically decreasing the amount of slavery in the nineteenth century.