Drake sailed on board the slave ship, Gloria, or María da Gloria, which made numerous voyages between various ports along along the West African coast, including the Forests of West Africa, Voltaic Region, Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra. The ship mostly went to Brazil, including Bahia and Rio de Janeiro (for lengthy descriptions see p. 89-90). Richard Drake, who was born Philip and raised in the English midlands, was orphaned at four years old. His uncle, Richard Willing, was a slave trader and introduced Drake to the business. As a teenager, Drake traded with Asante and later married the youngest daughter of a Dahomey king. Drake's involvement in the slave trade occurred during the British abolition movement. The last known voyage of the Gloria took place in 1847. The illustration is also in the 1972 reprint of Drake's work (Metro Books, Northbrook, Ill.), foreward by Blyden Jackson.

Richard Drake, Revelations of a Slave Smuggler (New York, 1860), p. 28. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-30818.

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

E017

Atlantic

"Scene in the Hold of the "Blood Stained Gloria"", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed November 30, 2023, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2555