PREDATOR OF THE SEAS, a history of the slaveship that fought for emancipation

342pp., b/w & colour illus., maps, hardback, d.w., Yale University Press, New Haven, 2024

ISBN: 9780300263992 

In 1827 the Royal Navy purchased a Baltimore clipper and renamed her the Black Joke. Assigned to the Preventative Squadron, she patrolled the west coast of Africa and freed 3,692 captives from enslavement. But in her previous life as the Henriqueta, the Black Joke had been a slave ship.

“This tightly-focused account of the horrific trade that took enslaved Africans to Brazil, and the moral ambiguities of Britain’s nineteenth-century anti-slavery patrols, is a page-turner - searing and atmospheric.” Margarette Lincoln, author of Trading in War

“Abolishing the slave trade was one thing, enforcing that abolition quite another. Predator of the Seas brings a new perspective to the story - the view from the deck of a vessel which served on both sides.” Michael Bundock, author of The Fortunes of Francis Barber

Stephen Taylor is a former foreign correspondent for The Times. His books include The Mighty Nimrod, a life of Frederick Courteney Selous; Livingstone's Tribe, a journey from Zanzibar to the Cape; The Caliban Shore, the fate of the Grosvenor castaways and Defiance, the life and choices of Lady Anne Barnard. He lives in Berkshire.