Voyage of Despair

In 1693, Captain Thomas Phillips embarked on a voyage from London to Guinea, where he purchased enslaved Africans on behalf of the Royal African Company. The subsequent journey across the Atlantic witnessed a tragic toll, with hundreds of the enslaved captives, and many of the crew, losing their lives before the ship reached the shores of Barbados. Three centuries later, in 2010, Brecon Town Council made a startling and controversial decision – to honour Captain Phillips with a plaque without reference to his slave-trading activities. In this engaging and original narrative, Rosemary Caldicott analyses the pages of Phillips’s journal to reveal the day-to-day brutality that defined the triangular trade, uncovering the forgotten stories of the victims in this dark chapter in history.