The Black Joke: The True Story of One British Ship's Battle Against the Slave Trade

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The author follows the journey of a single slaver ship captured by the British and used as an anti-slavery patrol brig in the years that followed.

During her service with the Navy, Black Joke 's crew included an assistant surgeon, three midshipmen, thirty seamen, and five marines, as well as a number of Liberian Kroomen for use on detached boat service. They argue that the context in which a show gets made, including the production schedule and the identity of the channel as well as the ways in which the gags reflect dominant media conversations about the topic, should be taken into account when assessing whether the jokes contribute to or destroy harmful stereotypes. My interest was more in maritime history than the political angle, but this book does such an excellent job shedding light on the despicably horrific nature of the slave trade, that one can't help but become enmeshed in that angle of the story as well.Simon Weaver, “ Jokes, Rhetoric and Embodied Racism: A Rhetorical Discourse Analysis of the Logics of Racist Jokes on the Internet,” Ethnicities 11, no.

Initially a slaving vessel itself, the Black Joke was captured in 1827 and repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots.Forced to surrender, it was taken to Freetown in Sierra Leone, then a British colony and main base of the WAS.

The Gertrudis was taken in January 1828 after a 24-hour chase and secured the release of 155 enslaved people, 80 of whom were children. Enslaved Africans on arrival at Freetown became British, whether they wanted to or not, and were given a number of options. As Rooks notes with a withering observation, “nothing, sometimes not even slavery, seemed to offend British sensibilities like nudity”. The third HMS Black Joke was probably built in Baltimore in 1824, becoming the Brazilian slave ship Henriquetta.

She had 569 enslaved Africans on board "and had landed at Bahia 3,360 slaves in the last two years". Built as a Baltimore clipper (possibly as the vessel Griffen [1]), Henriquetta (also Henri Quatre) was a brig designed to be fast.