A rare large Liverpool creamware 'Brooks Slavery Ship' jug p...

Hammer

£1,500

A rare large Liverpool creamware 'Brooks Slavery Ship' jug printed and enamelled on one side with a frigate wearing the red ensign and inscribed 'Success To The Brooks', the other with a black print depicting 'Faith, Hope & Charity', further small prints and painted decoration below the spout including 'I E W- Gon Before but Not Lost', probably Herculaneum, circa 1790-1800, 24cm [significant damage]. * The jug represents a notorious chapter in British maritime history. Thousands of West African slaves were shipped via the horrendous 'Middle Passage', often taking in excess of six weeks, to a life of slavery in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. The frigate Brooks, built in 1781 was owned by a well-known Liverpool merchant Joseph Brooks Junior [1746-1827] and was the subject of a shocking 1788 broadsheet depicting how over six-hundred slaves were accommodated head-to-toe in the hold, the image subsequently being used in the campaign to abolish slavery. The act banning the slave trade throughout the British Empire was passed in 1807, approximately ten years after the jug was made.