Here are some brutal facts about the French slavers:
– Slaver voyages: France, 4,200; British North America/United States, 1,500.
– Slaves transported: France 1,250,000, British North America/United States,
300,000.
– Slaves delivered to: French West Indies: 1,600,000, British North America/United
States, 500,000.
In the history of the Atlantic slave trade, the French turned four times as many Africans into slaves as the Americans did, they used them far more brutally, and French slavers not only got a head-start on Americans, they continued the slave trade — legally — until 1830, long after the rest of Europe had given it up. And they kept at it clandestinely until after the U.S. Civil War. France officially abolished slavery in its colonies only 14 years before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and then only under pressure from slave uprisings. Get the facts
.
L’ AURORE was built in 1784 in France by the shipbuilder H. Penevert. The length amounted to 31 m, the width to 8.7 m, the displacement to 500 tons at 4 m draught. From France ships of this kind sailed to the coast of Angola, in order to take over 600 slaves for the journey to Haiti, at that time French colony Saint Domingue. From there colonial goods were bought, usually sugar, and transported to France.
