Not A BRHG Event
Our guest speaker on Tuesday, October 29th at 6.30pm at the Newport Rising Hub will be Rosemary Caldicott, a social history researcher and author. During the event, Rosemary will provide insights from her book Voyage of Despair, focusing on lesser-known aspects of history. Rosemary Caldicott is recognized for her commitment to revealing untold narratives from history. Through her research, she offers a new insight into the history of Captain Thomas Phillips and the slave ship Hannibal, delving […]
Not A BRHG Event
People’s University of Fishponds – Sunday 30 June 2024 – 7:00pm – The Nissen Hut, Eastville Park, Bristol. In 1693, Captain Thomas Phillips embarked on a voyage from London to Guinea in the Hannibal, 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.Fast forward to 2010, three […]
On the weekend of 7-9 June 2020 the Brecon plaque to a slave trading captain was stripped from the wall on which it was erected in 2010. Poet Marvin Thompson was inspired to write the following poem: On the Anniversary of the death of George Floyd: Dear Brecon Town Council, A mouth drying to mud, tightening lungs and eyes on the edge of tears: that was the reaction of my Black British body when, on this wind-lash of a lockdown morning, I read who you class as a role model for my Welsh, Mixed […]
In 1693 the Royal African Company captain Thomas Phillips from Brecon, Wales set sail in the Hannibal from Gravesend to West Africa to purchase enslaved African people to be sold in Barbados. The journey was a disaster. 328 of his African captives died during the voyage, a horrific mortality rate of 47%. In 2018, while researching for the book Nautical Women, (BRHG, 2019), it was discovered that Brecon Town Council had erected a plaque to Phillips in 2010 without reference to his role in […]
In the Welsh town of Brecon, upon an old wall, along Captains Walk (a name based on a fiction), is a slate plaque commemorating the life of a slave trader who resided in the town. The plaque was commissioned by Brecon Town Councillors in 2009, erected in October 2010 (during Black History Month), and makes no reference to the fact that Captain Phillips was a 17th century slaver. Captain Thomas Phillips was the commander of the infamous slave ship the Hannibal in the 1690s. He was directly […]
