Trouvadore
| History | |
|---|---|
| Fate: | Wrecked March 1841 |
| General characteristics | |
Trouvadore was a Spanish slave ship that was shipwrecked in 1841 near East Caicos in the course of a run transporting Africans to be illegally sold to the sugarcane plantations in Cuba. As the United Kingdom had a treaty with Spain prohibiting the international slave trade and had abolished slavery in its colonies in 1833, it freed the 192 slaves who survived the wreck. Individuals and families, a total of 168 Africans, were placed with salt proprietors for apprenticeships in the Turks and Caicos Islands; the remaining 24 Africans were settled in Nassau.
Slave trading was illegal in Spain, as the country had outlawed the slave trade and had a treaty with the United Kingdom to that effect. However, governors in Cuba often turned a blind eye to the trade, as they believed slave labour was integral to the profitability of the sugarcane plantations producing their most important commodity crop. The exact route of Trouvadore is not known, but the records state that new crew members were picked up in São Tomé, a Portuguese colony off the coast of Africa that still legally traded enslaved Africans.
The exact number of Africans loaded onto Trouvadore is not recorded but would have been around 280-300. When the ship wrecked off East Caicos in March 1841, all the 20 crew members and 193 Africans aboard survived. This suggested that around 100 slaves had died during the Atlantic crossing, a typical loss for a venture of this kind. On landing on East Caicos, a number of the Africans fled into the bush, and a woman was shot dead by one of the crew.
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