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Throwing Slaves Overboard to Drown and Other Dark Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan July 26, 2020 35 min

Plateau - Slave ship — Slave ship hold. History Channel

34. Appealing and Reversing a Shocking Decision

The insurers appealed the trial court’s verdict, to have it set aside and for the case to be retried. In a hearing before the Court of the King’s Bench, the Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of Mansfield, and two other King’s Bench judges, reversed the lower court’s decision.

The reversal was not made on grounds of humanity, or because the slavers had committed murder. Instead, the court reversed based on newly introduced evidence showing that the slaves had been thrown overboard because of the ship captain’s negligence. The case was sent back to the lower court for a new trial.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.