Zanzibar, Tanzania 1907
A British sailor removes the leg chains off an enslaved African man who had worn them for three years, 1907.
The photos were taken by Joseph Chidwick who was serving aboard the HMS Sphinx at the time. The men shown in the photos had escaped from a slave-trading post off the coast of Oman when they heard the Royal Navy was nearby.
Chidwick's son, Samuel, donated these photos to the Royal Navy Museum in 2007. He had this to say:
"The pictures were taken by my father who was serving aboard HMS Sphinx while on armed patrol of the Zanzibar and Mozambique coast in about 1907. They caught quite a few slavers and those particular slaves that are in the pictures happened while he was on watch. That night a dhow (sailing vessel) sailed by and the slaves were all chained together. He raised the alarm and they got them onto the ship and got the chains knocked off them. They then questioned them and sent a party of marines ashore to try to track the slave traders down. They caught two of them and I believe they were of Arabic origin. My father thought the slave trade was a despicable thing that was going on, the slaves were treated very badly so when they got the slavers they didn’t give them a very nice time”.
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