Mesurado Beach: A Small African Slave Trade Factory and Its Global Legacy Today

In July 1813 Britain’s Royal Navy raided an illegal slave trading factory in what is today Liberia, scattering its inhabitants around the globe. Two hundred and thirty three slaves were delivered to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to begin lives as ‘recaptives’; two hundred and ninety five who had already been put aboard a slave ship were delivered to the market place at Havana, Cuba; an unknown number fled into the bush. Meanwhile the two British owners of the factory were shipped to Australia as convicts, and the American owner escaped justice and continued to trade in Cuba. Emma Christopher will look at the history of these events and then discuss the global legacy today through the process of tracing the descendents of those held in the factory in July 1813.