A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Before you Read the Plaque about Turner's “Slave Ship”

A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Before you Read the Plaque about Turner's “Slave Ship”
Excerpt:

(The Slave Ship or Slavers Throwing Overboard the
Dead and Dying — Typhoon Coming On, by J. M. W. Turner,
1775-1851, English painter, watercolorist, and printmaker)

Captains of slave ships carrying people in chains from Africa across the Middle Passage into slavery in the New World would throw the sick and dying overboard. The captain and the owners could then collect insurance for the lost “cargo”; there was no compensation for the lives of human beings lost to illness...