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Podcast: Dan Snow's History Hit
Episode: HMS Black Joke
Description: Please note that this episode contains mentions of racial trauma, slavery and violence.The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of global slave trading. Once a slaving vessel itself, only a lucky capture in 1827 allowed it to be repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots.A.E. Rooks is an expert in this little-discussed facet of the transatlantic slave trad...