Ship of Death

It is no exaggeration to say that the Hankey, one small British ship that circled the Atlantic Ocean in 1792 and 1793, transformed Atlantic World history. This extraordinary book tells the just-uncovered story of the Hankey, from its altruistic beginnings to its disastrous end, and describes the ship's fateful impact upon people from West Africa to Philadelphia, Haiti to London. Billy G. Smith, who has chased the story of the Hankey from archive to archive across several continents, recounts the saga that began with a group of high-minded British colonists who planned to establish a colony free of slavery in West Africa. When the colony failed, the ship set sail for the Caribbean and then North America carrying, as it turned out, mosquitoes infected with yellow fever. The resulting pandemic as the Hankey travelled from one port to the next was catastrophic. In the United States, tens of thousands died in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston. The few survivors on the Hankey eventually limped back to London, hopes dashed and numbers decimated. Smith links the voyage and its deadly cargo to some of the most significant events of the era – the success of the Haitian slave revolution, Napoleon's decision to sell the Louisiana Territory, a change in the geopolitical situation of the new United States – and spins a captivating tale of unintended consequences.