It’s The Good Ship, Jesus of Lubeck!
The first British slave ship to reach the Americas was known as Jesus of Lubeck.
If this isn’t a sign of bad things to come, then what is? The first British slave ship to reach the Americas was called Jesus of Lubeck. Between 1562 and 1567, Britain’s very first slave trader, John Hawkins, profited so greatly from the slave trade, that it caught the Queen’s attention. She donated the Jesus of Lubeck and another ship called … wait for it … The Minion, as an investment into Hawkins’ enterprise.
Hawkins’ lucrative business in profiting from human atrocities was abruptly ended in 1567 when his fleet was confronted by Spanish conquistadors in the Gulf of Mexico. Hawkins suffered a heavy loss of 325 men. His casualties are dwarfed by the number of African lives lost within the five years of Hawkins’ fiendish operation and the lives destroyed through brutal oppression of surviving enslaved Africans and the many generations to follow.
