Modeling the Marie-Séraphique: A Ship of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Overview

In this short documentary, members of an international team of scholars and visual artists describe to videographer Steve Bransford the process of creating a 3D model of the Marie-Séraphique, a Trans-Atlantic ship active in the trade of enslaved persons from 1769 to 1774. Making use of unique surviving illustrations and details from historical texts, 3D modelers at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship reconstructed the Marie-Séraphique. Any model will fail to convey the horror and violence endured by the captives onboard. This depiction offers insight into the making of such vessels, their design for conveyance, surveillance, and control.

Modeling the Marie-Séraphique

The Marie-Séraphique

Video Permissions

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Recommended Resources

Text

Eltis, David and David Richardson. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

Gualdé, Krystel. Nantes and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Nantes, France: les Éditions Château des ducs de Bretagne, 2018.

Radburn, Nicholas and David Eltis. "Visualizing the Middle Passage: The Brooks and the Reality of Ship Crowding in the Transatlantic Slave Trade." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 49, no. 4 (2019): 533–565.

Walvin, James. The Slave Trade. London: Thames and Hudson, 2011.

Web

Data Semantics Lab at Kansas State University. "Ontology Modeling for the Slave Trade." Accessed August 2, 2022. https://daselab.cs.ksu.edu/projects/ontology-modeling-slave-trade.

Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. "Henry Louis Gates Introduces the New Slave Voyages Website." February 7, 2019. Video, 6:08. https://vimeo.com/315957327?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=42502809.

Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. "Slave Ship, "L'Aurore", a 3D Video." February 4, 2019. Video, 4:46. https://vimeo.com/315299464.

"Onboard a Slave Ship." MCC Slave Voyage The Unity: 1761–1763. Accessed August 9, 2022. https://eenigheid.slavenhandelmcc.nl/slaves-journey/?lang=en.

Slave Voyages. "Introductory Maps." Accessed August 2, 2022. https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/maps#introductory-.

Slave Voyages. "Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Estimates." Accessed August 2, 2022. https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates?selected_tab=timeline.

Understanding Slavery. Accessed August 9, 2022. https://understandingslavery.com/.