Accession Number

2002.007.0001

Creation Date

circa 1700

Description

This large copper cauldron from the 1700 London-based slave ship Henrietta Marie was used to cook food for the 200+ African captives carried onboard.  The cauldron is 71 centimeters tall by 85 cm wide and 75 cm deep, with a volume of 0.45 cubic meters (0.6 cubic yards) – big enough to hold the large amount of food prepared daily for so many people as they were carried across the Atlantic Ocean. 

An eighteenth-century slave ship surgeon gives an idea of what was served to the Africans when he wrote, “The diet of the negroes, while onboard, consists chiefly of horse-beans, boiled to the consistence of a pulp; of boiled yams and rice, and sometimes of a small quantity of beef or pork.” The Henrietta Marie cauldron is still encrusted with corals and other marine growth that formed on it during its three centuries underwater.  Explore a detail of the coral growth on the cauldron here: https://skfb.ly/6urvF