1660-1807: The Gambia River served as the steadiest source of enslaved people from the Upper Guinea region, remaining navigable for small oceangoing vessels …

1660-1807: The Gambia River served as the steadiest source of enslaved people from the Upper Guinea region, remaining navigable for small oceangoing vessels up to 125 miles inland. British slave ships dominated this traffic, accounting for approximately four out of every five captives who were embarked from the river’s estuary. These individuals were predominantly from the Mandinka, Wolof, and Fulani ethnic groups and were often landed in the British mainland North American colonies or the Caribbean islands of Grenada and Dominica. The presence of the largest British fort in West Africa outside the Gold Coast further solidified the region’s importance to the trans-Atlantic trade system.