1840: Joseph Mallord William Turner exhibited his iconic painting “Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)” in London t…

1840: Joseph Mallord William Turner exhibited his iconic painting “Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)” in London to promote the cause of abolition. The work was based on the notorious 1781 voyage of the Zong, during which officers threw 132 living Africans into the sea to claim insurance compensation. Although the subsequent legal case in 1785 outrageously compared the captives to “horses,” the memory of the atrocity remained a potent tool for activists. Turner’s visceral representation used the event half a century later to highlight the ongoing inhumanity of the trade to a global audience.