It is a dramatic, disconcerting image, so disconcerting that it threatens to overwhelm whatever narrative one might construct around it. A black female is hoisted by one leg, clad only in a striped cotton wrap. She is hoisted up for all to see. The captain, one John Kimber, leers at the viewer, whip in hand. He is looking forward to flogging this girl for her ‘virjen modesty’, an act that bewilders one of the sailors. ‘My Eyes, Jack,’ he exclaims, ‘our Girles at Wapping are never flogged for their modesty.’ To which his crew mate retorts, ‘By G—d, that's too bad, if he had taken her to bed with him it would be well enough, Split me, I’m almost sick of this Black Business.’ The seamen take the sexual commerce of the ship for granted. The girl is fair game. She is a slave, a commodity. Has she refused the captain's advances? Is he into humiliation and bondage? Is this what turns him on? The seaman hoisting up the slave, dressed like the others in his portside best, is unhappy with the assignment. He has a ‘good mind to let her go’, although quite why is unclear. As for the three female slaves in the background, two of whom are chained by the hands, it is impossible to know how they are reacting to the spectacle. They are huddled together, whispering, involuntary witnesses to the torture.

Isaac Cruikshank produced this print on 10 April 1792, a week after the flogging and the subsequent death of the slave was disclosed by William Wilberforce in the House of Commons. Wilberforce described the event in a sentimental mode, horrified that a fifteen-year-old girl should be subjected to such depravity. He didn't sexualise the punishment like Cruikshank, although the details he offered of the girl's suspension, by wrists and ankles, could lend itself to the artist's interpretation. Cruikshank certainly played with the ambiguity. The spectacle is both horrific and salacious. It could touch evangelical and louche taste in its degeneracy.

I’ll begin by noting that this story is in many respects a Bristol one, for the ship Kimber commanded was the Recovery, a 189-ton vessel registered in the port and owned by four Bristol merchants. When the Recovery sailed from Kingroad at the mouth of the Avon, Bristol was still a very important Atlantic port.