Dr. John O Jensen

Excerpt - Over nine chapters, a preface, and extensive epilogue, the book provides a vivid retelling of two sweeping historical dramas and links them to larger events through the threads of slavery and disease. Chapters one through six describe the formation of the abolitionist Bolama Association in England, their passage to West Africa on the Hankey, and the faltering and ultimately unsuccessful effort to establish a British colony on an island now part of Guinea Bissau. The book follows the Hankey and the spread of yellow fever across the
Atlantic to the Caribbean and finally to Philadelphia, where Smith devotes two chapters to the well-known story of the 1793 Philadelphia epidemic. The epilogue follows the Hankey’s final journey to England, its government-ordered burning, and describes the legacy of the voyage.