Ship of death: A voyage that changed the Atlantic world.

A multi-disciplinary account from the perspectives of the history of the slave trade, the anti-slavery movement and medical history, of the voyage of the Hankey, a small British ship that circled the Atlantic in 1792-93, causing a pandemic of yellow fever. The voyage was originated by a group of high-minded British colonists who planned to establish a colony free of slavery in West Africa. When the colony failed the ship set sail from Africa for the Caribbean and the North America, carrying, as was later understood, mosquitoes from Africa infected with yellow fever virus. The Hankey traveled from one port to the next, spreading yellow fever, leading to the death of tens of thousands of people in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charleston.