This is coolbert:
See my previous blog entry Preventative.
Now for the rest of the story.
The Black Joke. A captured slave trading vessel from the era of the suppression of the African Slave Trade. Royal Naval warships using captured and impressed slave trading vessels to patrol the West African coast.
"The West Africa Squadron, also known as the Preventative Squadron, was a squadron of the British Royal Navy whose goal was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. Formed in 1808 after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 and based out of Portsmouth, England, it remained an independent command until 1856 and then again from 1866 to 1867."
One of the foremost vessels [performance of crew and ship outstanding] in the elimination and eventual abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade the HMS Black Joke.
Devoted readers to the blog will find the name Black Joke to be incongruous? Even totally inappropriate?
"incongruous: adjective - Lacking in harmony; incompatible. Not in keeping with what is correct, proper, or logical; inappropriate."
Unless you know the rest of the story!
"The third HMS Black Joke was probably built in Baltimore in 1824, becoming the Brazilian slave ship Henriquetta. The Royal Navy captured her in September 1827, and purchased her into the service. The Navy renamed her Black Joke, after an English song of the same name, and assigned her to the West Africa Squadron (or Preventive Squadron). Her role was to chase down slave ships, and over her five-year career, she freed thousands of slaves."
"The Black Joke, sometimes spelled Black Joak, was a bawdy song heard in London around 1730. William Hogarth referenced the song in the Tavern Scene of A Rake's Progress. Grose's dictionary of the vulgar tongue notes that the refrain of the song was 'Her black joke and belly so white', with black joke referring to female genitalia"
And as usual you now know the rest of the story and are all the better for it too!
coolbert.
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