Slaves were worth a lot of money. Why would any for-profit company kill off such valuable assets?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU ... WILL ... ATONE!
I would assume because the slave trade was illegal and they were afraid of being caught so they destroyed the evidence.
shareA lot of ships were deliberately sunk in those days for the insurance.
shareEspecially if your cargo became unwell
shareAh... hadn't thought of that.
shareOne group of "coffin ships" carried Irish immigrants during the potato famine and were worthless. The mortality rate was 30%.
But another group of "coffin ships" were old ships which over insured. They were wooden ships riddled with rot and wood and ship worms. They were repainted and given new names like in this story. There were 2,000 cases of sailors in England who were prosecuted for signing up but refusing to board these unseaworthy ships after seeing their condition.
I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else
As was read out in the documents there was a skeleton crew causing the ship to run aground during a storm. The crew locked the cargo hold so the ship and slaves would simply disappear into the ocean.
As I understand, this was commonly done after slavery was made illegal in England and all it's colonies as it was still very profitable the selling of slaves especially in the warmer colonies.
Episode 6 explained it.
In 1804 transportation of slaves was still legal BUT a year before, an abolitionist joined the East India Company board of directors, and as a result the Company no longer officially sanctioned the transport of slaves. But this ship was doing it anyway under orders of other directors and done for personal gain, and when the ship ran aground, they locked the slaves in the hold, and sunk the ship to get rid of the evidence. Ths ship had had her name temporarily changed and officially sailed empty of cargo.