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Bight of Benin
The Bight of Benin, or Bay of Benin, is a bight in the Gulf of Guinea area on the western African coast.
The Bight of Benin was named for the Kingdom of Benin in modern-day Nigeria. (The Republic of Benin, formerly Dahomey, took its name from the bight, not the other way around.) It extends eastward for about 640 kilometres (400 mi) from Cape St. Paul to the Nun outlet of the Niger River.
Historical associations with the Atlantic slave trade led to the region becoming known as the Slave Coast. As in many other regions across Africa, powerful indigenous kingdoms along the Bight of Benin relied heavily on a long-established slave trade that expanded greatly after the arrival of European powers and became a global trade with the colonization of the Americas. Estimates from the 1640s suggest that Benin (Beneh) took in 1200 slaves a year. Restrictions made it hard for slave volume to grow until new states and different routes began to make an increase in slave trade possible.
The Bight of Benin has a long association with slavery, its shore being known as the Slave Coast. From 1807 onwards—after slave trading was made illegal for Britons—the Royal Navy created the West Africa Squadron to suppress and crush the slave trade. These efforts were magnified after 1833 when slave trading was made illegal throughout the British Empire. These efforts would continue until the 1890s and cost Britain significant sums of money, and the Royal Navy hundreds, if not thousands, of sailors’ lives from tropical diseases.
The old Royal Navy rhyme says:
A variation goes:
This is said to be a slavery jingle or sea shanty about the risk of malaria in the Bight. A third version of the couplet is:
In R. Austin Freeman's 1927 novel A Certain Dr. Thorndyke, Chapter II, "The Legatee," mention is made of this location. The scene is the Gold Coast colony in Africa where the character Larkom asks, "How does the old mariners' ditty run? You remember it. 'Oh, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin, One comes out where three go in.'" Life expectancy was short in this locale due to the prevalence of Blackwater fever.
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Bight of Benin
The Bight of Benin, or Bay of Benin, is a bight in the Gulf of Guinea area on the western African coast.
The Bight of Benin was named for the Kingdom of Benin in modern-day Nigeria. (The Republic of Benin, formerly Dahomey, took its name from the bight, not the other way around.) It extends eastward for about 640 kilometres (400 mi) from Cape St. Paul to the Nun outlet of the Niger River.
Historical associations with the Atlantic slave trade led to the region becoming known as the Slave Coast. As in many other regions across Africa, powerful indigenous kingdoms along the Bight of Benin relied heavily on a long-established slave trade that expanded greatly after the arrival of European powers and became a global trade with the colonization of the Americas. Estimates from the 1640s suggest that Benin (Beneh) took in 1200 slaves a year. Restrictions made it hard for slave volume to grow until new states and different routes began to make an increase in slave trade possible.
The Bight of Benin has a long association with slavery, its shore being known as the Slave Coast. From 1807 onwards—after slave trading was made illegal for Britons—the Royal Navy created the West Africa Squadron to suppress and crush the slave trade. These efforts were magnified after 1833 when slave trading was made illegal throughout the British Empire. These efforts would continue until the 1890s and cost Britain significant sums of money, and the Royal Navy hundreds, if not thousands, of sailors’ lives from tropical diseases.
The old Royal Navy rhyme says:
A variation goes:
This is said to be a slavery jingle or sea shanty about the risk of malaria in the Bight. A third version of the couplet is:
In R. Austin Freeman's 1927 novel A Certain Dr. Thorndyke, Chapter II, "The Legatee," mention is made of this location. The scene is the Gold Coast colony in Africa where the character Larkom asks, "How does the old mariners' ditty run? You remember it. 'Oh, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin, One comes out where three go in.'" Life expectancy was short in this locale due to the prevalence of Blackwater fever.