The 1843 Mutiny on the Creole: US Slaves Who Freed Themselves in the Bahamas

The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History · Jun 12, 2026 · 12m · transcript

In November 1841, the American slave brig Creole left Richmond, Virginia, bound for New Orleans with 135 enslaved people in its hold. Madison Washington, a man who had escaped to Canada and returned for his wife, led a revolt that seized control of the ship and sailed it to Nassau in the British Bahamas, where slavery had been abolished in 1834. The Creole mutiny sparked a major diplomatic crisis between the United States and Britain, testing the limits of the international slave trade ban and the right of refuge. This episode follows Madison Washington's extraordinary double escape, the…