Whydah Galley

[Jim McDougall]

I always thought that term 'bight' was strange, it really is just a word for a shallow bay in a kind of curve in a coastline.
The words describing the 'Bight of Benin' are part of a rhyme which seems to have many variations but the same foreboding implications.

The fact of the Portuguese presence in these regions and their key role in the slavery situation are well established and the link in the previous post is quite descritive of the influences made.

In the same regions on what was known as 'the Slave Coast' was the Kingdom of Dahomey where Sir Richard Burton in 1863 observed some of the gruesome 'ceremonies' of King Gelele.

It would seem the Portuguese interest in procuring natives was in a sense to preclude their use in such sacrificial horror, though the grim travesty of slavery was in actuality far from 'humanitarian'. Whatever the case, this commerce carried on with other European participants, and the Whydah ship was actually named for the slave port of Whidah on this coast.
Blackbeard's vessel, the Queen Annes Revenge was formerly a French slave vessel as well. Another shipwreck well known was the slave vessel 'Henrietta Marie'.