Bunce Island

Africa » Sierra Leone » Freetown
March 17th 2010

Published: March 18th 2010

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NomadNik

Abandoned

En route to Bunce Island

Tuesday morning 9:30 AM: I was supposed to meet with an organization, but those plans unfortunately fell through. As I was getting ready to go to town, I get a call from a friend asking if I want to come to Bunce Island with her and some other friends. A day in the sun, on the water and a highly probable haunted island? I'M THERE!

Bunce Island was one of the forty major European commercial forts built along the West African coast during the slave trade era. This island was a meeting place for European traders and African merchants coming from all over Africa.

Around 1668, British companies started operating from this island, where they would purchase slaves, gold, ivory and the like. From about 1756, they began shipping slaves in large numbers to South Carolina and Georgia, where American rice planters paid high prices for slaves from this region. It's estimated that over 50,000 slaves were traded here, of which 15%!d(MISSING)ied on the transatlantic crossing.

During its long history, Bunce Island was attacked by pirates several times, four times by the French. It finally "closed" in 1807 when parliament prohibited the slave trade and became a

Obama

A pretty popular man out here!

sawmill until 1840.

This island has a lot of history, if only walls could talk! It's definitely worth a visit for those people traveling to Sierra Leone. I do recommend, however, that you make sure you travel with an OK (legitimate) boat! It took us almost two hours to get there, a trip that should have taken maybe 45-60min. And on the way back, our boat broke down because we didn't have enough petrol (among the few problems). There we were, out on the open water, for 45min before the "rescue" boat arrived. The waves were pretty rough making the five other passengers aboard our small speedboat a bit nervous. The transferring of human cargo (no pun intended haha, but that is a good book though from Caroline Moorehead) from one speedboat to the other was also interesting haha luckily everyone made it alive and ceased from falling into the dark, man-eating, shark invested abyss .............

Hahaha just kidding, it was THAT bad, but the water was choppy and we did struggle switching boats! From there, it took us another 30min or so to get back! A true adventure indeed ...