'What do you do if you witness a crime committed by an entire city?'
A case could be made for The Last Slave Ship being the genre-busting fourth novel in Ed Chatterton's 'Liverpool' series. Certainly there is crime – perhaps one of the biggest crimes in human history – and characters from A Dark Place To Die, Down Among The Dead Men and Remission reappear: most notably black Liverpool cop, DI Em Harris, who is cynically assigned to investigate an impossible case...and placate a watching press.
Black Liverpool teenager, Marcus Hamilton, is killed in a race-hate crime in modern day Liverpool. His death, in the dilapidated basement of a Georgian mansion once owned by a Liverpool slave trader, is witnessed first-hand by his best friend, Benjamin 'Benz' Walters and it is Benz who is the focus of this strand of the novel.
In a parallel narrative, The Uriel, Liverpool's last ever slaving ship, sets sail in 1809 bound for West Africa and one final bumper cash grab as the trade that has made Liverpool fat slowly dies. On board, Captain Joshua Salt presides over a desperate crew who know they are at the bitterest end of a bitter trade. Salt rules The Uriel with an iron hand and demonstrates is cruelty at every turn. But when The Uriel picks up Kweme as one of their trading slaves, Salt may have met his match.
In contemporary Liverpool, Harris's position is made more untenable when a police officer is killed as civil unrest grows. As the situation deteriorates, Harris is forced to face some uncomfortable truths about her city and her allegiances.
As The Uriel sets out across the Atlantic towards the New World with a full 'cargo' of slaves, people start to die. Salt is faced with a dilemma between his natural inclination to punishment and the inescapable conclusion that a campaign of rebellion he cannot define is being waged against his voyage. As things grow tense in both modern day Liverpool and aboard the last slave ship, the two narratives come together in an unimaginable, and utterly stunning, conclusion.
This novel grew out of a PhD (into the toxic legacy of the slave trade in Liverpool) undertaken by Ed Chatterton from 2013 to 2017. The exegesis which accompanies the novel can be downloaded here.
Publication date: September 2019
Black Liverpool teenager, Marcus Hamilton, is killed in a race-hate crime in modern day Liverpool. His death, in the dilapidated basement of a Georgian mansion once owned by a Liverpool slave trader, is witnessed first-hand by his best friend, Benjamin 'Benz' Walters and it is Benz who is the focus of this strand of the novel.
In a parallel narrative, The Uriel, Liverpool's last ever slaving ship, sets sail in 1809 bound for West Africa and one final bumper cash grab as the trade that has made Liverpool fat slowly dies. On board, Captain Joshua Salt presides over a desperate crew who know they are at the bitterest end of a bitter trade. Salt rules The Uriel with an iron hand and demonstrates is cruelty at every turn. But when The Uriel picks up Kweme as one of their trading slaves, Salt may have met his match.
In contemporary Liverpool, Harris's position is made more untenable when a police officer is killed as civil unrest grows. As the situation deteriorates, Harris is forced to face some uncomfortable truths about her city and her allegiances.
As The Uriel sets out across the Atlantic towards the New World with a full 'cargo' of slaves, people start to die. Salt is faced with a dilemma between his natural inclination to punishment and the inescapable conclusion that a campaign of rebellion he cannot define is being waged against his voyage. As things grow tense in both modern day Liverpool and aboard the last slave ship, the two narratives come together in an unimaginable, and utterly stunning, conclusion.
This novel grew out of a PhD (into the toxic legacy of the slave trade in Liverpool) undertaken by Ed Chatterton from 2013 to 2017. The exegesis which accompanies the novel can be downloaded here.
Publication date: September 2019
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A reading of the opening to The Last Slave Ship can be seen in the video here.
book club/teaching notes
A collection of background research and articles about the creation of The Last Slave Ship will appear here soon.