slave ship

American  

noun

1. a ship for transporting enslaved captives from their native homes to places of bondage.

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slave ship British  

noun

1. a ship used to transport slaves, esp formerly from Africa to the New World

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Etymology

Origin of slave ship

First recorded in 1790–1800

Example Sentences

They were among the divers who’ve explored the Clotilda, a slave ship whose mostly intact hull that rests on the bottom of the Mobile River in Alabama.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 6, 2023

They called their initiative the Amistad Project, a reference to an 1839 mutiny aboard a slave ship of that name.

From Salon • Mar. 1, 2023

Illness was the slave ship captains’ constant fear.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

Coincidentally, they were exploring the São José, a Portuguese slave ship on its way from Mozambique to Brazil that wrecked off Cape Town in 1794.

From New York Times • Oct. 14, 2022

Then she went to singing a Nigerian grief song learned from her daddy, who was lured onto an illegal slave ship in 1848, when he was only twelve.

From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns