Over 300 years, the transatlantic slave trade caused the abuse, suffering and enslavement of an estimated 10-12 million people. This episode takes a look at what some of that experience would have meant for these groups and individuals forcibly removed from their homelands. Specifically, we look at the slave uprising on the Spanish ship Tryal, in 1805, and ask some questions that set us on the path of this series about the abolition of one of the oldest human institutions. What were the social, political and economic conditions that led to the uprising on the Tryal? How did it go down and what were the repercussions? Furthermore, how did American author Herman Melville (of Moby Dick fame) write about the Tryal uprising, some 50 years after it had occurred, and during a period where his country was at that moment tearing itself apart over the very question of slavery? All this and more, in Slavery's Tryal.

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