The Golden Hind

From our good friends at "Avast Ye Applications":

Seán Mac Mathúna writes: "There are four statues on the front of Deptford's old town hall in NewCross Road. Three of them are connected with slavery in the West Indies: Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake and Oliver Cromwell. In 1652, Cromwell had been a regular visitor to Deptford to oversee the building of two ships The James and The Diamond - built solely it seems, for expeditions to the Caribbean aimed at displacing Spanish power in the region. Maurice Thomson, a resident of the Manor House at Lee ... was said to have been a personal friend of Cromwell's and involved in these expeditions. They were part of a network of businessmen interested in the vast wealth that could be derived from the sugar/slave trade."

http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/blackheath_slavery.htm

and from the endearingly entitled 'Enchanted learning' site...:

"Sir Francis Drake (1545-1596) was a British explorer, slave-trader,privateer (a pirate working for a government) in the service ofEngland, mayor of Plymouth, England, and naval officer (he was anAdmiral)."

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/d/drake.shtml
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