The Postal Museum what's on Voices of Resistance: Slavery and Post in the Caribbean

Voices of Resistance: Slavery and Post in the Caribbean

Opens 5 April 2025
The Postal Museum
Included in museum ticket

Explore the powerful stories of enslaved people whose labour fuelled 19th-century postal ships.

‘Backbone: Strong’ by Ama Dennis, 2024.

Postal ships carried mail between the UK and the Caribbean, enabling enslavers to manage plantations via the postal service and distance themselves from the atrocities of transatlantic slavery. Through letters between plantation owners and managers discovered in our archive, we can begin to piece together glimpses of the lives of enslaved people and their courageous acts of resistance.

For years the postal ships themselves were also refuelled by enslaved people on the island of St. Thomas. Learn how Caribbean coal workers are honoured today in a special film created with our partners, Dollar fo’ Dollar – the St. Thomas based organisation that works to ensure their legacies live on to inspire people.

Exhibition highlights

'RMS 'Severn' in the Bristol Channel', Joseph Walter, c. 1834
Portrait of Robert Wedderburn by Grace Lee, courtesy of the Museum of Colour. Robert Wedderburn was a leader of the anti-slavery movement in Britain, and was also the half-brother of one of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's founding members.
'Bangles' by Joy Gregory. Joy's work juxtaposes the privileged lives of enslavers living in Britain with the horrific experiences of the enslaved in the Caribbean.
Manuscript of James MacQueen's General Plan for Steam Communication, 1837, The Postal Museum, Post 29/23C
'Backbone: Strong' by Ama Dennis, 2024. The embodiment of ‘strength, resilience and wisdom, coal workers supported the physical weight of the coal and the mental weight of being the family's economic backbone.

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