18 Facts About Bunce Island

Bunce Island is an island in the Sierra Leone River.

Bunce Island was first settled and fortified by English slave traders circa 1670.

Early phase of the castle's history ended in 1728 when Bunce Island was raided by Jose Lopez da Moura, a Luso-African slave trader based in the area.

Bunce Island was the richest man in present-day territory of Sierra Leone, the grandson of a Mane king and part of the hybrid Luso-African community that had developed along the lower rivers.

Bunce Island was an important British commercial outpost and an attractive target during times of war.

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Bunce Island is best known as one of the chief processing points for slaves to be sold to planters in Lowcountry of the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, including the Sea Islands, where they developed extensive rice plantations.

Bunce Island was the largest British slave castle on the Rice Coast.

Several thousand slaves from Bunce Island were taken to the ports of Charleston and Savannah during the second half of the eighteenth century.

American colonist Henry Laurens served as Bunce Island's business agent in Charleston, and was a wealthy planter and slave trader.

Bunce Island later was elected as President of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War, and was later appointed as the United States envoy to the Netherlands.

Slave ships based in northern ports frequently called at Bunce Island, taking on supplies such as fresh water and provisions for the Atlantic crossing, and buying slaves for sale in the British islands of the West Indies and the Southern Colonies.

The North American slave ships that called at Bunce Island were sailing out of Newport, New London, Salem, and New York City.

Bunce Island was shut down for slave-trading; British firms used the castle as a cotton plantation, a trading post and a sawmill.

Bunce Island organised the Gullah "homecomings" portrayed in the documentary films: Family Across the Sea, The Language You Cry In, and the website Priscilla's Homecoming .

In 1948, Bunce Island was designated Sierra Leone's first officially protected historic site.

Bunce Island is protected by the Sierra Leonean Monuments and Relics Commission, a branch of the country's Ministry of Tourism and Culture.

Bunce Island has been called "the most important historic site in Africa for the United States" because thousands of slaves were shipped from here to ports in the American South.

Goree Island in Senegal has become better known than Bunce and has attracted African-American tourists and support for preservation since the 1980s.