Talk:The White Lion

Clarity of significance

Thanks for the edit and references. I do want to retain the fact that this ship appears to be the first to bring slaves that were both property of their owners and whose slavery was hereditary. I.e., chattel slavery. Those characteristics are essential to the impact of slavery in the U.S. and appear to not be present in the previous Native-American slave situations and indentured servitude. This ship is, in my opinion, at least as important as the Mayflower. Wnissen (talk) 15:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The nature of the White Lion's "first" status deserves a paragraph in the article. The article, History of slavery in Virginia, says, with several cites, that lifetime hereditary slavery of Africans in Virginia did not start until later. It started in Florida earlier. Native American slavery was inherited in many tribes. The section Slavery_among_Native_Americans in the United States#Traditions of Native American slavery cites several sources about hereditary Native American slavery before Europeans arrived, from the St. Augustine area to the Pacific Northwest. The beginning of African slavery in the English mainland colonies is significant enough, without downplaying earlier enslaved Africans and Native Americans. Somewhere Wikipedia needs to cover some related issues, including why enslavement of Native Americans ended sooner than that of blacks, and whether slavery in Florida was continuous from 1565 to 1861; I haven't been able to find the history of the various acts by the Spanish crown. The old saw that Native Americans died rather than work in the fields is belied by the massive sales of Native American slaves to harvest sugar cane in the Caribbean.

I agree the White Lion is more distinctive than the Mayflower, which was later than several other colonies. For obvious reasons the Mayflower's descendants publicize it more. I suggest not depending on the term "chattel slavery" but simply referring to hereditary slavery, since there doesn't seem to be agreement that "chattel slavery" necessarily means hereditary property. Slavery#Chattel slavery cites one book calling it hereditary, but https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chattel_slavery does not refer to inherited status, and no dictionary does. Numbersinstitute (talk) 16:37, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Short description

On 2020-03-02 @Koavf added a "short description|Slave ship". The ship is notable today because it carried slaves in at least one journey, but I don't think the sources support it being a slave ship for most of its existence. I think "privateer" would be a better short description. Numbersinstitute (talk) 03:08, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Title

This article should rather be at White Lion (ship), no?--Pharos (talk) 15:40, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

That's the name I used when I created but it got moved, I assume whoever did that knows better than me. Wnissen (talk) 02:40, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

@Wnissen: I believe that was a mistake, perhaps based on the assumption that these things had formal names like modern ships in the US Navy or something. By the way, since you started this article I'd encourage you to look into Talk:First Africans in Virginia#Article on the second ship.--Pharos (talk) 12:32, 2 June 2021 (UTC)