Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes

Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 30 Sep 2020 at 09:51:20 (UTC)

**Original** – Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes under the regulated slave trade act of 1788.

Reason: An unusual image I found looking through the table of the events leading up to the United States Civil War. According to our article on the relevant ship in question, the image is not 100% accurate as it contains omissions and the ship in question is known to have hauled for more slaves then depicted here, however the same article states with citations that "...this image has become the one most used to depict conditions on a slave ship" and asserts that the image "...has become an iconic image of the inhumanity of the slave trade." Submitting here for community consideration of an FP star.
Articles in which this image appears: Brooks (1781 ship), La Bouche du Roi (artwork), Slave Trade Act 1788, Slave ship, Thomas Clarkson, Triangular trade, Zong massacre
FP category for this image: Not entirely sure; best options I think would be Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Vehicles/Water, Wikipedia:Featured pictures/History/Others, or Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Diagrams, drawings, and maps/Diagrams, depending on how its viewed.
Creator: Plymouth Chapter of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Support as nominator – TomStar81 (Talk) 09:51, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - needs restoration. There's also some text on the bottom left that is cut off. MER-C 10:54, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @MER-C: The text is physically cut off in the original, as you can see in the uncropped version. I'm not sure we would want to do a restoration on this as most of the damage is from tears, folds, and stains, rather than dust and scratches that you get on a photograph. Making such substantial alterations might affect the image's role as a verifiable historical document. But I would defer to Adam's opinion on this. Kaldari (talk) 21:52, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Looks like the text is cut off on LOC original too. From seeing several illustrations on Wikisource, the text plausibly contains authorship information so it's important to the historical veracity of the document. MER-C 16:38, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
...What's the source of this? It doesn't appear to be the LoC. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.5% of all FPs} 06:34, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Adam Cuerden: Since the LoC seems to have the physical document (they have 2 different photographs of it and it's housed in their Rare Book Reading Room) and I wasn't able to find another high res version on the internet that pre-dates ours, I imagine the uploader acquired it directly from the LOC Prints and Photographs Division (which you can do for a fee). I've done this myself for images where the version on the LoC website was sub-standard, e.g. File:The Horse in Motion high res.tiff. This would also jive with the uploader's comment: "Higher resolution from LoC source". Unfortunately, the uploader retired many years ago, so we can't find out from them directly. Kaldari (talk) 21:58, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I'd like to know a lot more about this particular print and its significance. The Brooks illustration was widely-distributed in a wide assortment of versions; the first, by Elford in 1788, seems to have simply been a single plan view with accompanying text (possibly this); this was then added to in a 1789 broadsheet. Many subsequent versions were made, of which this undated version seems to be one. Given it's not in great condition, I'd want some reason to believe it is both a historically-significant printing, and that no copy of this printing in better condition can be found. TSP (talk) 15:02, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 10:45, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]