"An examplary image...is the so-called 'Brookes image', a shipbuilder's diagram demonstrating the optimal design of a ship for the purpose of "tight-packing" a vessel with slaves. As recounted by Marcus Rediker, this diagram, originally desinged for functional and promotional purposes within the slaving industry, was appropriated, reinscribed, and rearticulated by abolitionists as evidence of the profit-driven brutality of the slavers. Through a close reading of the image and its social life across time and space, Rediker shows how the image became an important node of conflict and advocacy in the eventual abolition of slavery in Britain in 1807 and subsequently in the United States."
Sensible Politics : The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism by Meg McLagan and Yates McKee (2012)pages 18-19
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