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Research has revealed that the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC), once the largest British shipping company during the height of the empire, continued to use enslaved labor after the abolition of slavery.
Despite slavery being abolished in the British Empire in 1833, RMSPC employed enslaved workers on the island of St. Thomas, which was a Danish colony at the time.
The island served as the company’s main “coaling hub,” where laborers unloaded Welsh coal using dangerous gangplanks, according to the Guardian.
The Postal Museum commissioned research revealing the shipping industry’s ties to the slavery economy, supported by Dr. Anyaa Anim-Addo as an academic adviser. The findings are part of a new exhibition examining the postal industry’s connections to slavery.
Senior curator Joanna Espin noted that the research demonstrated how the global postal service and its associated companies were “a tool of empire,” not just a communication network.
She said: “By ‘steaming’ its ships outside the British empire where slavery hadn’t been abolished, the RMSPC was able to exploit slave labour on the island. It is a complex story but we’re trying to show the choices made by the business and the way that the company benefited by exploiting enslaved labour.”
The upcoming exhibition, opening in April, will feature postcards, letters, paintings, and clothing from the era, along with correspondence between UK plantation owners and Caribbean managers found in the museum’s archives.
It also includes letters from two enslaved women who gained freedom through manumission and protested against working conditions.
The exhibition, created in collaboration with St. Thomas-based Dollar fo’ Dollar, highlights the island’s coal workers and their history.
Ayesha Morris of Dollar fo’ Dollar noted that her organization’s mission is to raise awareness of the workers who, “basket by basket,” fueled steamships at St. Thomas harbor for about a century and fought for better wages and conditions.
The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC), founded in Liverpool, was one of the most influential British companies of the Victorian era but eventually collapsed due to what some describe as one of “the greatest frauds in history.”
By 1920, RMSPC boasted of its global trade reach, carrying 1.4 million passengers and 14 million tonnes of cargo while employing over 35,000 people.
By 1929, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company faced severe financial troubles due to overexpansion and manipulation of accounts by its chairman, Lord Kylsant. The company’s stock collapsed in 1931, and it was taken over by the government, leaving shareholders with nothing.
In 2023, the Guardian launched the Legacies of Enslavement program and its award-winning Cotton Capital series, which explored the connections of its founders to the slavery economy.
Institutions like the Bank of England, Lloyd’s, the Church of England, and the University of Cambridge have all launched inquiries into their slavery ties, but the Postal Museum stated it is not planning reparations as part of its project.
