Conditions on a slave ship, as imagined by Johann Moritz Rugendas in 1830. Photograph: Museo Itaú Cultural.

They were the ships that carried enslaved Africans on hellish transatlantic voyages through the 18th and 19th centuries, with up to 400 in a single vessel. Now the wrecks of 14 ships have been identified in the northern Bahamas, marking what has been described by a British marine archaeologist as a previously unknown “highway to horror”.

The fate of the African men, women and children trafficked in their holds is unknown, but if a vessel was sinking, they were often bolted below deck to allow the crew to escape.

Sean Kingsley told the Observer that this extraordinary cluster of wrecks reveals that enslavers had used the Providence Channel heading south to New Providence, Cuba and around to New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico.

These ships, which date from between 1704 and 1887, were mostly American-flagged, and profited from Cuba’s sugar and coffee plantations, where enslaved Africans faced a life of cruelty.

Kingsley said: “Cuba pretended to accept rules to end the slave trade, but pursued the largest trafficking [of enslaved people] in the world, making massive profits in sugar cultivation.”

The wrecks have been identified during research by the Bahamas Lost Ships Project, managed by Allen Exploration, founded by Carl Allen, a philanthropist and explorer with two passions – the Bahamas and its sunken past.