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Conditions on a slave ship, as imagined by Johann Moritz Rugendas in 1830. Photograph: Museo Ita\u00fa Cultural.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n 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 \u201chighway to horror\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Sean Kingsley told the\u00a0Observer<\/em>\u00a0that 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.<\/p>\n These ships, which date from between 1704 and 1887, were mostly American-flagged, and profited from Cuba\u2019s sugar and coffee plantations, where enslaved Africans faced a life of cruelty.<\/p>\n Kingsley said: \u201cCuba 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.\u201d<\/p>\n