On 19 November 1737 the slave-ship Leusden left Elmina (Ghana) with a 'cargo' of 700 abducted and imprisoned Africans who would be sold as slaves in Surinname. One of them was the fifteen-year-old girl Tutuba.
On 1 Jabuary 1738, after a successful six-week voyage, the Leusden stranded on a sandbank in the Marowijne River and was wrecked. All the crew members were able to save themselves, but the 664 prisoners in the hold met a piteous death because the crew had battened down the hatches. By chance, Tutuba and fifteen others survived this disaster. Her tale and the captain's account are described in this gripping historical novella by Cynthia Mc Leod.
