History Channel Documentaries

USS Constellation: Battling For Freedom (2011x1)

Air date: Jan 20, 2008

In 1859 the United States is a nation torn apart over the issue of slavery. The USS Constellation is at sea off the coast of Africa, her mission is to interdict ships smuggling slaves. The job falls to the US Navy and a small fleet of ships called the African Squadron. Constellation is the flagship. The officers and sailors give first person accounts of life on the war ship. Woven into the story is the plight of a young hunter captured from his village. We follow his journey from the Congo interior to his imprisonment with 700 other Africans on the slave ship Cora. Filmed on location in the UK, we realistically recreate the horror of the slave trade and Constellation's heroic effort to stop slave smugglers.