page_title: Bunce Island
section_title: Research on Bunce Island
hierarchical_section_title: Bunce Island / History / Research on Bunce Island
caption_attribution_description: English: Bunce Island is an island in the Sierra Leone River situated in Freetown Harbour. The island measures houses a castle that was built by a British slave-trading company in c.1670. Tens of thousands of Africans were shipped from here to the North American colonies of South Carolina and Georgia to be forced into slavery, and are the ancestors of many African Americans of the United States.
context_page_description: Bunce Island is an island in the Sierra Leone River. It is situated in Freetown Harbour, the estuary of the Rokel River and Port Loko Creek, about 20 miles upriver from Sierra Leone's capital city Freetown. The island measures about 1,650 feet by 350 feet and houses a castle that was built by a British slave-trading company in c.1670. Tens of thousands of Africans were shipped from here to the North American colonies of South Carolina and Georgia to be forced into slavery, and are the ancestors of many African Americans of the United States.
  Although the island is small, its strategic position at the limit of navigation for ocean-going ships in Africa's largest natural harbour made it an ideal base for European slave traders. To mark the 2007–2008 bicentennial of Great Britain's abolition of the African slave trade, a team at James Madison University created a three-dimensional animation of the castle as it was in 1805, and an exhibit on the site that was displayed to museums all across the U.S. which is now held by the Sierra Leone National Museum.
context_section_description: Three American scholars have researched Bunce Island. Anthropologist Joseph Opala's research linked the island to the Gullah people of the United States Low Country. He organised the Gullah "homecomings" portrayed in the documentary films: Family Across the Sea (1990), The Language You Cry In (1998), and the website Priscilla’s Homecoming (2005). Historian David Hancock documented Bunce Island during the period of Grant, Oswald & Company in his study, Citizens of the World (1997).
  In 2006, television actor Isaiah Washington visited the island after learning through a DNA test he was descended from the indigenous Mende people of Sierra Leone.  Washington later donated US$25,000 to a project to create a computer reconstruction of Bunce Island as it appeared in 1805, to mark the bicentennial of the abolition of the African slave trade by the UK and the United States. A reconstructed slave ship was docked at the island.
  Project directors Joseph Opala and Gary Chatelain at James Madison University created a three-dimensional image of the castle using computer-aided design and historic drawings. It is part of an exhibit portraying the island's history and depicts the buildings as they appeared 200 years ago.
  Evidence of numerous historical and genealogical links between Bunce Island and the United States has been found. In 2013, historians reported learning that two U.S. presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, are directly descended from a slave-ship captain who operated out of Bunce Island and other ports in the Sierra Leone region in the late 1700s. Their ancestor Thomas Walker (AKA "Beau Walker") came from Bristol, one of Britain's principal slaving ports. Walker was involved in 11 slaving expeditions; he immigrated with his fortune to the US, where he became naturalised in 1792. One of his descendants, Dorothy (Walker) Bush, was the mother of George H.W. Bush.
caption: Beach on Bunce Island
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