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Triangle Trade
In 1804, Liverpool was the largest slave trading port in Great Britain, yet her influential traders felt threatened by the success, in Parliament, of the anti-slavery movement. Few in Liverpool condemned the ‘Trade’. William King, son of a Liverpool slave trader, sickened by what he experienced aboard a Spanish slaver, was one of the few who did speak out.
Triangle Trade, set during the dying days of this despicable business, has generational change, moral wickedness, greed, romance, and the fortunes of war woven through the lives of a father and son caught up in the turmoil that preceded the implementation of the British Trade Act of 1807, which would end Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. Nineteenth century Liverpool is revived; a city of political conflict and dynamic change, mirrored in its inhabitants.
Triangle Trade, set during the dying days of this despicable business, has generational change, moral wickedness, greed, romance, and the fortunes of war woven through the lives of a father and son caught up in the turmoil that preceded the implementation of the British Trade Act of 1807, which would end Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. Nineteenth century Liverpool is revived; a city of political conflict and dynamic change, mirrored in its inhabitants.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
268 pages, Hardcover
First published July 23, 2010
116 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 4, 2010
Fancy houses rise in Liverpool, England from the profits of slave trading between Africa and the plantations of the West Indies. Empires fight wars for control of the seas that connect sugar plantations, industrialists, and the brutally exploited human capital of West Africa. Amid this dark and dynamic global business, William King is ready to make a man of himself in 1804. His father George King runs a modestly successful shipping company where William is employed as a first mate. The Ice King opens with William telling his father he wants a captaincy. George refuses and William rebelliously accepts a commission with the British Navy.
During a war with Napoleonic France, William serves blockade duty off the French coast and then commands a vessel taking dispatches to South Africa. His many sea voyages both as a merchant and a military officer have exposed him to the horrors of slave transport, and William is morally against it.
After the war, when William is trying to decide his next career move, he becomes involved with abolitionists as he travels to reunite with his father after years of absence. William finds that his father George has become much more successful. George's new partnership with the powerful Liverpool businessman Donald Nicholson has made George wealthy, but the wealth is all derived from the Slave Trade.
Disapproving, William rejects rejoining his father's shipping company and instead captains a ship backed by the abolitionists. His mission is to prove that trans-Atlantic trading can be profitable without transporting slaves or trading in commodities produced by slaves. This challenge and William's seafaring and commercial adventures between Boston, Jamaica, and Cuba drive the majority of the novel. About halfway through the novel, its title of Ice King becomes clear, but I will not give it away because it is clever and interesting.
In his novel Geoff Woodland displays the sweeping scope of his historical research. Details large and small pack every page of the Ice King as William calls on ports in Liverpool, Boston, Kingstown, and Havana. Each city is summoned in the imagination with vivid details. The stench of Liverpool sewage and its sooty air are constant. The hot sunny diversity of Kingstown blossoms with fruity tropical abundance while always showing the dark underbelly of its slave culture. The mangrove swamps, fortifications, and warehouses of Havana set the scene for a daring slave rescue. The bustling enthusiasm of Boston illustrates the excitement of the young United States.
Woodland employs this broad global landscape with unflagging competence. No place is glossed over. Every setting is carefully developed. The author writes with concrete uncluttered prose that is never flowery but always evocative, and he handles the economic themes of the seafaring commercial empires with great understanding. The sugar produced in the slave plantations is the sweet vice driving the abominable abuse of human capital. A quote from an abolitionist character in the novel explains the problem:
"It is out of sight and therefore out of mind for many people. They want their sugar, but they do not think of the pain and damage inflicted on their fellow human beings to obtain it at a price they are willing to pay."
Even over two hundred years later this sentiment can be applied to many global commodities, and most people still prefer to not think about it.
Woodland's portrayal of human exploitation is not limited to slavery. He mentions how mills in Manchester, England advertised cheaply in Ireland to lure an over abundance of laborers, many of them women, to England. Some women were then easily diverted into Liverpool brothels.
The dreary realities of economic history are only the bones not the soul of this novel. Powerful emotional forces influence the characters. William has a love interest with the capable and shrewd Ruth, daughter of his Boston business partner Abraham. Their romantic relationship is strong but often challenged by their individual desires to run their own companies. George and William have a complicated father-son relationship. William very much serves as a morally redemptive figure when compared to his slave-trading father, who is easily manipulated by Donald Nicholson. And Donald Nicholson embodies the evils of purely reptilian capitalism that has no regard for anything except profit. The reprehensible nature of Donald is further illuminated by the characters of his son, Henry, and daughter, Charlotte. Both are detestable human beings. Henry constantly hungers for sadistic sex with prostitutes, and Charlotte is so irredeemable that when George strikes her across the face, she firmly deserves it.
Many nice touches enliven this engrossing novel that never has one draggy dull moment. The side characters of William's Chinese steward Sang and Paris, the Kingstown coffee house proprietor, add depth and diversity to the story. And the concept of capitalism is also a central character of this novel that nicely portrays how this economic philosophy has shaped the world. Capitalism is seen in both good and bad lights. The commercial successes William achieves as he follows his moral compass act as an inspiring foil to the winning-is-all worship of the brutal commercial status quo presented by Donald and Henry Nicholson.
The Ice King will fill readers' sails with the strong wind of an enlightening historical adventure set on the high seas. The novel presents a tightly written narrative that constantly urged me to read the next page. I was honestly caught up with worry about William until the final paragraph.
During a war with Napoleonic France, William serves blockade duty off the French coast and then commands a vessel taking dispatches to South Africa. His many sea voyages both as a merchant and a military officer have exposed him to the horrors of slave transport, and William is morally against it.
After the war, when William is trying to decide his next career move, he becomes involved with abolitionists as he travels to reunite with his father after years of absence. William finds that his father George has become much more successful. George's new partnership with the powerful Liverpool businessman Donald Nicholson has made George wealthy, but the wealth is all derived from the Slave Trade.
Disapproving, William rejects rejoining his father's shipping company and instead captains a ship backed by the abolitionists. His mission is to prove that trans-Atlantic trading can be profitable without transporting slaves or trading in commodities produced by slaves. This challenge and William's seafaring and commercial adventures between Boston, Jamaica, and Cuba drive the majority of the novel. About halfway through the novel, its title of Ice King becomes clear, but I will not give it away because it is clever and interesting.
In his novel Geoff Woodland displays the sweeping scope of his historical research. Details large and small pack every page of the Ice King as William calls on ports in Liverpool, Boston, Kingstown, and Havana. Each city is summoned in the imagination with vivid details. The stench of Liverpool sewage and its sooty air are constant. The hot sunny diversity of Kingstown blossoms with fruity tropical abundance while always showing the dark underbelly of its slave culture. The mangrove swamps, fortifications, and warehouses of Havana set the scene for a daring slave rescue. The bustling enthusiasm of Boston illustrates the excitement of the young United States.
Woodland employs this broad global landscape with unflagging competence. No place is glossed over. Every setting is carefully developed. The author writes with concrete uncluttered prose that is never flowery but always evocative, and he handles the economic themes of the seafaring commercial empires with great understanding. The sugar produced in the slave plantations is the sweet vice driving the abominable abuse of human capital. A quote from an abolitionist character in the novel explains the problem:
"It is out of sight and therefore out of mind for many people. They want their sugar, but they do not think of the pain and damage inflicted on their fellow human beings to obtain it at a price they are willing to pay."
Even over two hundred years later this sentiment can be applied to many global commodities, and most people still prefer to not think about it.
Woodland's portrayal of human exploitation is not limited to slavery. He mentions how mills in Manchester, England advertised cheaply in Ireland to lure an over abundance of laborers, many of them women, to England. Some women were then easily diverted into Liverpool brothels.
The dreary realities of economic history are only the bones not the soul of this novel. Powerful emotional forces influence the characters. William has a love interest with the capable and shrewd Ruth, daughter of his Boston business partner Abraham. Their romantic relationship is strong but often challenged by their individual desires to run their own companies. George and William have a complicated father-son relationship. William very much serves as a morally redemptive figure when compared to his slave-trading father, who is easily manipulated by Donald Nicholson. And Donald Nicholson embodies the evils of purely reptilian capitalism that has no regard for anything except profit. The reprehensible nature of Donald is further illuminated by the characters of his son, Henry, and daughter, Charlotte. Both are detestable human beings. Henry constantly hungers for sadistic sex with prostitutes, and Charlotte is so irredeemable that when George strikes her across the face, she firmly deserves it.
Many nice touches enliven this engrossing novel that never has one draggy dull moment. The side characters of William's Chinese steward Sang and Paris, the Kingstown coffee house proprietor, add depth and diversity to the story. And the concept of capitalism is also a central character of this novel that nicely portrays how this economic philosophy has shaped the world. Capitalism is seen in both good and bad lights. The commercial successes William achieves as he follows his moral compass act as an inspiring foil to the winning-is-all worship of the brutal commercial status quo presented by Donald and Henry Nicholson.
The Ice King will fill readers' sails with the strong wind of an enlightening historical adventure set on the high seas. The novel presents a tightly written narrative that constantly urged me to read the next page. I was honestly caught up with worry about William until the final paragraph.
February 28, 2015
William’s father, George King, has built a moderately successful shipping business but when he declines William’s request to captain one of his ships William leaves and joins the Navy. While he is at sea George King is lured into the slave trading business which is highly profitable. When William returns and hears of his father’s exploits he is determined to show him that a profit can be made in the shipping industry without human suffering.
Ice King, also known as Triangle Trade, is a rollicking tale of trade on the high seas during the early nineteenth century.
I was immediately drawn into the world of William King. William was a gentleman in a time when it was ok for men to be harsh and crude. It was good to see the stark contrast in character of siblings Henry and Charlotte Nicholson to that of William King and Ruth Judson. Woodland gives you characters to despise and characters to root for.
This story is full of adventure, family, humour, friendship, rivalries a few sword fights and a breath holding duel to the death.
I would recommend Ice King (Triangle Trade) to anyone who enjoys a good historical adventure.
Ice King, also known as Triangle Trade, is a rollicking tale of trade on the high seas during the early nineteenth century.
I was immediately drawn into the world of William King. William was a gentleman in a time when it was ok for men to be harsh and crude. It was good to see the stark contrast in character of siblings Henry and Charlotte Nicholson to that of William King and Ruth Judson. Woodland gives you characters to despise and characters to root for.
This story is full of adventure, family, humour, friendship, rivalries a few sword fights and a breath holding duel to the death.
I would recommend Ice King (Triangle Trade) to anyone who enjoys a good historical adventure.
February 16, 2021
OK, but I was hoping for more historical detail about Liverpool.
July 26, 2012
I suppose not too many people these days are well informed about the evil slave trade. I had an advantage in that respect because one of my mother's heroes was William Wilberforce, the English politician who toiled so long and hard to have it, or England's massive involvement in it, outlawed.
So, once I had heard about Ice King, Geoff Woodland's book in which the trade is ever-present, even if sometimes only in the background, it was natural that I should select it to read. Added influences in that decision were that Mr Woodland, who I do not know, hails from Liverpool (a city built on the slave trade and now sporting a museum to inform you of that), not too far from my own origins in Blackpool, he is of the same generation as myself, and we share a common background as seafarers.
So what did I find? A story of a young seaman, a lieutentant in the Royal Navy, who is put on half-pay - ie put out to grass - as part of the "peace dividend" after the French navy is largely destroyed at the Battle of Trafalgar - a peace dividend which applied only to the Navy because Napoleon's army was still in its prime (a fact which enabled one of his drum majors to build the house in which I now reside).
So he becomes a captain in what we would now call the Merchant Navy at about the same time that he returns home to Liverpool to find that his father has immersed the family shipping company in the disgusting slave trade.
He is advised that it is impossible to run a shipping company these days without "The Trade" but, having met and been enlightened by some of Wilberforce's followers, he sets about, with his own ship, proving that an honest living and a bright future can be enjoyed without destroying the lives of innocent Africans.
The title of the book puzzled me but the reasons for it become very clear along the way.
Mr Woodland writes well and has succeeded in writing a book which is informative about this important part of history, in addition to showing how life was at sea in those days and how the world, and trade around the world, was opening up.
He weaves in a story or two about romance, throws in some very believable characters, and generally gives us a very entertaining read.
I found an added bonus in the information given about the development of Boston and its hinterland - an area where one of my daughters has now been living for almost 3 years.
The book comes to a satisfying and logical end but I have a feeling it is the beginning of a series about William King.
So, once I had heard about Ice King, Geoff Woodland's book in which the trade is ever-present, even if sometimes only in the background, it was natural that I should select it to read. Added influences in that decision were that Mr Woodland, who I do not know, hails from Liverpool (a city built on the slave trade and now sporting a museum to inform you of that), not too far from my own origins in Blackpool, he is of the same generation as myself, and we share a common background as seafarers.
So what did I find? A story of a young seaman, a lieutentant in the Royal Navy, who is put on half-pay - ie put out to grass - as part of the "peace dividend" after the French navy is largely destroyed at the Battle of Trafalgar - a peace dividend which applied only to the Navy because Napoleon's army was still in its prime (a fact which enabled one of his drum majors to build the house in which I now reside).
So he becomes a captain in what we would now call the Merchant Navy at about the same time that he returns home to Liverpool to find that his father has immersed the family shipping company in the disgusting slave trade.
He is advised that it is impossible to run a shipping company these days without "The Trade" but, having met and been enlightened by some of Wilberforce's followers, he sets about, with his own ship, proving that an honest living and a bright future can be enjoyed without destroying the lives of innocent Africans.
The title of the book puzzled me but the reasons for it become very clear along the way.
Mr Woodland writes well and has succeeded in writing a book which is informative about this important part of history, in addition to showing how life was at sea in those days and how the world, and trade around the world, was opening up.
He weaves in a story or two about romance, throws in some very believable characters, and generally gives us a very entertaining read.
I found an added bonus in the information given about the development of Boston and its hinterland - an area where one of my daughters has now been living for almost 3 years.
The book comes to a satisfying and logical end but I have a feeling it is the beginning of a series about William King.
March 2, 2011
My review has also been posted on my blog.
The cover on this is unusual, with a slightly eerie feel to it. I like the font used on the front and inside for the title, it fits the book really well.
Liverpool in 1804 was the largest slave trading port in Great Britain. Ice King shows the discontent, success, wealth and change which the slave trade brought, set against various backdrops from Boston to Cuba and back to Liverpool.
The King family are in the shipping business, George King is close to downfall in his business and must decide what to do next - collapse or join in the profitable slave trade. His son, William is totally against the idea, having experienced a Spanish slave trade boat on his travels. The book tells of greed, turmoil, vindictiveness and the harsh reality of life aboard boats in the 1800s. My favorite character is William. He has solid principles based on facts, and isn't afraid to take his ideas and enterprise on them whilst acting against the slave trade. The tension between him and his father, and later on Charlotte is palpable.
I enjoy reading historical stories, this one was no exception. It's woven really well, and had me turning the pages wanting to know what was going to happen next, all the way through - very engrossing. The adventures that William has made for fantastic reading. As a reader I was swept away into a world where women aren't meant to be the leaders and slaves are seen as the same as cattle. Charlotte, the daughter of a rival boating family, seems pleasant enough at first - appearances aren't all they seem and eventually a poisonous family get what they deserve.
Ice King is a detailed book, packed with information on how life was likely to have been like on board, including insights into surgery and death on board. It also shows what it must have been like for the family left behind. Thoroughly enjoyable.
The cover on this is unusual, with a slightly eerie feel to it. I like the font used on the front and inside for the title, it fits the book really well.
Liverpool in 1804 was the largest slave trading port in Great Britain. Ice King shows the discontent, success, wealth and change which the slave trade brought, set against various backdrops from Boston to Cuba and back to Liverpool.
The King family are in the shipping business, George King is close to downfall in his business and must decide what to do next - collapse or join in the profitable slave trade. His son, William is totally against the idea, having experienced a Spanish slave trade boat on his travels. The book tells of greed, turmoil, vindictiveness and the harsh reality of life aboard boats in the 1800s. My favorite character is William. He has solid principles based on facts, and isn't afraid to take his ideas and enterprise on them whilst acting against the slave trade. The tension between him and his father, and later on Charlotte is palpable.
I enjoy reading historical stories, this one was no exception. It's woven really well, and had me turning the pages wanting to know what was going to happen next, all the way through - very engrossing. The adventures that William has made for fantastic reading. As a reader I was swept away into a world where women aren't meant to be the leaders and slaves are seen as the same as cattle. Charlotte, the daughter of a rival boating family, seems pleasant enough at first - appearances aren't all they seem and eventually a poisonous family get what they deserve.
Ice King is a detailed book, packed with information on how life was likely to have been like on board, including insights into surgery and death on board. It also shows what it must have been like for the family left behind. Thoroughly enjoyable.
September 22, 2012
I have always loved sailing ships and tales of adventure on the high seas. The Ice King will always be one of the best for me. When I began reading this book, I felt as if I had settled in with a tale that was truly written in the early 1800s -- the author's prose and style has the feeling of the long-ago literary greats. Well-drawn characters and a compelling plot make this book difficult to put down.
Read this book -- it is a wonderful tale!
Read this book -- it is a wonderful tale!
December 2, 2012
Ice King is a thoroughly enjoyable historical novel. It includes interesting, well-drawn characters and plenty of action, romance and authentic early nineteenth century detail.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews