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ATAPY Helps UNESCO School in Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project

On September, 15, 1974, divers Odd K Osmundsen, Tore Svalesen and Leif Svalesen discovered wreckage and giant elephant tusks at the bottom of the sea near Tromøy, off the southern coast of Norway. Along with the ivory cannons, ship timber and other interesting objects were found. Almost everything was hidden under layers of seaweed, rocks, and sand. However, as a result of thorough planning and intense study of old documents from the archives, the three divers knew exactly what they had found.

The Danish-Norwegian slave ship Fredensborg that sank on December, 1, 1768 was a typical ship that engaged in the Triangular Trade.

Triangular Trade is the name given to the trading route used by European merchants who exchanged goods with Africans for slaves, shipped the slaves to the Americas, sold them and brought goods from the Americas back to Europe. Ships left Europe with cargoes of a broad assortment of goods considered suitable for the slave trade. Once anchored in the forts, the interiors of the ships were rebuilt to accommodate enslaved Africans.

Fredensborg is the best documented wreck of a transatlantic slave trade ship located so far.

Photo: reconstruction of a slave ship by students of Vesthimmerlands Gymnasium

In September, 2003 ATAPY was contacted by Mr. Jeff Klintø, an educator at Vesthimmerlands Gymnasium. This UNESCO school participates actively in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project. The project was supported by the Danish UNESCO Comittee and The Digital North Denmark.

As a part of the project, Mr. Klintø initiated the creation of a CD-Rom with teaching materials about the Danish involvement in the Triangular Trade. The CD-rom had to contain contemporary materials as well as materials from the age when the use of Gothic letters was common. That is where the project faced a challenge.

Mr. Klintø:

‘Gothic letters caused a number of problems in relation to the OCR-programs that are currently available on the market. These problems led us to approach the Royal Library in Copenhagen, where they recommended that we address the Russian company ATAPY, which handled the Royal Library’s Gothic materials. However, the thought of having Gothic texts which were written in Danish handled in Novosibirsk by Russian employees seemed unrealistic. The materials were from an age when there was no national orthography yet; the dictionaries in the OCR program would be useless. How would they be able to work? Add to this the very uneven quality of the printing in the old works, and the task seems rather impossible.’

The Media Service Department of ATAPY accepted the challenge and did excellent work on recognition, proofreading and exporting to HTML of more than 5500 pages of Old Danish book.

Let Mr. Klintø draw a line under the project history with his own words:

‘The materials that were returned were of a high standard, and ATAPY was incredibly obliging and helpful. The communication with project leadership functioned excellently and the team worked wonders with the materials which were often of a poor quality. Therefore I would like to sincerely recommend this company. Thanks to the competent staff of ATAPY, it is now possible for the public to have access to materials which may not be issued at libraries any more because of their age and rarity. Incidentally, it is worth noticing that the work was done for a very favorable price.’

About the Transatlantic Slave Trade Project:

The Transatlantic Slave Trade Project is aimed to break the silence surrounding the Transatlantic Slave Trade. By learning about the past, young people can fully understand the present and prepare a better future together in a world free of all types of enslavement, injustice, discrimination and prejudice.