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The White Lion was a privateer ship of English manufacture that brought the first Africans to Virginia in late August 1619. It is regarded as the start of chattel slavery in the North American colonies.

As John Rolfe, secretary of the colony of Virginia, wrote to Virginia Company of London treasurer Edwin Sandys: "About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett with the Treasurer in the West Indyes, and determined to hold consort shipp hetherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls (whereof he was in greate need as he pretended) at the best and easyest rates they could."

The slaves were taken on the Portuguese slave ship São Jão Bautista from Luanda, Angola, capital of the then-Portuguese colony. Intercepting the São Jão Bautista on its way to modern-day Veracruz on the Gulf coast of Mexico, the White Lion then captured part of the ship's human cargo under Dutch letters of marque from Maurice, Prince of Orange. White Lion captain John Colyn Jope then sailed for Virginia to sell the slave cargo, first landing in Point Comfort.

After being sold off the White Lion, two of the slaves, Isabella and Anthony, married and had a child in 1624. William Tucker, as they named him after a local planter, was the first recorded Black child born in English America.