Middle Passage Reality

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MIDDLE PASSAGE REALITY

In July of 1788, Liverpool slave-trade participants testified about their activities in Parliament. They told MPs that slaves, among other things, were comfortable during transatlantic crossings.

Then, under intense cross examination, they acknowledged the truth. We pick up the story in chapter 23 of Clarkson's history:

Every slave, whatever his size might be, was found to have only five feet and six inches in length, and sixteen inches in breadth, to lie in. The floor was covered with bodies stowed or packed according to this allowance: but between the floor and the deck or ceiling were often platforms or broad shelves in the mid-way, which were covered with bodies

When captives were brought to the African ports, they were bound together, two by two. Were they also tethered, in some manner, aboard ship?

The men were chained two and two together by their hands and feet, and were chained also by means of ring-bolts, which were fastened to the deck. They were confined in this manner at least all the time they remained upon the coast, which was from six weeks to six months as it might happen.

If they were captured to provide free labor, Africans needed nourishment. What did they eat?

Their allowance consisted of one pint of water a day to each person, and they were fed twice a day with yams and horsebeans. Some of the captives refused to eat, wishing to die rather than to live in such horrific conditions. When that happened, slavers would force-open their mouths with a device (called a speculum oris) which looked like an instrument of torture.

Confined in cramped quarters, how did the captives keep their bodies limber?

After meals they jumped up in their irons for exercise. This was so necessary for their health; they were whipped if they refused to do it; and this jumping had been termed dancing.

Young girls could also be whipped if they refused the captain's order to dance without their clothes. One example was memorialized by George Cruikshank on the 10th of April, 1792: “John Kimber, captain of the slave ship Recovery, whipped a fifteen-year-old captive while she was suspended by her ankle. Although she died of her injuries, a jury in the High Court of Admiralty acquitted Kimber. They concluded the girl had died of disease, not mistreatment.”

Were captives allowed to breathe fresh air, or did they spend most of their time below deck?

They were usually fifteen and sixteen hours below deck out of the twenty-four. In rainy weather they could not be brought up for two or three days together. If the ship was full, their situation was then distressing. They sometimes drew their breath with anxious and laborious efforts, and some died of suffocation.

It is said one could smell an approaching slave ship ten miles away, so horrific were its onboard conditions.

How did slave-trading captains - and their crews - deal with the reality of life as they transported human cargo to distant shores? John Newton - a slave trader turned abolitionist - kept a journal of his activities between 1750-1754. Let's look at life onboard ship as he sailed toward the Caribbean island of Antigua:

26th MAY. ... In the evening, by the favour of Providence, discovered a conspiracy among the men slaves to rise upon us ... I've found near 20 of them had broke their irons. Are at work securing them.

The next day he encountered bad weather:

27th MAY. ... A hard tornado came on so quick that had hardly time to take in a small sail; blew extream hard for 3 hours with heavy rain...At noon little wind....In the afternoon secured all the men's irons again and punished 6 of the ringleaders of the insurrection.

Two days after the attempted revolt, Newton wrote about what might have been:

28th MAY. ...Their plot was exceedingly well laid, and had they been let alone an hour longer, must have occasioned us a good deal of trouble and damage ... They still look very gloomy and sullen and have doubtless mischief in their heads if they could find every opportunity to vent it ...

Several slaves - which Newton identifies by numbers, not names - took ill and died:

29th MAY. ... Buryed a boy slave (No.86) of a flux. Had 3 girls taken with fevers this morning ...

12th JUNE. ... Buryed a man slave (No.84) of a flux, which he has been struggling with near 7 weeks ...

13th JUNE. ...This morning buryed a woman slave (No. 47) Know not what to say she died of for she has not been properly alive since she first came on board.

22nd JUNE. ... I am much afraid of another ravage from the flux, for we have had 8 taken within these few days.

24th JUNE. ... Buryed a girl slave (No. 92).

27th JUNE. ... When we were putting the slaves down in the evening, one that was sick jumped overboard. Got him in again but he dyed immediately between his weakness and the salt water he had swallowed ...

As they neared Antigua, Newton and his crew discovered another insurrection plot:

28th JUNE. ... Put the boys in irons and slightly in the thumbscrews to urge them to a full confession.

29th JUNE. ... In the morning examined the men slaves and punished 6 of the principal, put 4 of them in collars.

Within days of reaching Antigua, Newton had sold all of his captives:

8th JULY. ... Landed the slaves. Sold all to about 20.

What was the transatlantic crossing like from the captive's perspective? Olaudah Equiano, the kidnapped son of a chief, answers that question.

Slave-traders used inhuman devices to capture, and control, their victims. They kept track of their cargo as though people were commodities, like guns or sugar:

“Deplorable conditions existed onboard slave ships as captives crossed the Atlantic. How were people, including children, able to endure such a crowded and foul environment? What goes through a child's mind as he or she is kidnapped from home and turned into a slave?”

Olaudah Equiano, born in 1745 (in what is now Nigeria), answered those questions. The son of a chief - and later one of Britain's leading abolitionists - Equiano was one of the first Africans to live through chattel slavery and write about it. The following are some first-hand observations from his book.

Children were kidnapped from their homes, often when their parents were not there. A similar event happened to Olaudah and his sister. He was eleven years old.

At some point, before he sailed, Equiano was separated from his sister. It was a frightening event for both of them.

The first time the young lad set eyes on a slave ship, he was terrified.

He thought he was brought on board to be eaten by the white men:

When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted...I asked if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair?

Since he did not live on the African coast, and had never seen a ship, Equiano thought sailing happened by magic.

Conditions on board ship were so bad he would have jumped overboard had he been able.

Equiano learned he would be taken far away to work for white men in their country.

During the crossing, the stench below deck, nearly unbearable on the coast, became "pestilential."

Many of the kidnapped Africans thought death was preferable to living on a slave ship.

Some of the captives jumped into the water, committing suicide. More would have followed had the crew not stopped them.

Equiano's ship arrived in Barbados. He, and the other captured Africans, were sold as slaves on the Caribbean island. Olaudah Equiano spent many years at sea as the slave of a naval man. Although he became a freeman in 1766, for the sum of forty pounds sterling, he never saw his parents or sister again.

Many people wanted to maintain slave-trading for economic reasons. A Capt. Norris said he knew slave labor was "the connecting medium of our foreign with our domestic commerce he said:." British manufacturing depended on it. If that connection were removed:

The export of British manufactures, which to Africa and the Colonies amount to nearly three millions sterling annually, would soon be reduced to nothing...From the inevitable decrease of the import of West Indian productions, there would be such a deficiency of the national revenue, as the imposition of fresh taxes, upon a people deprived of their accustomed resources of opulence and industry, could not possibly replace ... Our national importance would quickly decline, and be known to the next generation, only by the page of history. (Norris, pages 182-183)

Thanks to the Library of Congress, you can read an early edition of Equiano's narrative. Initially published in 1789 when he was Britain's leading abolitionist ,Equiano's book asks compelling questions. Here are some examples:

1. How could white people consider Africans inferior when many 'Europeans were themselves descended from barbarians?
2. Were Africans barbarians?
3. "Is this what your God meant when he said do unto others...?"
4. Was slavery essential to a nation becoming rich?
5. How does the treatment of Africans on the Middle Passage conflict with the idea that one takes care of one’s property?
6. What kind of reasons could have been given to allow slave owners to treat a human as property?
7. Why is slavery considered wrong or a sin or an abuse to many people?
8. Would you have survived the Middle Passage?