Slave Ships
The journey from Africa to America usually took about two months. To maximise their profits slave merchants carried as many slaves as was physically possible on their ships. By the 17th century slaves could be purchased in Africa for $25 and sold in America for $150. After the slave trade was declared illegal, prices went much higher. Even with a death rate of 50 per cent, merchants could expect to make tremendous profits from the trade.
The slave ship docked at Jamestown, that I boarded, only provided about 2 square metres per slave and I easily identified some of the equipment including iron handcuffs, leg shackles, thumb screws, branding irons and instruments for forcing open slave’s jaws. This slave ship, built to carry a maximum of 450 people, was carrying over 600 slaves. Chained together by their hands and feet, the slaves had no room to move. Many of the slaves appeared permanently crippled due to the way they were chained up with all fastened together by handcuffs on their wrists and by irons riveted on their legs.
The slave ship docked at Jamestown, that I boarded, only provided about 2 square metres per slave and I easily identified some of the equipment including iron handcuffs, leg shackles, thumb screws, branding irons and instruments for forcing open slave’s jaws. This slave ship, built to carry a maximum of 450 people, was carrying over 600 slaves. Chained together by their hands and feet, the slaves had no room to move. Many of the slaves appeared permanently crippled due to the way they were chained up with all fastened together by handcuffs on their wrists and by irons riveted on their legs.
On going below the decks I received such a greeting in my nostrils, as I had never experienced in my life. I became so sick and observed a slave being flogged savagely and severely for refusing to eat. Until then I could never have imagined such brutal cruelty. The air soon become unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and many of the slaves appeared close to death. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. The misery, which the slaves endure, is not easy to describe.
I could now understand how the ship’s conditions contribute to fevers and stomach complaints, like dysentery and diarrhoea, and why the death rate was so high.
Whilst disembarking the ship I met Thomas Clarkson who, in 1787, formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trades. He described the conditions on board a slave ship: “The voyage, the horrors of which are beyond description. For example, the mode of packing. The hold of a slave vessel is from two to four feet high. It is filled with as many human beings as it will contain. They are made to sit down, chained together, with their heads between their knees. First, a line is placed close to the side of the vessel. Then, another line, and then the packer, armed with a heavy club, strikes at the feet of the last line in order to make them press as closely as possible against those behind. Thus it is suffocating for want of air, starving for want of food, parched with thirst for want of water, these poor creatures are compelled to perform a voyage of fourteen hundred miles. No wonder the mortality is dreadful!”
I could now understand how the ship’s conditions contribute to fevers and stomach complaints, like dysentery and diarrhoea, and why the death rate was so high.
Whilst disembarking the ship I met Thomas Clarkson who, in 1787, formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trades. He described the conditions on board a slave ship: “The voyage, the horrors of which are beyond description. For example, the mode of packing. The hold of a slave vessel is from two to four feet high. It is filled with as many human beings as it will contain. They are made to sit down, chained together, with their heads between their knees. First, a line is placed close to the side of the vessel. Then, another line, and then the packer, armed with a heavy club, strikes at the feet of the last line in order to make them press as closely as possible against those behind. Thus it is suffocating for want of air, starving for want of food, parched with thirst for want of water, these poor creatures are compelled to perform a voyage of fourteen hundred miles. No wonder the mortality is dreadful!”