Life Aboard a Slave Ship | History

from about 1525 to 1866 twelve and a half million Africans were taken from their homeland and forcibly transported across the Atlantic a journey that approximately 2 million of them would not survive by the turn of the 18th century European merchants were building vessels capable of transporting hundreds of enslaved people per journey these ships had extra port holes for ventilation weapons mounted on deck in case of rebellion and additional compartments added below deck to take on more human cargo before boarding the ships at African port cities enslaved people were stripped of their clothing and remaining possessions

and have their heads forcibly shaved during boarding which could take weeks or even months enslaved people lived on the deck of the ship and a temporary wooden house constructed by the crew the crew also installed netting around the deck of the ship designed to catch those enslaved who might act for death over forced servitude once moved below deck and slave people would find themselves stuffed into compartments with ceilings as low as four and a half feet where they would spend most of their voyage they were segregated by gender and age adult men were kept separately

in shackled in pairs women usually left Unchained and their designated compartment and children often free to move about the ship there were no sanitary facilities of any kind and slave people were forced to relieve themselves where they sat creating hellish conditions when combined with the heat and lack of ventilation below deck disease was rampant dysentery malaria yellow fever smallpox measles and influenza ravaged the enslaved and crew members alike the enslaved people generally spent about eight hours a day above deck but we're still separated by gender with a barre kata a reinforced wall that could be

used to protect crew members in case of a revolt enslaved people were also subject to forced exercise which sometimes included dance and song for the entertainment of the crew enslaved captives deemed disobedient or tortured and beaten usually with with the especially cruel cat-o'-nine-tails a tool designed to inflict maximum pain enslaved people who refused to eat their typical meal of rice and beans were forced to do so sometimes with a speculum horas a medieval tool used to force open a person's mouth women while usually left unshackled were raped and sexually abused by members of the crew

sometimes arriving in the new world carrying the children of their attackers but it was the women using their miniscule freedoms who would often coordinate mutinies against their captors but these rebellions were rarely successful the true extent of the horrors of the Middle Passage came to light in a 1783 court trial over the slave ship zong the song left present-day Ghana in August of 1781 with 442 enslaved on board after a two-month journey riddled with navigation errors 62 enslaved people and seven crew members had perished without reaching their destination disease was spreading throughout the ship and

fresh water was running dangerously low captain Luke Collingwood was afraid of the financial cost of more deaths enslaved people that died of disease were not covered by the ship's insurance but the enslaved who drowned were Collingwood 130 enslaved people thrown overboard he claimed it was necessary to do so to halt the spread of disease at the trial between the songs owners and their insurance company the owners argue that because it was legal to kill sick animals for the health of a ship it was legal to treat enslaved people the same the court agreed with the

ship's owners but the trial itself exposed the horrors aboard the song and it's story was republished by British abolitionists but the name of the ship redacted meant to show that this tragedy could happen on any ship transporting enslaved people across the Middle Passage 24 years after the song trial the international slave trade was outlawed in both Great Britain and the United States it would take England an additional 26 years in the u.s. another 58 years plus a civil war before the practice of slavery was officially abolished you