How Was Life On A Slave Ship

From approximately 1525 to 1866, a staggering twelve and a half million Africans endured the heart-wrenching experience of being forcibly taken from their homeland and transported across the vast Atlantic Ocean. Tragically, nearly 2 million of these individuals would not survive this harrowing journey.

As the 18th century approached, European merchants were increasingly constructing ships designed to transport hundreds of enslaved people on each voyage. These vessels were equipped with additional portholes to provide ventilation, weapons mounted on the deck in anticipation of possible rebellions, and extra compartments below deck to maximize human cargo capacity.

Before boarding these ominous ships in African port cities, enslaved individuals were subjected to a dehumanizing process. They were stripped of their clothing and remaining possessions, and their heads were forcibly shaved. This preparation phase could extend for weeks, or even months, adding to the anguish of those already suffering.

Once aboard, the enslaved people were left to inhabit the ship's deck or a makeshift wooden structure constructed by the crew. The crew also implemented netting around the deck to prevent desperate acts of escape. However, when they were moved below deck, the enslaved individuals found themselves crammed into compartments with ceilings as low as four and a half feet. In these cramped conditions, they would spend the majority of their arduous voyage. They were segregated by gender and age, with adult men often shackled together. Women were usually unchained within their designated compartment, while children had limited freedom to move about the ship. In this nightmarish environment, there were no sanitary facilities, forcing the enslaved to endure squalid conditions, exacerbated by the suffocating heat and poor ventilation. Diseases such as dysentery, malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, measles, and influenza ran rampant, afflicting both the enslaved and crew members.

While the enslaved people were permitted about eight hours a day above deck, they remained segregated by gender, separated by a reinforced wall called a "barre kata" that served to protect the crew from potential uprisings. Enslaved individuals were also subjected to forced exercise, which sometimes included coerced dance and song for the entertainment of the crew. Those deemed disobedient faced severe punishment, often enduring beatings with the cruel "cat-o'-nine-tails," a tool designed to inflict excruciating pain. Those who refused to consume their meager meals of rice and beans were compelled to do so, sometimes with the use of a "speculum oris," a medieval tool used to force open the mouth.

Tragically, women, though usually unshackled, were subjected to sexual abuse and rape by members of the crew, sometimes even arriving in the New World bearing the children of their assailants. Despite their limited freedom, some women managed to use their minuscule liberties to coordinate mutinies against their captors. Regrettably, such rebellions rarely achieved success.

One poignant episode that revealed the horrifying conditions of the Middle Passage was a 1783 court trial involving the slave ship Zong. Departing from present-day Ghana in August 1781 with 442 enslaved individuals on board, the ship endured a two-month journey fraught with navigational errors. By the time they reached their destination, 62 enslaved people and seven crew members had perished, with disease spreading rapidly, and fresh water running dangerously low. In a horrifying act, Captain Luke Collingwood, fearing the financial ramifications of more deaths, ordered 130 enslaved individuals to be thrown overboard. He argued that this was necessary to halt the spread of disease.

During the ensuing trial between the ship's owners and their insurance company, the owners contended that since it was legal to euthanize sick animals for the sake of a ship's health, it should also be permissible to treat enslaved people in a similar manner. Shockingly, the court sided with the ship's owners. However, the trial itself brought to light the unimaginable horrors aboard the Zong, leading to its story being published by British abolitionists. The redaction of the ship's name underscored the disturbing reality that such tragedies could occur on any vessel transporting enslaved individuals across the Middle Passage.

Twenty-four years following the Zong trial, the international slave trade was officially outlawed in both Great Britain and the United States. However, it would take an additional 26 years for England and 58 more years, coupled with a devastating civil war, for the practice of slavery to be definitively abolished in the United States.