The Middle Passage – the Atlantic Slave Trade
In Africa, men, women and children were taken captive in battle or in raids by enemy tribesmen and marched to the west coast. It was only the first leg of what would be a long journey, a voyage that would end in a lifetime of slavery. In between was a crossing over the Atlantic Ocean known as the Middle Passage.
Spanish explorers were the first to bring Africans on their explorations to the New World – some as slaves, some as free men – and as colonization grew and as the Spanish began to establish plantations in the Caribbean, they would bring African slaves to the New World as permanent residents. In 1501, the first African slaves arrived in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The islands of the Caribbean were proving to be an excellent environment for the production of sugar cane and soon other European countries had established their own colonies.
Demand for labour to work the vast fields that rolled across the islands like a green continuation of the ocean itself grew, and African slaves seemed suited to the harsh labour. They worked in brutal conditions that included extreme heat, humidity, and were plagued by poisonous insects, venomous snakes, and tropical diseases. Compared to other races, the Africans seemed to have a higher tolerance for the extreme conditions in the sugar cane fields. That was the commonly accepted theory at the time. Whether fact or fiction, as African slavery moved from the Caribbean to the North American mainland, that mentality followed.
Once again, it was the Spanish who brought the first African slaves to North America, arriving in Saint Augustine in the Spanish colony of Florida. But it was not until 1619 that the first Africans arrived in the British colonies.
The Treasurer, an English ship, left Jamestown, Britain’s first successful attempt to establish a colony in the New World, to pick up goods for the colony. At some point on the high seas, the ship met a Dutch man-of-war, the White Lion, and the two sailed on together until they encountered a Spanish frigate loaded with slaves. No one knows how many slaves were on the Spanish ship, but the White Lion parted company with the Treasurer and appeared off the coast of Virginia carrying twenty out of the one hundred slaves that had been taken from the Spanish frigate. The captain reported that the other eighty had died. The twenty remaining African slaves on the White Lion were exchanged for provisions. Eventually, months later, the Treasurer reached Jamestown. Their slaves had been sold in Bermuda. The pirating of a Spanish ship had brought slavery to the British colonies in the New World. By 1649, the number of African slaves in the colony of Virginia was 300. By 1671, they numbered 2,000, comprising 5 per cent of the population.
As more people arrived, more land was cleared and cultivated, and agriculture grew in the New World. But so did the demand for labourers to keep it going. With the growing demand for labour, the slave trade became even more lucrative. From 1619 until 1808, when the importation of African slaves was banned in the British colonies, an estimated 450,000 Africans were imported as slaves.
In other parts of the New World, the numbers of imported Africans varied, but were still staggeringly high. Before 1880, Brazil had imported 4 million. In the West Indies, each of the European colonies established by France, Britain, Spain and the Dutch had imported more than 1.5 million African slaves each.
The Human Cargo
A life of misery began for the African captives even before they reached the shores of the New World. Two techniques were advocated for dealing with the human cargo. Some captains believed in ‘loose packing’, a technique which involved transporting a lower number of Africans. Captains who practised it believed that by providing the captives with more air, room and better sanitation, it increased the percentage of slaves who were in good condition by the time they arrived in the New World. More survivors meant more profit.
The other technique was ‘tight packing’, which was employed when a captain believed that greater numbers of captives would offset the high mortality rate. ‘Tight packing’ became the dominate practice over time. Conditions on-board were so horrible that documented accounts speak of an odour so strong that it announced the ships’ arrival at port long before the boats themselves could be seen. Slaves were segregated by gender, but were chained together and packed so closely together in the ships’ holds that sleeping could only be accomplished spoon fashion. Standing was impossible, with only two–four feet of clearance above their heads. The captives were forced to lie in their own faeces, urine, blood and vomit.
Diagram of slaves packed in ships
It is not surprising that under such conditions disease was the primary cause of death. Doctors were employed by ‘tight packers’ in an effort to increase the percentage of captives who survived, and survived in good condition. Most could only be called doctors in the broadest sense of the term and would never have been allowed to practise medicine anywhere but aboard a slave ship. Such men were paid ‘head money’, a price per captive who made the journey and arrived in the New World fit enough to start work.
The greatest fear of the captain of a slave ship was revolt, and it was not a fear that was unfounded. More than 200 attempts to mutiny were documented during the years of the Middle Passage before the United States outlawed the import of African slaves in 1808. Some captains were known to punish a cargo of captives who attempted revolt by herding them into the sea. Some men jumped in voluntarily rather than face further brutality.
Crossing the Atlantic might take three weeks or three months, depending upon weather conditions. During that time, the captives were only allowed on deck during good weather or when the captain had no reason to fear the threat of revolt. Captains of slave ships applied extreme controls in order to prevent any possible revolt. One account tells of a captain who used a young woman as an example, tying her to a hoist and lowering her into the water. Even though she was raised immediately, sharks had already eaten the lower half of her body.
Unfounded or justified, the captains of slave ships made the message clear to captives who didn’t understand the language of their captors. Resistance would be met with brutal punishment.
Welcome to the New World
On average, approximately 15 per cent of African captives did not survive the Atlantic crossing to the New World. Those who did were taken to slave markets in major ports such as Chesapeake Bay in the north, Charleston in the colony of South Carolina, Savannah on the coast of William Penn’s Georgia colony, and to New Orleans in Louisiana.
In terms of agriculture, the cultivation of tobacco was proving very profitable and becoming an increasingly popular indulgence, particularly in Britain. Rice, which grew in the southern colonies of the New World, also spurred the slave trade. Like tobacco, it was labour intensive, but not enough Englishmen could be convinced to migrate to the colonies in order to provide an adequate workforce. As the cultivation of tobacco and other forms of lucrative agriculture increased, the demand for slave labour grew along with it.
But the Southern colonies were not the only region of British North America that found slave labour to be beneficial to commerce. In the late seventeenth century, the city of Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was one of the major ports for slave trade.
Slave Auction Poster, by John Addison, printer, Government Office, East India Company, St Helena
The humanity of slaves sold in the slave markets was usually disregarded both by sellers and buyers. They were seen as property, an investment, the same as a piece of equipment or livestock. Buyers were usually permitted to inspect a slave as closely and as intimately as he or she deemed necessary to assure themselves that the slave was healthy and physically fit for whatever duties the prospective buyer might have in mind. It was not unusual for a slave to be stripped naked for a buyer to examine them for scars that might indicate past whippings, which meant a slave was potentially a problem. They also looked for physical