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The Great Divide: The Social History of the
Middle Passage in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

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Erik J . W. Hofstee

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THE GREAT DIVIDE: ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE
PASSAGE IN THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
By

Erik J. W. Hofstee

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History

2001

ABSTRACT

THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE PASSAGE IN
THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
By

Erik J. W. Hofstee

This work concentrates on previously un- and understudied aspects of the social
history of the middle passage in the Atlantic slave trade. I argue that the middle passage
has a social history that can be recovered, and that there are identiﬁable forces that
shaped that history. Slavery on a slaving vessel is conceptualized as a particular form of
enslavement that was as much a system as land-based slave systems. Both quantitative
and qualitative evidence are used.

As a counter-weight to the prevailing historiography, I open my work with a
chapter on the experiences of women on the middle passage. The second chapter
considers the experiences of children and infants. The third chapter considers the crew of
slaving vessels, and includes a large section devoted to black crewmembers. The second
part of the dissertation describes a number of the most important forces that shaped the
voyage. Resistance and rebellion, mutiny and survival strategies of both crew and slaves
are examined in the context of the constrained stage of the slaving vessel and the
prevailing systems of control. The conclusion includes a number of suggestions for

further research.

Copyright by
Erik J. W. Hofstee
2001

To my parents.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No dissertation is a solo endeavor, and mine is no exception. I have relied on the
work and assistance of more people than I can readily acknowledge here. There are too
many scholars to whom I owe an intellectual debt - writers on the middle passage, on
slavery, on American history, and other ﬁelds — to mention here. While I differ with some
upon occasion, collectively their research and ideas have created the intellectual
foundation upon which this work builds.

I have been blessed with a supportive dissertation committee. The chair of my
committee, Professor Christine Daniels is a rigorous scholar with a keen mind and a
ready sense of humor. She is also a formidable critic of substance and style. Professor
Darlene Clarke-Hine believed in my work, offered wise council, and arranged
desperately needed RA positions. Professor Richard Thomas’ passion for his work
remains an inspiration. Both taught me that caring and writing about the facts are not
incompatible. Professor Jim McClintock supported me from the beginning with
professional advice and guidance for which I remain grateful. Professor Harrow proved
to be an outside reader with penetrating insights. I am grateful to the College of Arts and
Letters at Michigan State University for the award of a Merit Scholarship which made
much of the research in this dissertation possible.

My colleagues at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, Professors
Doeko Bosscher, Tity de Vries, Ine Megens, Jaap den Hollander and Toon de Baets and
the other members of the sectie Eigentijdse Geschiedenis were uniformly supportive. For

interest and encouragement above and beyond the call of duty, Professor Wil Verhoeven

and drs. Jessica Winters of the American Studies program at the University of Groningen
deserve special thanks. Thanks also to Professor J aap Verhuel at the University of
Utrecht. Professor Frits van Holthoon encouraged me to pursue my studies in the United
States. He has been both mentor and colleague. He will remain both, and a friend.

Some debts can be acknowledged, but never repaid. So it is with my debt to my
parents, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. Irene Shim has been more supportive than
anyone has a right to expect, and in more ways than I could possibly recount or even
recall. Her support during graduate school and after has meant everything to me. Dr.
Jeffrey Hodges and Professor Ralph Bauer are both everything friends should be, and

more.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................... x
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1

WOMEN ................................................................................ 20
CHAPTER 2

CHILDREN AND INFANTS ........................................................ 64
CHAPTER 3

CREW .................................................................................... 106
CHAPTER 4

RESISTANCE AND REBELLION ................................................... 175
CHAPTER 5

MUTINY .................................................................................. 205
CHAPTER 6

SURVIVAL STRATEGIES ............................................................ 251
CONCLUSION .......................................................................... 290
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................... 302

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1. Current Estimates of Slave Ratios ....................................... 26
Table 1.2. New Estimates of Slave Ratios, Including Infant Data ................ 27

Table 2.1. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman’s Proportion Children Carried. 69

Table 2.2. Proportion Children, Excluding Infants ................................... 70
Table 2.3. Proportion Children, Including Infants .................................... 71
Table 2.4. Proportion of Children Reported Disembarking by Nationality ....... 73
Table 2.5. Children Disembarked per Ton Contrasted with Slaves

per ton Carried ............................................................................ 78
Table 2.6. Ratio of Boys to Girls by Vessel Tonnage .............................. 79
Table 2.7. Ratio of Boys to Girls by Slaving Nation ............................. 80
Table 2.8. Ratio of Male to Female Infants on the Middle Passage ............ 81
Table 3.1. The Inﬂuence of the Experience Level of Captains on the

Outcome of a Slaving Voyage ....................................................... 114
Table 3.2. Average Armaments of British and French Slavers .................. 141
Table 3.3. Rate of Capture by Armament Levels .................................. 141
Table 3.4. French and English Desertion Patterns ................................. 156
Table 3.5. Statistical Overview of French and English Desertion Patterns 156
Table 5.1. Insurrections and Guns on Board Data (All Nationalities) ........... 210
Table 5.2. Insurrections and Guns on Board Data (French Trade) ............... 210
Table 5.3 Insurrections and Guns on Board Data (English Trade) ............... 210.

Table 5.4. Overview of Revolts as Reported in the Atlantic Slavery Dataset 217

Table 5.5. Distribution of Crew Death on Voyages Reporting and Those
Not Reporting An Insurrection ......................................................... 240

viii

Table 5.6. Comparison of Slave Mortality between Vessels Reporting and
Those Not Reporting an Insurrection ................................................ 249

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1. Causes of Vessels Lost in the Atlantic Slave Trade ................... 139
Figure 3.2. Most Common Number of Guns Carried, All Nationalities 140
Figure 3.3. Shipwrecks per 1000 Voyages .......................................... 149
Figure 3.4. Shipwrecks and Slave Presence ......................................... 150

INTRODUCTION

“’T’isn’t he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is, - ‘tis he who
has endured I was black but I had the feelings of a man as well as any man”1

The quote above rightly cautions against the hubris implicit in supposing that the
experiences of those involved in the Atlantic slave trade can be fully understood by
historians. But it also makes a case for a serious, comprehensive attempt at recovering the
experiences and the structure that gave rise to them. The social history work that exists on
the middle passage tends either to be general and border on the sensationalist, or to be

case studies that are either very specialized or very brief.2 Recent writing especially,

 

' Quoted in K. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (New York, Vintage Books, 1964), 430.

2 For an example of the ﬁrst, see Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the
Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518—1865 (New York: Viking Press, 1962). Mannix and Cowley, an amateur
historian and a journalist. wrote what has by default become the standard reference work for those seeking
information on the social history of the slave trade. Yet it is a deeply flawed book in many respects; it is
overly sensationalist, does not provide a balanced view of the trade, and is very poorly referenced. The
alternative, M. Burnside’s Spirit of the Passage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997) is a coffee table
book, thinly referenced, and with little depth. Though better than Black Cargoes, it is not an acceptable
social history of the middle passage. Yet there are few other alternatives, as the social history of the middle
passage is generally regulated to a few pages in books dealing with slavery and the slave trade as a whole.
See for examples J.M. Postrna, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1815 (New York: Cambridge
UP, 1990) or R.L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979). There are a number of detailed case studies available,
such as Nigel Tattersﬁeld’s The Forgotten Trade Comprising the log of the Daniel and Henry of I 700 and
Accounts of the Slave Trade from the Minor ports of England, 1698-1725 (London: I. Cape, 1991), and
Suzanne Schwartz’s Slave Captain - The Career of James Irving in the Liverpool Slave Trade (Wrexham:
Bridge Books, 1995). But these books are not able to generalize conﬁdently, and do not address the
structure of the middle passage. There are several case studies in scholarly articles extant, such as M.
Boucher’s "The Voyage of a Cape Slaver in 1742,” Historia 24, 1 (1979), Walter E. Minchinton’s “The
Voyage of the Snow Africa,” Mariner's Mirror 37, 3 (1951), Bruce L. Mouser’s, “The Voyage of the Good
Sloop Dolphin to Africa 1795-96.” American Neptune 37, 4 (1978) and Michael E. Stevens’ “'To Get as
Many Slaves as You Can': An 1807 Slaving Voyage,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 87, 3 (1986).
These types of articles have fallen out of favour in recent times, partly because of the demographic
emphasis on work on the middle passage, and partly because they add little new to the existing body of
knowledge, as they cannot generalize outside of their particular topic. There is also an incomplete body of
work that seeks to understand a particular aspect of the social history of the middle passage. J.H. Hodson’s
"The Letter Book of Robert Bostock, A Merchant in the Liverpool Slave Trade, 1789-1792,” Liverpool
Bulletin, 3 (1953), W. N. Boog Watson’s “The Guinea Trade and Some of Its Surgeons (with Special
Reference to the Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh),” Journal of the Royal College of
Surgeons of Edinburgh 14, 4 (1969) and Stephen D. Behrendt’s “Slave-Ship Crews and the Health Care of
Slaves,” Unpublished paper, Canadian Association of African Studies Annual Meeting (Toronto, May
1991) are examples of this type of work. However, these are too limited in scope to satisfy the reader
seeking to understand the middle passage as a dynamic system, and to place the experiences of crew and

partly due to a backlash against the tales of horror and morbidity, has not focused on the
middle passage other than to quantify and, to a lesser degree, to probe very specialized
aspects of the trade. The trend for the past three decades has been to focus on the trade as
a whole and on demographics in particular.3

Even when described in numbers, the middle passage still speaks to the
imagination as do few other historical topics. The Atlantic slave trade was a coerced
migration between Africa and the New World that spanned several centuries and
condemned at least 11.5 million Africans to the middle passage.4 Over ten million
individuals were delivered into slavery in the New World, and about 1.5 million
individuals died on the passage.5 The massive exodus from Africa took between thirty-
ﬁve and forty thousand voyages, and employed hundreds of thousands sailors. These, and
related statistical questions have formed the mainstay of historical inquiry into the middle
passage. Demographic and quantitative questions such as numbers, origins, distribution,
time, and the like have been debated in numerous books and articles. The quantitative
work reached its pinnacle with the publication of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade data set

in late 1999 that compiled information on 27,233 distinct voyages.‘5 Although it is in

 

slaves within that context. In addition, the sum of these types of studies does not amount to anything
approaching a comprehensive social history of the middle passage. The experiences of women slaves.
children, and black crew members have received little or no attention, to name but a few glaring omissions.
3 For a comprehensive overview of the directions scholarship on the Atlantic slave trade has taken up to
1990, see Hebert S. Klein, “Recent Trends in the Study of the Atlantic Slave Trade.” Indian Historical
Review 15, 1-2 (1988-89). Klein recognizes the lacuna in the social history of the trade in his article.

‘ The term “New World” is a problematic one, exclusively reﬂecting the perspective of the European
conquerors, settlers and their descendants. It is, however, a much more manageable phrase than “parts of
the North American continent, most of the South American continent, and the slave holding islands.” Thus
I use it, albeit with reservations. Similarly, I occasionally use the word “owner” to refer to the purchaser of
a slave. I use this term to reﬂect the legal and social relation between the two individuals. I do not imply
that the enslaved was “owned” in any other sense.

5 These are the scholarly consensus ﬁgures for the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas after 1600. D. Eltis,
David Richardson, Stephen D. Behrendt, and Herbert S. Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A
Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5.

6 D. Eltis et al., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (CD-ROM).

many respects incomplete, it is an astounding achievement that will prove invaluable in
further writing on the topic. I have used it extensively in this work. It is fair to argue that
demography must come before detailed social histories, but there is the risk of bogging
down in statistics, especially when new work makes only relatively minor adjustments to
previously published work.7 The middle passage has been extensively measured, but it
has been only superﬁcially described, and the dynamics of the voyage are not well
understood.

Too great a focus on the statistics of the trade carries with it the danger of losing
sight of the individuals caught up in it, and can imply that the experiences were
homogenous for all involved. This one-dimensional approach does not do the historical
reality of the middle passage justice. For all the quantitative work published, many of the
most elementary questions on the social history of the middle passage have yet to be
asked, let alone answered. Too little is known about the experiences of the men, women,
children, and crew onboard the Slavers, and about their interactions with each other, and
about the forces shaping those interactions. Unless the experiences of slaves and Slavers
are recovered and the dynamics of slaving voyages probed, statistics have the potential to
sanitize as much as to elucidate. It is too easy to speak glibly of “a 12 % mortality rate”
or some other statistical generalization, without understanding the experiences that lay
behind the numbers. There is a real risk of trivializing the experiences of slaves and
Slavers alike by transforming their experiences into mathematical calculations.

The middle passage can be legitimately conceptualized in many different ways. A

massive migration, requiring demographic analysis is one. It can also be conceptualized

 

7 Eltis, a major contributor to “the numbers game”, has called for more attention to be devoted to the social
history of the trade, arguing that numbers tend to sanitize the reality of the trade. David Eltis, “The

as a journey of fear and horror, as a cultural highway, as a forge shaping a new collective
identity, or as a tendril of the capitalist / mercantilist system, among others. The middle
passage was a physical journey, but also a mental journey; a journey away from, but also
towards; an act of destruction, but also formative.8 To study the middle passage in the
Atlantic slave trade is to accept contradictions, just as in the study of land-based slavery.
But as in land-based slavery, the middle passage was a systemic process, one from which
experiences can be distilled, and patterns recognized and accounted for. My work does
not advocate any particular interpretation of the middle passage. I am interested in
making a preliminary attempt at recovering the experiences of those on board, and in
understanding the forces that shaped those experiences.

Partly due to the scholarly emphasis on the quantitative side of the middle passage
and partly due to the fragmentary nature of primary sources, the middle passage has often
been assumed to have been almost a time of stasis. The experiences of male slaves have
too often served as a template for all onboard. Yet the experiences on board were not
homogenous, and the experiences of male slaves cannot be extrapolated to all on board. I
posit that a slaving vessel was an historical stage as much as any static location was, and
that much of the experiences of slaves and crew on the middle passage can be recovered.

I argue that the Atlantic needs to be viewed as a geographical location in its own right

 

'Numbers Game' and Routes to Slavery,” Slavery and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.), 2.

8 Some work has been devoted to the impact of the middle passage on the personalities of slaves recently
arrived in the New World, but it is an area in which much remains to be done. It is an area few historians
are willing to venture given the difﬁculties of measurement, generalizations. and the risks of stereotyping.
Early work on slavery and the formation of “slave personalities” have rightly caused grave misgivings
about this type of work. Stanley Elkin’s Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Public Life
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959) drew a barrage of criticism. Yet it is safe to hypothesize that
the middle passage caused substantive changes among many who suffered through it. A weak article
addressing this point is Okon Edet Uya’s “The Middle Passage and Personality Change Among Diaspora
Africans,” in Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora (2nd ed. ), Harris (ed.). Orlando Patterson’s brief
treatment of the subject in The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and
Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969), 151

where individuals acted and reacted within the constraints of their circumstances. As with
any historical stage, there was enough room for many different experiences to take place
and a variety of responses to unfold. I believe both can be contextualized in a theoretical
framework that identiﬁes and explains the forces that caused the middle passage to take a
particular form. Furthermore, I believe that recovering these and placing them in the
context of New World slavery is important.

The study of Atlantic slavery has concentrated on the experiences and dynamics
that took place on land. But by focusing only on land masses as physical locations, -
Europe, Africa, and the New World - the peculiar form of slavery on board slaving
vessels that effected well over eleven million individuals has been virtually ignored. The
microcosm of the slaving vessel was a very real place, one that had its own system. The
system showed both similarities to, and distinct differences from, slavery on land.
Understanding the social history of the middle passage is as important as understanding
any given land-based slave system; it is a prerequisite to understanding Atlantic slavery
as the whole that it was.

My study is divided into two main sections - the ﬁrst, chapters 1 — 3, probes the
individual and the collective experiences of those on board and the dynamics underlying
them, while the second works towards providing an analytical context for those
individual and collective experiences. The ﬁrst part of my study devotes a chapter apiece
to women, children and infants, and crew. I do not deal with male slaves as a separate
category in this section, though I do devote attention to them elsewhere in my work. This
is because nearly all the scholarly work extant on slaves on the middle passage has taken

the perspective of the male slaves. Their experiences have too often been implicitly

 

is better, but incomplete.

assumed to be the “average” experience. Yet they made up a minority of the slaves who
made the voyage.9 Rather than perpetuate this perspective, I focus on the women,
children and infants, and crew on Slavers. By highlighting their experiences, I challenge
the prevailing view of the middle passage. Recovering the experiences of women is
important in and of itself, but it is also necessary in order to develop a more balanced
understanding of the middle passage as a whole. While there were some similarities to
the experience of men, the experience of women differed substantially on a number of
fundamental levels. Chapter one introduces several ways that this was so, ranging from
the simple - for example, the conditions of conﬁnement — to the more subtle — for
example, how Slavers conceptualized the women under their control. I attempt to
establish a framework that delineates the circumstances that caused women’s experiences
to differ from that of men. I focus on two areas as case studies: i) the rape and sexual
abuse of slave women, and ii) the role of women in resistance. This chapter also
considers the experiences of pregnant women. Women who had infants with them on
board are considered in the next chapter, “Children and Infants.”

Virtually nothing is known about how children experienced the middle passage in
spite of the large number of children who made the crossing. There is no work extant that
considers their terms of conﬁnement, their relationships with other slaves or with the
Slavers, what was unique about their suffering, and least of all, their perceptions of
themselves and their world. The chapter “Children and Infants” addresses these questions

among others. Without doubt, this was the most challenging chapter of the dissertation to

 

9 Taken over the entire trade. An exact ﬁgure is impossible to give as it depends largely on how one deﬁnes
“man” as opposed to “boy” or “man-boy” (a common manner of referring to youths in the trade). See
chapter two “Children and Infants” for more on this. Nor can the number of female slaves be determined
with absolute precision. For more on this point and on the ratios of adult males to other slaves on board, see

research and write; the sources were the least forthcoming on the subject and
reconstructing a childhood past is problematic at the best of times. Nonetheless certain
observations can be made, and the outlines of a common experience can be discerned.
Infants and pregnant women were more common on the middle passage than is generally
supposed, and this chapter considers both.

I pay as much attention to crew as I do to slaves, as they relied heavily on each
other for their public identities and roles, and both were equally important in the shaping
of the middle-passage. Slave-ship crew were not a homogeneous mass. The distinction
between ofﬁcers and sailors is particularly important to understanding the middle
passage, and the relationship between the two is considered in detail. I also consider the
relationship of crew with their peers and with the slaves. Tensions on board a slaver
could be intense, both between slaves and crew, and among the crew themselves. Crew
had concerns and responsibilities that were not directly related to the slaves under their
control, and some of those are also dealt with in this chapter. I devote a large section to
black crew — both slave and free — as this too was an aspect of the trade that has not
received scholarly investigation.

The second part of my dissertation focuses on the processes and forces that
framed the actions and experiences of slaves and crew. I consider the motivations and
constraints that underlay collective and individual actions and that determined the day-to-
day conditions and routines on board a slaver. Violence and the threat of violence, from
both slaves and crew, is the central analytical tool.

The ﬁrst chapter of this section provides an overview of resistance and rebellion,

on the middle passage. Peter Parish has noted that “The two basic conditions which set

 

chapter one, “Women.”

the pattern for slave control were the fact or the threat of punishment and the general poor
prospects of successful and permanent escape.”10 This is all the more true on the middle
passage. The violence and the threat of violence - systemic and incidental, overt and
implicit, calculated and casual, individual or group directed — was closer to the surface on
the middle passage than on land. There was far less of a veneer covering the
commodiﬁcation of human beings; consequently, violence and its close companion, fear,
were unmasked to an extent seldom encountered on land. Highly overt forms of coercion,
ranging from constant vigilance, to the chaining of slaves, to the threat and use of
extremely harsh physical punishments were as fundamental to the organization of a slave-
ship. This was counter-balanced by the frequency and overt nature of resistance on the
middle passage. Resistance and rebellion are as fundamental to understanding the middle
passage as are the facts of violent oppression and individual enslavement. It is the
interplay of these forces, along with the need for personal and group survival that
ultimately determined the structure of the middle passage. While I describe various
expressions of resistance and rebellion, I concentrate on the dynamics underlying the
acts; I look beyond the act to the meaning of the deeds, and consider the dialectic this
created between the enslaved and the enslaver. I also consider the effects of the constant
implicit threat of resistance and rebellion. Mutiny was the most serious expression of
slave dissent.

A separate chapter is devoted to mutiny, as it was the concrete and symbolic
pinnacle of resistance to oppression on the middle passage. It was, from the perspective
of both slave and enslaver, also the most dangerous. It involved open and often organized

violence by slaves that threatened both white ascendancy and white lives. It alone was an

 

10 Peter J. Parish, Slavery: History and Historians (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 34.

8

action taken by the slaves that could potentially topple an entire voyage’s success. I argue
that mutinies and attempted mutinies were far more common than is generally assumed,
and that distinct typologies existed in mutiny attempts. There were distinct dynamics to
how mutinies developed, and identiﬁable factors which led to a greatly heightened risk of
a mutiny taking place. There were also several factors that determined the likelihood of
the success or failure of a mutiny. Violence, implicit or explicit, shaped the world of the
Atlantic slave trade, but the violence was not absolute. The ﬁnal chapter explores how
both crew and slaves sought to maximize their survival chances on the middle passage by
exploiting what space there was between control and rebellion.

Expressions of both oppression and dissent were tempered by the need for
survival on the middle passage. I contend that the ﬁrst goal of slavers was personal
survival, and that the second was to keep as many of their slaves alive as possible. This
shaped their actions in particular ways, and caused identiﬁable patterns to emerge in
shipboard routines, and in their interactions with slaves. While most slaves were similarly
concerned with personal survival, there were distinct differences in their situation. They
generally felt they had less to lose and were consequently more desperate than crew.
They were willing to take greater risks than slavers were. Group survival strategies
informed crew decisions to a greater extent than they did slave actions. Crew were
greatly outnumbered by slaves on the middle passage, and all slaves posed a potential
risk to them. Slaves on the other hand, relied more on individual survival strategies as the
room they had in which to maneuver was more limited, and generally did not favor

collective survival strategies.

No study on a subject as large and of as long duration as the middle passage can
hope to be complete. The writer is forced to choose where to lay emphasis, and where to
devote less attention. I concentrate on the previously unexplored aspects of the middle
passage. My work is not a synthesis of all that is known about the middle passage; for
example, I do not concentrate on the details of the foods that slaves were typically fed.
Rather, I concentrate on recovering previously ignored experiences and on identifying the
forces that gave the middle passage its structure. Nor does my work extend beyond the
social history of the middle passage. 1 am not concerned with the slave trade as a whole.

I do not consider the economics of the trade, or the economic structure that gave
rise to it. It is beyond the purview of this work to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of
the relationship between Atlantic slavery and the economic system that sustained it. The
prices of slaves, who beneﬁted, who lost, the role of slavery in the economic structure of
the Atlantic world and similar questions have been the subject of countless books and

articles.11 Other than to acknowledge that the social history of the middle passage that is

 

1' Historians have long realized that economics and slavery were inextricably intertwined, and virtually
every aspect of the slave trade has been subject to economic analysis. Good starting points are Cedric
Robinson’s "Capitalism and Slavery: The Historiography." African Labour History 1 (1993); Robert W.
Fogel’s “The Origin and History of Economic Issues in the American Slavery Debate.” in Evidence and
Methods (without Consent or Contract), R. Fogel and S. Engerman, (eds.) and Henry A. Gemery and Jan S.
Hogendorn (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade
(New York: Academic Press, 1979). The costs, proﬁts and risks of the trade have been debated in
innumerable works, as has the economic structure of the trade. See for example William Darity, Jr., “The
Numbers Game and the Proﬁtability of the British Trade in Slaves,” Journal of Economic History 45, 3
(1985), William Darity, Jr., “Proﬁtability of the British Trade in Slaves Once Again,” Explorations in
Economic History 26, 3 (July 1989), and Joseph E. Inikori, “Market Structure and the Proﬁts of the British
African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 41, 4 (1981). Two
representative articles on the economics of the middle passage and the price of slaves in Africa are David
Richardson, “The Costs of Survival: the Transport of Slaves in the Middle Passage and the Proﬁtability of
the 18th Century British Slave Trade,” Explorations in Economic History, 24 and David Richardson,
“Prices of Slaves in West and West-Central Africa: Toward an Annual Series, 1698-1807,” Bulletin of
Economic Research 43, 1 (1991). The effect of slavery and its demise on regional economics has also been
extensively debated. Some studies span continents, others focus on national or local levels. For examples of
the former. see Stanley L. Engerman, “The Atlantic Economy of the Eighteenth Century: Some
Speculations on Economic Development in Britain, America, Africa and Elsewhere.” Journal of European
Economic History 24, 1 (Spring 1995) and David Eltis, “The Economic Impact of the Ending of the African

10

my subject relied on the mercantilist / capitalist structure of the time for its structure and
existence, I do not address the issue in my work.12 What is addressed in my work is the
outgrowth of that system. I explore the branch - the middle passage -, not the tree. My
deﬁnition of the middle passage is, however, more inclusive than the conventional
deﬁnition of the middle passage.

I deﬁne the middle passage to be the time from when the slaves were purchased
by the individuals responsible for shipping them across the Atlantic ocean to the New
World until they had discharged that responsibility either by selling them, or by
delivering them to agents responsible for doing so. In the case of a failed voyage, I define

the middle passage as having come to an end when the slaves where no longer under the

 

Slave Trade to the Americas,” Social and Economic Studies 37, 1-2 (1988). See also Joseph E. Inikori,
“Africa in World History: The Export Slave Trade from Africa and the Emergence of the Atlantic
Economic Order,” in General History of Africa. Vol. 5: Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth
Century, B. A Ogot (ed.). For examples of the later, see David Eltis, “The Economics of African
Participation in the Slave Trade,” in The Atlantic Slave Trade, Northrup (ed.), David Richardson, “The
Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748-1776,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, 4
(1987), Robert William Fogel, and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American
Negro Slavery (New York: Norton, 1989), David W. Galenson, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the
Barbados Market, 1673-1723,” Journal of Economic History 42, 3 (1982) and Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar
and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775 (Baltimore, 1973). Studies have
been published assessing the effect of slavery in towns that supported the trade; see for example Melissa
Elder’s, The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth-Century Lancaster (Halifax,
England: Ryburn, 1992). The abolition of the slave trade and of slavery has similarly been the subject of
numerous economic analysis. See for examples David Eltis. Economic Growth and the Ending of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) and Robert Edgar Conrad,
“Economics and Ideals: The British Anti-Slavery Crusade Reconsidered,” Indiana Historical Review 15, 1-
2 (1988-89). See also Eric Williams’ classic Capitalism and Slavery. (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolinian Press, 1994). The works mentioned above by no means form a comprehensive overview of
books and articles on the economics of the Atlantic slave trade. They have primarily been selected because
they inﬂuenced my thinking on the subject, or because they are representative works. New works are
constantly being added to an already large body of work.

‘2 Several scholars have considered the subject. See for examples Stanley M. Elkins and Eric McKitrick,
“Institutions and the Law of Slavery: The Dynamics of Unopposed Capitalism,” in Comparative Issues in
Slavery, Finkelman ed. See also Stanley M. Elkins, and Eric McKitrick, “Institutions and the Law of
Slavery in Capitalist and Non-Capitalist Cultures,” In Comparative Issues in Slavery, Finkelman (ed.). See
also D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behaviour in Early English America
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). I do not argue that this particular economic system was a
necessary part for the large-scale organized trade in human beings. It has occurred in many different
economic contexts, and at many different times in human history. I do acknowledge that. in the case of
Atlantic slavery, it was what caused the ships to sail, the slaves to be bought and sold into the Atlantic
system, and what kept the plantations turning.

11

control of the slavers, and the slavers had given up hope of reestablishing control over
them. This deﬁnition is broader than the conventional deﬁnition that limits the middle
passage to either the time spent on board the slaving vessel, or to the duration of the
actual Atlantic crossing. These more restrictive definitions omit a large part of the events
effecting both slave and slaver not covered elsewhere that are necessary to understand the
middle passage as a whole.

I do not, however, investigate any other legs of the slaving journey unless they
contribute to an understanding of the middle passage. Nor am I concerned with the
experience of slaves and traders prior to the sale of the slaves to those responsible for
transporting them away from Africa unless it impacts the middle passage in some way.
The origins of the slaves, or how or why they were enslaved and offered for sale in the
Atlantic trade are beyond the purview of this work.13 Nor do I investigate the time slaves
spent in the barracoons prior to their purchase by slaving ships’ crew, even though this is
an area in which there is a great lacuna. I do, however, recognize that the middle passage
did not occur in a vacuum. The slaves brought their cultures and life experiences on
board with them, and these informed their actions and reactions on board. Similarly, the
physical and mental condition of slaves was inﬂuenced by their experiences prior to
embarkation. Crewmembers too, were the products of their cultural background. The
middle passage placed individuals, black and white, in speciﬁc situations that forced
them to make and act upon personal decisions of a fundamentally moral nature. These

decisions were not made in a social, ideological, economic or political vacuum.

 

'3 For information on this, see Patrick Manning, “The Slave Trade: A Formal Demography of a Global
System,” Social Science History 14, 2 (1989), 286.

12

The middle passage by my deﬁnition does include time spent by slaves and crew
in Africa, whether on the slaving vessel or not. I use the phrase “Atlantic crossing” to
refer to the time actually spent sailing between Africa and the port of destination in the
New World. Some slave’s middle passage was considerably longer than others’: the time
spent waiting or “cruising” along the coast while the vessel attempted to acquire a full
cargo of slaves, the actual Atlantic passage, and the time between arrival and
disembarkation could all vary considerably. I do not deal with the inter-African trade or
with destinations other than the New World. Nor do I consider inter-New World slave
trading.

My work is largely based on primary sources, either by slavers, their ideological
opponents, or their ﬁnanciers. This is complemented by the little written by slaves who
made the middle passage that has survived. There is a wealth of qualitative primary
documentation available, though it is widely dispersed.” Contemporary documents
generally pay relatively little attention to individual slaves, but there are enough
documents available to compensate for this to some degree. Due to the fragmentary
nature of many sources, the social historian must perforce glean information from many
different sources. I use narratives, diaries, logbook entries, letters between ﬁnanciers and
captains, legal documents, newspaper articles and other surviving written-materials. The
abolitionists were active in collecting and disseminating information that was not in the
interests of those best placed to know the truth or falsity of it. It was in the abolitionists’
interests to present the trade from its most horriﬁc perspective, certainly on occasion with

exaggeration. On the other hand, livelihoods and great ﬁnancial interests were at stake,

 

“ The exception is Donnan’s monumental collection of primary documents of the slave trade. Elizabeth
Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America vols. 14 (Washington, DC:

13

prompting suppression and denial of the horrors, and leading to the creation of
impossibly benign versions of events. Sources from both abolitionists and proponents of
the trade need to be handled with the requisite care, but both can occasionally be useful
sources of information on middle passage.

I frequently use quotations from the primary sources to illustrate my points. I have
found that it gives an indispensable immediacy to the text. In the case of a social history
on the middle passage, I feel it is an academically sound approach, and a moral
obligation. It is too easy to lose sight of — sanitize - the reality of the trade by treating it
purely as an academic and theoretical exercise. I intend that my work insofar as possible
explain, not ﬁlter, the voices of those on the middle passage. Often, rather than teasing
apart one particular incident, and then using that as a starting point to establish the typical
or atypical aspects of the incident, I use several different accounts when considering a
given topic. This is for two reasons. First, the accounts themselves are often not rich
enough to allow for a detailed analysis. Second, additional accounts provide new voices,
which allow a particular point to be better illustrated.

I make extensive use of statistical calculations and numerical data in my work.
Yet for my work, statistics and quantitative work are not an end in and of themselves. I
only infrequently enter into the debate on the demographics of the Atlantic slave trade. I
am not primarily interested in replicating or reﬁning extant work; with one or two
exceptions, I have few substantive quarrels with the existing quantitative work. I use
statistics in the service of writing a social history rather than to establish new

demographic or quantitative ﬁndings for their own sake. Quantitative data can be a very

 

Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930-35).

14

useful tool for this. Upon occasion, they allow one to ask questions and to establish
patterns that would not otherwise be accessible.

If reliable work has been published, I use those ﬁgures. Occasionally I use the
work of other scholars, reﬁned by my own calculations. More commonly I calculate my
own statistics, as the types of questions I seek answers to have often not been addressed
by other scholars. I rely on The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM as
a starting point for my calculations.ls With 27,233 records containing varying amounts of
information per voyage, generalizations can often be conﬁdently made. It is true that
numbers can easily be as misleading as they can be enlightening.16 Absolute precision is
not possible; the primary data are not complete enough for that. Yet frequently trends can
be identiﬁed, and it is on these that I have focused. Where my ﬁgures and conclusions are
tentative, I have made a point of noting that in the text. Perhaps some of my ﬁndings may
be over or under-stated, and indeed, I offer them as much to encourage debate on the
issues I raise as to come to conclusions.

I have chosen a thematic rather than chronological approach for a number of
reasons. While there were several substantial changes in the organization of the slave
trade over the course of its history, these tended to have little effect on how the middle

passage — distinct from the organization of the trade, and the procuring of slaves — was

 

'5 D. Eltis, S. Behrendt et. al., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The publication of the Atlantic slavery
dataset promises to allow quantitative and demographic studies on the slave trade to reach unprecedented
heights of precision. Scholars such as Eltis, Engerman, Inkori, Richardson, Daget, Cougherty, Behrendt,
Postrna, and a handful of others are likely to set the tone of this work. But they will be joined by younger
scholars who will increasingly analyze the data in new and creative ways. Ingenious probing and
manipulation of the information contained in the dataset will also almost certainly allow scholars to ask -
and answer - completely new questions about the trade. It is my hope that my work will be a step in that
direction.

'6 Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman’s Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro
Slavery (New York: Norton, 1989) still stands as a warning beacon to those who seek to quantify human
experience. See also Herbert Gutman, Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975).

15

experienced by either slaves or crew. Nor was the interaction between slaves and slavers
much affected. Very little changed in the mechanics of the actual middle passage over the
course of the trade, and there was a “surprising similarity” between the slaving nations.17
This was partly because the slaves who made the middle passage always made it for the
ﬁrst time, and partly because relatively few innovations in sea-faring technology affected
the experiences of slaves or crew. The fact that the middle passage was of relatively short
duration - too short for fully articulated adaptation strategies to arise on either side — also
played a role. Slaves did not have time enough to form a sophisticated own culture that
might have allowed them to adapt to the pressures of their circumstances in a manner
more analogous to slaves on land. The room for negotiation on board between enslaver
and enslaved was less than on land, partly because of the transient nature of the
relationship, and partly because of the physical constraints on a slaving vessel. There was
far less time and inclination on both sides to overcome the gap in understanding between
oppressors and oppressed, or to establish a negotiated status quo. Both parties relied far
more overtly on violence and the threat of violence.

A thematic perspective also allows the experiences of slaves and the contours of
the middle passage to be more readily identiﬁed than a chronological approach does. This
is mainly because the forces shaping the experience of the middle passage — survival
strategies, resistance, crew and slave violence, accommodations, the nature of the vessels
used —- were remarkably consistent over the trade, and over the slaving nations.18 Very

few slaves made the passage in steam ships, and relatively few made the crossing while

 

'7 H.S. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1978), 228.

’8 Klein, The Middle Passage, 228. Mortality declined in the eighteenth century due to increased
knowledge about diets and early vaccinations, but it did so for all slaving nations.

l6

the trade was illegal. Chronologically speaking, the illegal trade may have caused the
greatest change in how both slaves and slavers experienced the middle passage. I do not
separate the illegal trade from the legal trade systematically, but I do note the changes
that occurred when relevant. There is as yet no comparative social history of the middle
passage during the legal and illegal trades. While the former was of a much longer
duration, the latter is in many respects better documented, and offers enough sources to
make the project feasible.

I often compare the experiences of the middle passage to those on land. There is a
rich scholarship for those interested in land-based slavery, and on one level my
comparisons serve as a point of reference. In addition, the noting of similarities and
differences serves as a step towards integrating the study of slavery on the middle
passage with the various forms slavery took on land. The comparison of slavery as it took
place on sea and slavery on land sheds greater light on both. The middle passage was an
integral part of the institution of slavery, and needs to be incorporated into the study of
African slavery in the New World if the Atlantic slave system is to be understood as a
whole.

The most common method of writing a social history that deals with large
numbers of people is to attempt to distill a hypothetical “average” experience, with
caveats time to time, pointing out that not every representative experience holds for
everybody. Describing the extremes of any given system can also be a useful way of
delineating it, though one quickly runs the risk that the extremes are taken, implicitly, as
representative of the whole, while they are intended to describe the margins of the

system. So it is with the Atlantic slave trade. That the trade was barbaric in and of itself,

17

is beyond dispute. How common extreme acts of barbarism were is not known, and
generally not debated. The structure of the trade, however, guaranteed that they could and
did take place. They were integral to the trade. As such, I do include them in my work. In
a topic as emotion laden as the slave trade this poses special problems. It is necessary to
steer a careful course to avoid an uncritically cynical view informed by a contemporary
moral outrage. It is equally necessary to avoid the creating of a sterile, theoretical account
of the trade from a comfortable twentieth century academic perspective that implicitly
denies the incredible magnitude of human suffering caused by the trade. Some of the
extreme abuses were irrational, others rational barbarism. The system contained both
within itself. They were part of the whole, and were a part that needs to be recovered and
examined, as they provide invaluable evidence in the describing of the whole. As I seek
to recover the forces that structured the trade, and to understand individual and group
experiences and actions within that context, the hypothetical average experience and the
extremes of the system are relevant to my study.

Just as every slave’s middle passage cannot be described, so no single slave’s
middle passage can be completely described. Voyages differed by vessel, by captain and
crew, by length, by weather, by crowding, by luck, and much more. Some experiences
were more common - that is to say, shared by a greater number of slaves or crew — than
others, but the full diversity of experiences cannot be accurately recovered. Yet within
that diversity, patterns did emerge, and several of the forces that determined the
experiences of those on board can be identiﬁed and described.

As a ﬁnal note: the magnitude of the middle passage and the suffering it caused is

not easily comprehended. The numbers are not easily related to individual human lives.

18

But as an indication — every character, both letters and numbers, in this dissertation,
including the conclusion, all footnotes and this introduction represents 28.4 slaves who
made the middle passage. Every word stands for 17.4 slaves who died during the middle

passage. Every paragraph equals 35.5 slaving voyages.19

 

‘9 The ﬁrst was calculated by dividing the consensus number of slaves who made the middle passage after
1600 (11.4 million) by every letter in every chapter in the dissertation, including footnotes, numbers and
quotes, but excluding the bibliography (401,324). The second was calculated by counting every word the
dissertation, only excluding the bibliography (80,398) and dividing the consensus number of slaves who
perished on the middle passage (1.4 million) by that number. The ﬁnal calculation was made by dividing
the conservative consensus ﬁgure for slaving voyages that arrived in the New World (35,561) by the
number of paragraphs (1,003) in this dissertation. Estimates of the number of slave and voyages from
David Eltis et al, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 5.

19

CHAPTER 1: WOMEN

“Both men and women, without the least distinction”l

The title of this chapter, taken from the memoirs of Dutch slaving captain, William
Bosman, sums up both the common perception of women’s experience on the middle
passage, and current historical scholarship on the subject. No extant studies consider the
ordeal of women slaves, nor the ways in which gender was constructed, on the middle
passage. Historians who have considered women’s experiences at all have generally devoted
only a few paragraphs - at most a few pages - in their volumes concerning the general trade
of Africans to the Americas.2 Scholars need to consider more fully whether the experience
of women on the middle passage was substantially different from that of men, and if so,
how.

Preliminary research indicates that the ﬁrst question must be answered in the
afﬁrmative. The second suggests at least two ways in which women’s experiences differed
from that of men. First, while female slaves shared many circumstances with male slaves,
they may have experienced them differently. Second, women slaves had experiences that
they did not share with men. While a single chapter cannot hope to cover the full spectrum
of black women’s experiences on the middle passage, it will be a starting point for an

examination of the role of gender on the middle passage.

 

' W. Bosman “A New and Accurate Account of the Coast of Guinea” Reproduced in part in E. Donnan
Document Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 1, 441.

2 References to women on the middle passage remain widely scattered in narratives, logbooks, newspaper
accounts, journals, letters and the like. All accounts have been written by European (and a few African)
men. I know of no extant account of the middle passage written by a slave woman. As a result, the records
tend to reconstruct slave women’s experiences from a European male’s point—of-view. Only the female
actions observers saw ﬁt to record in records which have survived, combined with demographic data and
scholarly accounts of slave women on land, provide researchers with a starting point from which to launch
an investigation. More work on the subject would be a positive development, as would interpretations from
different scholars.

20

Primary documents generally indicate that slavers preferred to buy males to
females. Captain William Ellery’s instructions to “Buy no girls, and few women; but buy
prime boys and young men” are typical in this regard.3 Much has been written on the
proportion of women on vessels making the middle passage, ﬂuctuations in their
representation in the trade, and the areas from and to where they tended to be shipped.4
The consensus ﬁgure tends to hover around 65% men and 35% women, or a ratio of
slightly fewer than 2 men to every woman. In terms of ﬂuctuations, the number of
women decreased by more than ﬁfty percent between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries.5 The large discrepancy between the number of men and women shipped has led
to a lengthy discussion between scholars as to the reason(s) why this was so. The debate
on whether the number of women in the trans-Atlantic trade was a question of African
agency or slaver preferences is far from over. Certainly there was a greater African
reluctance to part with female slaves than male slaves, as female slaves were more in
demand in the trans-Saharan trade, and were more easily integrated into African society.
The Arabic trade consisted largely of women, with relatively few men or children.6 It is

also true, however, that this African preference coincided with that of the slavers

 

3 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 69.

4 For representative work on the topic, see Philip D. Morgan, "The Cultural Implication of the Atlantic
Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments," Slavery
and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. Ed.), p. 126-7; D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market
Behaviour in Early English America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); David Eltis, "The
Volume, Age/Sex Ratios, and African Impact of the Slave Trade: Some Reﬁnements of Paul Lovejoy's
Review of the Literature," The Journal of African History, 3 (August 1990); David Eltis, "Fluctuations in
the Age and Sex of Slaves in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trafﬁc," Slavery and Abolition 7,
3 (1986); Joseph E. Inikori, "Export versus Domestic Demand: The Determinants of Sex Ratios in the
Transatlantic Slave Trade," Research in Economic History 14 (1992); Patrick Manning, "The Slave Trade:
A Formal Demography of a Global System," Social Science History 14, 2 (1989); Patrick Manning and W.
H. S.Grifﬁths, "Divining the Unprovable: Simulating the Demography of the African Slave Trade," Journal
of Interdisciplinary History 19, 2 (Autumn 1988); Daniel Littleﬁeld, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the
Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 57.

5 They were replaced by a proportionally greater number of children. D. Eltis, S. Behrandt et al. The Trans-
Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999), 34.

21

themselves.7

A quick exploration of the Trans-Atlantic CD ROM dataset, using the records that
contain information on both the number of men and women disembarking conﬁrms the
approximate ratio given above.8 It is probable, however, that the consensus ﬁgure is
substantially incorrect.

Previously published work has not taken the number of infants carried into
consideration. Though only a relatively small percentage of records in the Atlantic slavery
dataset contain information on infants, the number is large enough to generalize
conﬁdently.9 These voyages show a strong and consistent pattern: if the data on infants
disembarking are recorded separately, there is a very pronounced drop in the number of men
and women reported disembarking. The effect is more pronounced in men than in women,
and is substantial in both cases. An average of 60.28 women disembarked per vessel where
there is sufﬁcient information to calculate this.10 The voyages that report data on infants of
both sexes disembarking as well as of women and men disembarking, however, return an

average of only 29.97 women disembarking per vessel.11 Those same voyages reported an

 

‘ David Eltis, "Fluctuations”, 313.

7 See M.A. Klein and CC. Robertson, Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press,
1983); Stanley Engerman and David Eltis, , "Was the Slave Trade Dominated by Men?," The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 23 (Autumn 1992); D.W. Galenson, Traders, 62; Herbert S. Klein, "Recent
Trends in the Study of the Atlantic Slave Trade," Indian Historical Review 15, 1-2 (1988-89); and Joseph
E. Inikori, "Export versus Domestic Demand.” The most recent issues in this debate are brieﬂy addressed
in D. Eltis, S. Behrandt et al’s booklet accompanying The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade CD ROM.

3 The 2653 records indicate that a total of 161,961 women disembarked, and that 308,457 men
disembarked, a ratio of slightly more than 1.9 men to every woman. This returns an average of 116.22 men
per vessel (and a median of 102), and an average of 60.82 women per vessel (and a median of 51), ﬁgures
well in line with the consensus ﬁgure. I have used disembarkation ﬁgures as they are likely more reliable
than embarkation ﬁgures, and provide more records with which to work. Of course this does not take
mortality into account, but this does not effect the ratio of men to women to any great degree.

9 The dataset contains some information on 27,233 voyages. Of theses, 570 records contain information on
male infants disembarking, while 552 records contain the same information on female infants. A total of
548 records contain the information for both sexes.

‘0 2654 voyages contain information on the number of women disembarked, yielding an average of 60.28
women per voyage (161427 women divided by 2654 voyages).

11 16244 women divided by 542 voyages.

22

average of 20.42 female infants disembarking giving a total of 50.39 female slaves per
voyage, much closer to the 60.28 women reported disembarking on vessels that did not
report infants. An additional average of 39.18 male infants also disembarked on vessels
reporting the number of male infants.

It is thus likely that many slavers counted female infants as women, while some
slavers counted male infants as women, while others counted them as men, and a few did
not include them in the surviving count at all or counted them as children. ’2 This contention
is subject to testing. If it is correct, one can predict that the average number of men reported
disembarking from vessels should be much higher when the number of male infants
disembarking are not speciﬁed than when both men and male infants are speciﬁed. The total
of the average number of male infants and the average number of men on the later voyages
should, however, be lower than the average number of men reported disembarking when no
information on male infants is speciﬁed (because some slavers will count male infants as
women or not at all). And indeed, both are the case. Over all the voyages that report the
number of men disembarking but not the male infants, the average number of men
disembarking is 124.27.13 The voyages containing information on both the number of men
slaves disembarking and the number male infants report only 82.72 men disembarking, and
39.18 infants.14 The hypothesis is therefor conﬁrmed. The number of men reporting
disembarking was reduced substantially on voyages that identiﬁed male infants (82.72

compared to 124.27), but the total of men and male infants reported disembarking (82.72

 

‘2 Donnan is the only scholar who has noted that children were occasionally entered as women in slavers’
accounts; however, she did not pursue the matter beyond the simple observation. How widespread this
practice was is uncertain. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 289.

'3 268,663 men divided by 2,162 voyages.

'4 570 voyages contain sufﬁcient information to make the calculations. For men the totals are 47,153 men
divided by 570 voyages. For male infants the totals are 22,332 male infants divided by 570 voyages. This
returns an average of 82.72 men and 39.18 male infants.

23

plus 39. 18) is not quite equal to the average of voyages reporting only the number of men:
121.9 compared to 124.27. This is because occasionally male infants were counted as
women or not counted at all, as contended. The same calculation does not apply to children,
indicating that boys and girls were counted separately, unlike infants, or were equally
divided among the men and women in accordance to their sex.”

Calculating the ratio of men to women in the records containing information on
men, women and infants disembarking, causes the ratio of men to women to change from
the 1.9 consensus ﬁgure to 1 woman disembarking for 2.79 men disembarking.16 The 542
accounts that specify both the age and sex of slaves disembarking suggest that far fewer
women made the crossing than has up to now been supposed, while the unspeciﬁed (and
thus probably less reliable) accounts conﬁrm the generally accepted ratio. This offers solid
grounds for revising estimates of the proportion of very young slaves canied upward, and
the number of adult women downward.

It is important to note that I do not claim that my dataset is representative for the
entire trade; the sample size is too small for that. It is not representative is several respects,
the most important of which is likely to be the median date (1812) of the voyages leaving
Africa. This is late in the trade, and we know that the number of children, and possibly
infants, increased as the trade continued. Nearly all the voyages disembarked their slaves in
the Caribbean, and most of those in Havana. The vessels in the sample also tended to be
smaller than the average vessels in the trade, and are mainly Spanish and American vessels,
though smaller numbers of several other nations are also included. In addition, there is not

enough information available to determine whether the ports of embarkation are typical of

 

'5 Unfortunately the Trans-Atlantic CD ROM dataset does not contain enough relevant records to test this
with any degree of accuracy.

24

the trade. It is also possible to argue that vessels carrying a larger number of infants would
be more likely to specify them than vessels carrying fewer infants, though this is
speculative. Even given all the above caveats, the effect described will almost certainly hold
to some degree for the entire trade. The caveats will almost certainly nuance, but not negate
the argument made above, or the calculations below. This is because it is a near statistical
certainty that most voyages carried at least some infants. This is corroborated by the high
average number of infants reported per vessel when they were recorded, as well as the fact
that more than 96% of voyages that report infants on board, report infants of both sexes.17 If
infants on board were an exception rather than the norm, the average number of infants
carried would be much lower, as would the incidence of carrying infants of both sexes on
board simultaneously. In addition, the records that do specify the number of infants
disembarking tend very strongly to contain far more complete information on other aspects
of the voyage, suggesting that the records themselves are more reliable.18 It is almost certain
that the number of infants carried would have varied by national carrier, period of
embarkation (the number of children carried more than tripled between the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries), port of embarkation and perhaps port of disembarkation. But again,
this will probably lower the average number of infants carried, and nuance, but not negate
the effect shown in the calculations below.

Taken over the entire trade, the tables below illustrate the current estimates, and

 

‘6 45,462 men to 16,244 women.

'7 20.28 female infants and 39.89 male infants, for a total of 59.6 infants per vessel.

’8 If one calculates the average number of infants disembarking from vessels that specify male and female
infants disembarking, as well as the number of boys and girls disembarking (488 voyages) the ﬁgures Show
that the average slaver disembarked 63.33 infants and 39.65 children for a total of 102.98 young slaves.
Vessels that do not specify infants but do specify girls and boys (1,942 cases) disembarked an average of
65.08 children. This is 37.9 fewer young slaves than those that do specify infants. While not perfect
evidence - the difference in sample sizes means that the later sample includes information from more
nationalities and time periods, but also less complete records - it does suggest that infants were not

25

estimates based on the voyages reporting infants separately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total no. to Average Estimated Trade total Ratio male
calc. average per voyagg total voyages3 to female
Men (ave. of
2663 voyages)’ 308,457 115.83 36,000 4,169,880 1.91
Women (ave. of Ratio male
2663)’ 161,691 60.72 36,000 2,185,920 to female
Girls (ave. of
2,465)2 56,594 22.96 36,000 826,560 1.81
Boys (ave. of Women as
2,576)2 91,364 . 35.47 36,000 1,276,920 % of total
Male infants Not specified : included in the totals above 38.7%
Female Infants Not specified : included in the totals above M33358?
Total/ship | 234.98“ | Total Ta,459,280‘ 49.3%

Table 1.1. Current Estimates of Slave Ratios

1 The averages are calculated over all voyages reporting the number of men and women disembarked, but

not infants.

2 Based on the average of all voyages reporting the number of girls and boys disembarked respectively.
3 The estimated total number of voyages is a rounded ﬁgure based on the one provided by the editors of the
Trans-Atlantic slavery dataset (p. 5).

4 The totals do not match the consensus ﬁgure of an average of 281.1 disembarkations per vessel and of a
total of approximately 10.5 million slaves disembarked due to smaller number of slaves carried than

 

 

average in this subset, and the smaller than average size of the vessels. This has to do with the

representativeness of the data sets, discussed above. This should not effect the ratios presented either here

or below substantially.

 

automatically included in the count with boys and girls.

26

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total no. to Average Estimated Trade total Ratio male
calc. average per voyage total voyages‘ to female

$1335” 45,462 83.88 36,000 3,019,680 2.8
:42)?” (am °’ 16,244 29.97 38,000 1,078,920 Tﬁgﬁaﬁf
:ﬁsggve' °f 56,594 22.96 36,000 826,560 2.17
22%;?” °f 91,364 35.47 38,000 1 276,920 $3823?
magggqgants (“9' 22,332 39.18 36.000 1,410,480 12.94
2:23: 22:3” 11,149 20.2 36.000 727,200 ”3,", 321/

Total / ship 231.665 Total 8,339,7605 36.2%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1.2. New Estimates of Slave Ratios, Including Infant Data

1 The averages are calculated over all voyages reporting the number of men and women disembarked, but
not infants.

2 Based on the average of all voyages reporting the number of girls and boys disembarked respectively.

3 Based on the average of all voyages reporting the number of female infants and male infants disembarked
respectively.

4 The estimated total number of voyages is a rounded ﬁgure based on the one provided by the editors of the
Trans-Atlantic slavery dataset (p. 5)

5 The totals do not match the consensus ﬁgure of an average of 281.1 disembarkations per vessel and of a
total of approximately 10.5 million slaves disembarked due to smaller number of slaves carried than
average in this subset, and the smaller than average size of the vessels. This has to do with the
representativeness of the data sets, discussed above. This should not effect the ratios presented either here
or below substantially.

The consequences of the above ﬁndings are potentially very important. Fewer adult
women than had previously been assumed made the middle passage, as did relatively fewer
adult men. Even if the average ﬁgures for the number of infants carried on vessels that do
not specify infants upon disembarkation is considerably lower than on those that do specify
the numbers of infants disembarked, the consequences for the demography of the trade will

still be very large.19 Even if the number of infants canied on vessels not specifying infants

 

’9 While the exact numbers for various carriers, places of embarkation and disembarkation, and time
periods still needs to be worked out, some predictions can already be made. The question of African agency

27

are estimated at half that of the number of vessels that do specify the number of infants, the
ratio of men to women remains above one women to every 2.25 men, as opposed to the
(approximate) one to 1.9 currently accepted. And as argued above, it is a statistical
impossibility that all or most vessels not reporting infants separately did not carry infants.
Nonetheless, the absolute number of women who made the middle passage was very
substantial, and as such demands academic attention.

The attitude and views that slavers’ crews had of slave women were conditioned by
a number of factors. These include the contemporary construction of Aﬁica and Africans in
the Western mind and the prior experiences they or their colleagues had had in shipping
human bodies across the Atlantic on a slaving vessel. In other words, shipboard culture and
the violent structure of slave dealing, as well as crew experiences outside slave trading
affected their treatment of slave women. Seventeenth and eighteenth century constructions
of race and femininity, as well as their view of the poor, weak and dispossessed were central
to their treatment of both male and female slaves.

European perceptions of the black female body contributed to slavers response to
them. With variations on the theme, the argument would generally amount to the following:
African women were not 'the same' as European women. They were cruder, physically

stronger, more “earthy”, and less sensitive.20 Given these unfavourable but sexuallyalluring

 

and the trans-Saharan trade will become even more pertinent, and the question of why so few women
entered the trade will acquire a new urgency, as will related demographic questions. The composition of
slaving vessels is also changed substantially, raising several new questions. For example, how does the
lower number of adults on board effect crowding? Crowding is often measured as the ratio of tons per
slave, and it is clear that adults require more space than infants or children. Another possible area of inquiry
is whether the lowered number of adult males (and females) had a discernible impact on resistance on
board. In terms of the New World, questions about African cultural survivals come to mind. If more infants
and fewer adult women arrived in the New World, one would expect survival of African cultural traditions
to be less, particularly among African groups that were particularly susceptible to this revised demography.
2° Barbara Bush, “The Eye of the Beholder: Contemporary European Images of the Black Woman” in Slave
Women in Caribbean Society: 1650-1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

28

comparisons, white men could not be expected to use the same mores with black women as
with white women. Actions that would be immoral and criminal directed at white women
would not necessarily be so if directed at black (slave) women. John Newton, an ex-slaving
captain turned abolitionist, explicitly contradicted this form of reasoning in an abolitionist
tract, stating that “some hard-hearted pleader may suggest that [abusive] treatment would
indeed be cruel in Europe; but the African women are negroes, savages, who have no idea of
the nicer sensations which obtain among civilized people.” Newton, however “dare[d] to
contradict them in the strongest terms” stating that “with regard to the women, in Sherbro,
where I was most acquainted, I have seen many instances of modesty, and even delicacy,
which would not disgrace an English woman.”21 Of course, even Newton was unwilling to
defend the rights of African women based on their own culture, by defending it as of equal
worth with English culture. Instead, he used the same race-based measure of worth as his
opponents did, but argued that their measurements, and therefore their premises, were
inaccurate.

The image of lesser worth and greater crudity of black women, of course, did not
render black women’s bodies sexually unattractive. On the contrary, interracial sex had the
added attraction of forbidden fruit.22 On land, laws forbidding sexual relations between
whites and blacks were passed, in part, to control this intimate interaction between the

races.23 On land, scholars have proposed categories of white stereotypes projected onto

 

2' John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754 (With Newton 's 'Thoughts upon the African
Slave Trade '), Bernard Martin & Spurrell, M. (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 105-6.
22 Sailors also exploited women on the coast of Africa. “Women, likewise, contribute largely to the loss of
our seamen. When they are on shore, they often, from their known thoughtless irnprudence, involve
themselves, on this account, in quarrels with the natives, and, if not killed on the spot, are frequently
poisoned.” J. Newton, The Journal, 101.

In Virginia, for example, interracial sex was outlawed in 1676; in Maryland, in 1692. Such laws, of
course, were often ignored. W. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-
1812 (NC: Univ. of NC. Press, 1986) 24.

29

black women. Among these is the “Jezebel” a sexually wanton female slave.24 On the
middle passage this image was intensiﬁed, as the women were more vulnerable, more
degraded and more commodiﬁed. Of course, as slavers acted on their stereotypes, the myths
of crudeness and wantonness were sustained and intensiﬁed. As long as black slave women
could not defend their honour (as Europeans conceived it) as white women did, they would
inevitably bear the blame for it. The middle passage took advantage of, and contributed
substantially to this process. The transient nature of the voyage and the lack of restraints on
the crew increased their vulnerability.

In some ways, women shared men’s circumstances on the middle passage, although
they may have experienced them differently. Women, like men were subject to the various
cruelties and indignities of the purchasing process. Both sexes were, for example, often
branded with a hot iron before boarding the slaving vessel to prevent the crew from
committing fraud with their human cargoes, and so disadvantage their ﬁnanciers. One slaver
noted that “a burning iron, with the arms or name of the companies, lyes in the ﬁre” but also
claimed “we yet take all possible care that they are not burned too hard, especially the
women, who are more tender than the men.”25 Even if this statement were true, it may not
have mattered much. While being branded was certainly physically excruciating, its
psychological effect would be similar to other slave selection procedures. Terror and the
imposition of physical pain, like other dehumanising practices, all emphasise an individual's
reduction to a commodity. It emphasized to the slave that she (or he) held no value as an

individual.

 

2‘ See for example, Deborah Gray-White, Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South
(Reprint: New York: Norton, 1999).

25 W. Bosman, A New and Accurate Account of the Coast of Guinea... Reprinted in Elizabeth Donnan,
Documents, vol. I, 442.

30

Examining naked slaves publicly accomplished the same goal. Before their
purchase, slaves were examined, “even to the smallest member, and that naked too, both
men and women, without the least distinction or modesty.”26 Involuntary nakedness
certainly causes psychological vulnerability. Combined with an intrusive examination "to
the smallest member" in front of other people, the process emphasises the complete lack of
importance of the individuality and humanity of the person concerned.27 Other evaluation
processes had a similar effect. For example, the age of newly—acquired women was often
estimated by examining the ﬁrmness of their breasts.28 The sexual overtones are clear.

African women must have felt infuriated, desecrated, and violated by this process.
John Newton noted that they were often taken aboard “naked, trembling, terriﬁed, perhaps
almost exhausted with cold, fatigue and hunger.” Despite their condition, they were
“exposed to the wanton rudeness of white savages. The poor creatures cannot understand the
language they hear, but the looks and manners of the speakers are sufﬁciently intelligible. In
imagination, the prey is divided, upon the spot and only reserved till opportunity offers.”29
Many primary sources contain references to sexual abuse of African women during the
slavers’ examination process, full of innuendo. Slaving captain John Barbot, for example,
noted that it was “most diverting” to watch the surgeon examine “those parts which are not

to be named”, and that the women on board “afforded us an abundance of recreation.”3°’31

 

2" W. Bosman, A New and Accurate Account . . .” In Elizabeth Donnan, Documents, vol. 1 (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930-35), 441.

27The traders were quite explicit about what they were buying: Atkins writes that from the factories the
slaves were “sold in open Market on shore, and examined by us in like manner, as our Brother Trade do
Beasts in Smithﬁeld; the Countenance, and Stature, a good Set of Teeth, Pliancy in their Limbs, and Joints,
and being free of Venereal Taint ....” Quoted in James Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade (U. of
Mississippi, 1983), p. 51.

28 J.M. Postrna, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1815 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990), 236.
29 John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 105.

3" Reprinted in Donnan, Documents, vol. 1,463.

31Some evidence suggests that in some ships the examinations of the “smallest member” went on aboard
the vessel too. Captain Phillips, for example, wrote in 1693 that “the distemper which they call the yaws, is

31

While the evaluation experience and subsequent nakedness was without question
humiliating for both sexes, the complete disregard for modesty may have been experienced
differently by women than by men. These practices doubtless were conducted as they were,
not only to evaluate slaves, but also to emphasise the purchasers’ dominance.32 While many
individuals sold to Atlantic slavers had already experienced slavery for various lengths of
time, and had suffered on their way to the coast, they were not necessarily inured to the
rituals of pain and humiliation. From the slaves’ perspective, both male and female, the
violence of the purchasing process probably lay less in the physical affront than in the
damage done to the their self-respect. The cavalier manner in which their humanity was
disregarded constituted the heart of the violence. Much of this humiliation may have been
directed inward, and not placed on the slavers, where it belonged. Feelings of shame, guilt,
low self-esteem and depression, combined with either suppressed violence or apathy, were
typical.33 The selection procedures are sure to have had a profound psychological impact.

The examination process also had the effect of impressing on women the
powerlessness of African men vis a vis their enslavers. Women were not only forced to
submit to humiliation, but also forced to witness the inability of their male counterparts to
interfere in any way. These practices were emasculating to male slaves, and part of an effort

to break the spirits of the both male and female slaves while simultaneously emphaSising

 

very common here, and discovers itself by almost the same symptoms as the Lues Venerea or clap does
with us; therefor our surgeon is forc’d to examine the privies of both men and women with the nicest
scrutiny, which is a great slavery, but what can’t be omitted.” Reproduced in George F. Dow, Slave Ships
and Slaving (W esport, Connecticut: Negro University Press, 1970).

32 I suspect that many slavers must have understood, at some level, the psychological ramiﬁcations of their
policy. Their behaviour also doubtless reﬂected slave-trading tradition, practicality and a complete lack of
respect for the individual being traded.

33A comparison to armed forces is useful here. Militaries seek to reduce their recruits to functional units by
employing tactics of fear, humiliation and degradation, and by attempting to eradicate individual
differences in innumerable ways. All are a part of an attempt to coerce unthinking obedience. Slavers may
have done the same, whether their methods were a deliberate decision, or a process that evolved through
practice.

32

slaver dominance.34 It is not possible to establish whether the methods used were
deliberately intended to have that effect, or a whether it simply evolved through practice.
Women and men also shared many circumstances when a slave ship put to sea, but
may have experienced them differently. Several sources, for example, indicate the practice
of involuntary nakedness for both male and female slaves continued during the Atlantic
journey. Many slaves embarked stripped “of all they have on their backs; so that they come
aboard stark-naked, as well women as men.” They were then “obliged to continue [naked] if
the master of the Ship is not so charitable (which he commonly is) as to bestow something
on them to cover their nakedness.”35 Others, “[b]efore they enter[ed] the canoes” had been
subject to similar treatment. “[T]heir former Black masters” had already stripped “them of
every rag they have, without distinction of men or women.” On “orderly” slaving vessels,
however, “each of them as they come aboard is allowed a piece of canvas, to wrap around
their waist, which is very acceptable to these poor wretches.”36
The crude piece of canvas was provided only in orderly ships. One can deduce,
therefore, that not all slaves received cloth and thus had to make the entire middle passage
naked. Without question this affronted the slave’s dignity, and for some the humiliation was
excruciating. As late as 1830, Peter Leonard, who worked at suppressing the illegal slave

trade in the British vessel, Dryad, boarded ships where among all the slaves “there was

scarcely sufﬁcient covering for the nakedness of half a dozen persons.” They nonetheless

 

3’ This aspect of slavers’ invasions on the persons of female slaves is analogous to the rape of black women
on land. Hine recognizes the rape of black women as “an attack on the black men’s property rights on black
women.” The notion of “property rights” of black men is problematic, especially in terms of the middle
passage, as the ethnic composition of a slaving vessel could vary widely. However, the idea that the
molestation and degradation of black women was a de facto attack on black men too, is a sound one.
Darlene Clark Hine and David Barry Gaspar, eds., More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the
Americas (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 24.

35 W. Bosman, “A New and Accurate Account. ” In Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 442.

36 J. Barbot, “A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea... ” In Donnan Documents, vol. 1,

33

“particularly the boys and girls” had “evinced by their actions a natural and unaffected sense
of modesty.” 37 Some slavers’ accounts indicate that women were particularly embarrassed.
John Atkins, a proponent of the trade wrote in his Voyage to Guinea that “the women retain
a modesty, for tho’ stripped of that poor clouth which covers their privies they will keep
squatted all day long on board to hide them.”38

Some slavers presented practical reasons for transporting the slaves naked, but the
reasons were often inconsistent. Many Slavers argued that nakedness on board was more
hygienic, as slavers could then “avoid vermin.” Stein, the only historian to consider the
matter, concurs.39 Certainly an overview of the primary sources suggests that hygiene was
the foremost consideration, or at least justiﬁcation, for slaves’ nakedness during the middle
passage. Danish trader Paul Isert, however, commenting on French ships, suggests that
slaves’ propensity for suicide explains their lack of clothing. “For this reason on French
ships they are not even allowed a narrow strip of loincloth for fear they will hang themselves
by it, which has in fact happened.”40 It is doubtful whether this is a common reason,

however; men were more frequently naked than women, but as far as we know no more

 

294. '

37 Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage to the Western Coast of Africa in His Majesty 's Dryad, and in the
Service of That Station for the Suppression of the SlaveTrade in the Years 1830, 1831, and 1832 (Nendeln:
Kraus, 1973), 107.

3“ Quoted in c. Palmer, Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700-1739 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1981), 57.

39 Robert Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 102. He claims that on French vessels only men went naked, while
women covered themselves with a small piece of cloth. However, if hygiene were the only reason slaves
were forced to travel naked, it does not make sense to have allowed some slaves to retain some clothing.
Other sources directly or indirectly (by noting the ﬁlth of coverings) corroborate Stein’s interpretation. But
some ships’ masters allowed slaves who came on board clothed to retain their clothing. William Page, a
British sailor, said in 1845 that “Most of them were generally entirely without any article of clothes or
covering, though at times they had strips of cloths around their loins, and some had handkerchiefs tied
around them.”

‘0 Paul Isert, Letters on West Africa and the Slave Trade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 176.

34

likely to commit suicide.41 There are, moreover, many references to ships that state “most”
or “nearly all” slaves had no covering, but some did, which would not have prevented slaves
from committing suicide. Richard Ligon of Barbados presented another reason to keep
slaves naked when he wrote in 1657 “the Planters buy them out of the ship, where they ﬁnd
them stark naked, and therefor cannot be deceived in any outward inﬁrmity.”42 All of these
accounts conﬁrm, from the slavers’ perspective, the social acceptability and economic
desirability of slaves travelling naked. From the perspective of the slaves, however, the
ritual of humiliation experienced on the coast of Africa was repeated for the beneﬁt of their
new purchasers.

During the middle passage, the sexes were segregated on virtually all ships. As John
Atkins noted “this is a Rule always observed, to keep the Males apart from the Women and
Children, and to handcuff the former.”43 Reasons given for this segregation of the sexes
varied. Another slaver, Captain T. Phillips, explained that it prevented “quarrels and
wranglings among them”, as well as the spread of venereal disease. Nonetheless,
communication was occasionally possible between the sexes. Phillips’s frustration was
evident in his remark that, although the men and women were separated “by partitions and
bulk-heads” they could not be kept apart; “do what we can, they will come together.” 4" On
some, possibly most vessels, segregation was maintained at meal times. In Phillip’s vessel,
men were “all fed upon the main deck and the forecastle, that we may have them under the

command of our arms from the quarter-deck, in case of any disturbance.” The women,

 

1' So it was on the Albion, where “we allowed . . . to the women, a piece of coarse cloth to cover them.”
George F. Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (W esport, Connecticut: Negro University Press, 1970), 84.

‘2 D.W. Galenson, Traders, 85.

‘3 Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 281.

44 T. Phillips, “A Journal of a Voyage made in the Hannibal” In George F. Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving
(New York: Kennikat Press, 1927), 61.

35

however, “eat upon the quarter-deck with us, and the boys and girls upon the poop.”45
No slave ship, however, seems to have made any distinction between the space allowed to
individual men and women on board.

Primary sources suggest that men and women differed in the relative freedom they
had on board. This reﬂected individual captains’ policies. Generally, women had greater
liberty of movement on board than men. Often women (and children) were not coupled by
irons while on board at all; only in exceptional circumstances were they chained while at
sea. A report to the House of Lords about the slave trade recounts that "The men are put in
Irons, in which Situation they remain during the whole Middle Passage, unless they are sick,
but not the Boys and Women", which reﬂects the most common situation.46 Humanitarian
concerns, however, did not necessarily prompt the slavers to remove the irons. Captain T.
Conneau, for example, wrote that “the longer a slave is kept in irons, the more he
deteriorates,” and that “the sole object of a slaver is to land his cargo in perfect healthy
order?”7

Due to the fragmentary and subjective evidence, it is difﬁcult to establish what
percentage of slavers adopted this relatively liberal approach. It may have been a minority,
as John Barbot inadvertently conceded when he noted that on his ship, he allowed the slaves
“much more liberty” than “other Europeans would think prudent.” He continued “many of

the males had the same liberty [as the women] by turns, successively; few or none being

 

‘5 El. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 407.

‘6 Report of the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council, 2 vols., London, 1789. Excerpted in E.
Donnan Documents, vol. 2, 598. See also T. Conneau A Slaver’s Logbook. 85-86, Dow Slave Ships, 177,
Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 282, and vol. 2, 353.

‘7 T. Conneau A Slaver's Logbook, 85-86. Conneau‘s account is among the less reliable sources. He wrote
his book out of pecuniary motives, and it is a sensationalist work that is biased in favour of the trade. But
the form of reasoning he uses to justify the trade (and mechanics of the trade) is in and of itself revealing.

36

fetter'd or kept in shackles, and that only on account of some disturbances.”48

In some ways, women manifested different reactions to enslavement than did men.
They were, according to slaving accounts, for example, more likely to suffer mental
breakdowns. These were occasionally, but not always, linked with suicide attempts.
Alexander Falconbridge, for example, reported that frequently, “the negroes, on being
purchased by the Europeans, become raving mad . . . particularly the women.” He described
a scene he had witnessed one day in the port of Bonny. A “middle aged stout woman, who
had been brought down from a fair the preceding day” was “chained to the post of a black
trader’s door, in a state of furious insanity.” At the same time, “a young negroe woman . . .
who had lost her senses soon after she was purchased” was chained to the deck of a slaver in
the Bonny River. Falconbridge had purchased such women himself. He had once been
compelled “to conﬁne a female negroe, of about twenty-three years of age, on her becoming

”49 That the woman was

a lunatic. She was afterwards sold during one of her lucid intervals.
sold “during one of her lucid intervals”, indicates that it is likely that mental breakdowns
occurred more often than was reported, and also, that there was a sliding scale of “insanity.”
Even if a slave were well enough to be sold, she or he rrtight have been mentally unstable.
Indeed, a number of slavers arrived at their destinations with female slaves among
their cargo who were listed as mentally disturbed; they usually sold last, along withother
‘refuse slaves’. One such woman delivered to Jamaica long remained unsold because she

9

was “betweene mad 8: Foole soe that noe body would give any thing for her or accept her.’

 

‘8 J. Barbot, in E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 462. There are also several accounts extant that clearly
indicate that the women were ironed throughout the voyage.

‘9 Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (New York: AMS Press,
1973), 32. The term 'mad‘ is problematic - I have taken it to mean a stress-induced mental breakdown, but
the question needs working out.

37

Local planters were concerned that she might set ﬁre to their plantations.50

A few scholars have noticed the phenomenon of insane women slaves on land and
have offered possible explanations. Barbara Bush, for example, deals with the matter in a
few lines. She believes that slave women “opted out by becoming raving mad.”5 1 Peter
Wood has suggested that some insanity noted on land may have been pretence on the part of
the slaves, a bluff that slavers “called, perhaps more often than it occurred.”52 No evidence,
however, suggests that mental breakdowns on the middle passage were voluntarily chosen,
and much suggests they were not. There was very little to gain by pretending insanity on
shipboard, as conditions would not be improved and the question of a reduced workload was
irrelevant. John Blassingame, on the other hand, has argued that the pressures of slavery,
even on land, could cause mental breakdowns, especially when a slave was separated from
her loved ones or in cases of extreme physical abuse.53 The strain and dangers imposed by
the middle passage was far worse than that of land-based slavery, and provided a fertile
ground for mental breakdowns. 5"

Insanity was reported far more often among female slaves than male slaves. 55 This
may, of course, simply reﬂect a sexist bias in recognising its symptoms. Or it may correctly

reﬂect the relative frequency of mental breakdowns between the sexes. In the absence of

 

5° D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 80.

5' Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society: 1650-1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990), 56.

52 Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina From 1 6 70 through the Stono
Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1978), 285-6

53 John Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1972), 298.

5‘ Another possible reason for insanity on slaving vessels was thirst. Buxton, in 1840, recorded an instance
of a woman who went mad by drinking seawater. T.F. Buxton, African Slave Trade and Its Remedy
(London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), 147-8.

55 Men also broke down under the mental stress of slavery. In 1702, for example, the Dutch ship Koning
van Portugal returned 2 slaves, a man and a woman, for having gone “crazy.” J .M. Postrna, The Dutch,
242. He also mentions a slaving captain who abandoned ﬁve of his slaves on an island because of physical
and mental handicaps.

38

other evidence, it is probably safe to assume that there was indeed a sex-based difference in
the manifestations of insanity. The middle passage certainly posed an enormous mental
strain on the African slaves. These range from the loss of one’s homeland, friends, and
family to the inhuman treatment aboard slavers, the bad physical condition of many slaves,
the general ineffectiveness of one’s own actions, and uncertainty as to what the future held.
Hopelessness and despair must have been rampant. The factors above, of course, exclude
any other personal losses for an individual slave, which would have been different in each
case.

Although slavers’ crews reported the “dramatic” aspects of women’s lives
(nakedness, madness and the like), we know very little about the daily lives of women
slaves on the middle passage. What can be reconstructed is made up of fragments written for
other purposes than to record the lives of women. These fragments must be seen in the
context of a slaving vessel. These vessels were ﬁlthy, noisome and unhealthy. The crew,
always potentially violent, inculcated fear into their desperate captives. Even seasickness
could kill. John Falconbridge, a surgeon, offered a truism when he stated that “the hardships
and inconveniencies suffered by the negroes during the passage, are scarcely to be
enumerated or conceived.”56

Certain tantalising tidbits, however, suggest that female slaves developed female
societies, with their own hierarchy, aboard slavers. One old woman slave, who could not be
sold, for example, had been cast into the sea to drown by her African owner. The crew of the
Katherine rescued her. This old woman subsequently took it upon herself to reassure the

other female slaves "who used always to be the most troublesome to us, on account of the

 

5‘ A.M. Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages, 23. Falconbridge noted that slaves “are far more violently
affected by the sea-sickness, than Europeans”, and that it “frequently terminates in death, especially among

39

noise and clamour they made.” On this voyage, instead, the female slaves "were kept in
such Order and Decorum by this woman, that [the captain] had never the like in any voyage
before.”57 Such descriptions provide hints about women’s ship-board life. What accounted
for the "noise and clamour" of the women? Why did it occur; how typical was it?

Many sources suggest that as with the male slaves, not all was harmonious among
women. John Falconbridge recounted that sometimes “The women are furnished with beads
for the purpose of affording them some diversion. But this end is generally defeated by the
squabbles which are occasioned, in consequence of their stealing them from each other.”58
Given the prevailing conditions on board slavers, of course, a short fuse among both slaves
and slavers is not surprising. Other sources suggest that “squabbles” of various degrees of
seriousness occurred regularly among both men and women. These could escalate to serious
violence. For the most part the hierarchies and interactions between women slaves on board
are lost.

Violence cannot be taken as the most prevalent type of interaction among women
slaves. Much that did not give rise to explicit comment by the slavers was more common.
For example, the formation of shipboard friendships that resulted in ties that lasted a lifetime
and could be as close as familial ties, was not commented on by slavers. There must have
been many unrecorded acts of selﬂessness, support and comfort. Moments of hope too, were
not recorded. Yet we know they must have occurred. How often and to what effect is
forever lost.

Other experiences, however, women by deﬁnition did not share with men. There are

numerous references in primary sources, for example, to pregnant slave women aboard

 

the women.”
57 W. Snelgrave “A New Account,” in E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 351.

40

ships. Many slave ships provided (woefully inadequate) special accommodation for
pregnant women on board. According to Barbot, Portuguese slave ships, for example,
crowded most of the women between decks, except “those that are with child” who were
crowded “in the great cabin.”59

Women who gave birth during the middle passage were almost always pregnant
before they were purchased by white slavers. Even including the time a vessel may have
spent 'cruising' the coast of Africa in search of a full cargo of slaves, women would not have
had enough time to become pregnant and deliver a child on board. The only plausible
exception to this may have been if a woman had become pregnant in the 'barracoons' while
her owner waited for a ship. While this was not impossible, it is unlikely to have been true
often, as extreme psychological stress, malnutrition and physical stress would have reduced
fecundity.60 Falconbridge observed that some women were “so far advanced in their
pregnancy, as to be delivered during their journey from the fairs to the coast; and I have
frequently seen instances of deliveries on board ship.”61 Slavers, however, evidently did not
seek out pregnant women to purchase.62

Both life on board and the journey to the coast, were physically and mentally

demanding on a pregnant woman, and these were the most likely times for female slaves to

be pregnant. The condition of a woman during her ﬁrst trimester was most important in

 

58 Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade, 23.

59 J. Barbot and J. Casseneuve, “An Abstract of 8 Voyage to Congo River” in E. Donnan, Documents, vol.
1, 459.

6° See Rhoda Reddock, “Women and Slavery in the Caribbean: A Feminist Perspective,” Latin American
Perspectives 12, l (1985): esp. 67-8 and Barbara Bush, Slave Women, 137 on slave fecundity. While her
argument on “emotional amenhorroea” is unlikely to have held for many slave women on land, it is likely
to have more value when transferred to the middle passage.

6' A. Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade, 13.

62 As pregnancy is usually only visible from the ﬁfth month, it is probable that some women made the
entire passage while pregnant without the slavers’ knowledge. Slavers did, however, buy women they knew
were pregnant. I have not located any source that contrasts the prices of pregnant women with those who
were not, which might shed further light on the motivations of slavers when purchasing women they knew

41

determining the survival chances of a fetus.63 A large number of miscarriages and high
infant mortality rates are virtually certain. Miscarriages on slavers were too common to be
remarked upon, unless they led to the mother’s death. During the voyage of the vessel James
in 1675, for example, a slave woman “[m]iscarryed and the Child dead within her and
Rotten and dyed 2 days after delivery?“

Given the conditions aboard a typical slaver, it is remarkable that some mothers
carried their babies to term. On land, for example, high slave infant mortality often resulted
from nutritional defects.65 On the middle passage, nutrition was doubtless very much worse.
In the absence of adequate nutrition, a fetus will draw from its mother’s reserves, thus
further weakening her. Yet some women did, under these conditions, manage to carry their
children to term. The mortality of both mother and child must have reached astronomical
heights on board slavers. Unhygienic conditions must have caused infection rates to
skyrocket, while both mother and baby would have had compromised immune systems.

No literature addresses the subject of pregnant women or those with newborn infants on the
middle passage. Births often occurred, however, and many were recorded. Such incidents
are generally not related with the sense that they were unusual, whether the baby lived or
died. The Rhode Island slaver Hope, for example, had boarded more than one hundred

slaves in Africa, “besides one born afterwards on the passage.”66 Royal Navy vessels that

 

to be pregnant. The lack of such sources is, however, also revealing.

‘3 John Campbell, "Work, Pregnancy, and Infant Mortality among Southern Slaves." Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 14 (Spring, 1984), 808. By 1807 this knowledge was common enough to have
been taken up in The Planter’s and Mariner ’s Medical Companion.

6‘ See “An Acc’tt of the Mortallity of Slaves Aboord the Shipp "James"? Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 206.
65 Kenneth F. Kiple, and Kiple, Virginia H., "Slave Child Mortality: Some Nutritional Answers to a
Perennial Puzzle." Journal of Social History 10, 3 (March 1977), esp. 287-88. For details on infant
mortality in Jamaica under slavery, see Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the
Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica. (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1969), 101.

6° Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 353. The case is recounted in detail on pages 334-358.

42

suppressed the illegal trade reported many births. They may have been more common in the
illegal trade, although almost certainly not to the extent that the increased reports indicate.
The increase probably represents the impact the cruelties of the trade had on members of the
Royal Navy, rather than an increase in births. When Peter Leonard’s vessel, for example,
captured the slaver Primeira, he wrote that the slaves included “four infants at the breast,
one of whom was born since the period of capture, whose mother, unhappy creature, sickly
and emaciated, was suckling it on deck, with hardly a rag to cover either herself or her
offspring.”67

Slavers may have been more inclined to accept pregnant women who they expected
to deliver their child after the vessel was safely at its destination. If the birth were postponed
till after the mother’s sale, the new owner would have assumed the risks associated with
delivery. This was, of course, not always possible. When the Elizabeth clocked in Caracas
on March 11, 1737, she had smallpox on board, and was quarantined. While she waited for
permission to land, the agent reported that “one of the ﬁnest women had been delivered of a
mulatto boy and were both well.”68 This reference is particularly interesting as it indicates
that the child had a white father. The passage was too short for the father to have been a
member of the crew, so the woman in question must have had a sexual encounter with a
white man in Africa.

Of course, the middle passage also provides horriﬁc examples of the treatment of
newly-delivered women. These were often written by abolitionists, in an effort to Show the
horrors of the trade. Without corroborating evidence, it is difﬁcult to determine whether

these incidents actually occurred, or whether reality was exaggerated in the interests of the

 

‘7 Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 104.
‘8 Quoted in C. Palmer, Human Cargoes, 114.

43

abolitionist cause. In the case of women who gave birth on the middle passage, abolitionists
often mentioned extreme instances of cruelty. Captain Hayes of the Royal Navy described
slave women brought on board the Dryad from a captured slaver in 1831 who “were just
brought from a situation between decks, where the scalding perspiration was running
from one to the other, covered also with their own ﬁlth, and were [was] is no uncommon
occurrence for women to be bringing forth children” while “men [were] dying by their side,
with, full in their view, living and dead bodies chained together.”69 It was, of course,
standard practice to segregate men and women and dead bodies were usually removed
immediately for fear of the spread of disease, which makes the quote suspect. On the other
hand, Falconbridge, an ex-slaving surgeon who became an active abolitionist, noted that on
one occasion, he did see “a pregnant woman give birth to a baby while still shackled to a
corpse that our drunken overseer had neglected to remove.”70
The relationship between mother and child on the middle passage may have been a
particularly mutually dependent one. Female slaves were sometimes reported to have “died
of grief” after their new-boms died.71 The captain of the James noted in 1676 the fate of a
young mother and her child “bought by myselfe” who, being “very fond of her Child
Carrying her up and downe wore her to nothing by which means fell into a feavour and
dyed.”72 It is possible that having an infant might have increased a mother’s chance of

survival. A baby gave an enslaved woman a responsibility and something active to do, and

may have provided her with a determination to live in order to protect the infant. The

 

‘9 T.F. Buxton, African Slave Trade, 155. This was an extreme case; the rhetoric was no doubt due to his
shock at the conditions he found.

7° T. Brady and Evan Jones, The Fight Against Slavery (New York: Norton, 1975), 83.

7' J .M. Postrna, The Dutch, 242. On 258, when discussing women’s mortality rate, he opines that "Women
must have had a big share in the care of the young, which may also have resulted in a greater sense of
purpose.” This is the only mention I have seen of the question, but it is certainly an idea that deserves
investigation. If true, it can certainly be extrapolated to the care of newborn infants.

reverse was probably also true - if a baby were to die, the chances of the mother dying as
well might have been increased.

Another experience that slave women did not (commonly) share with slave men was
the possibility of suffering sexual abuse and rape. A number of scholars have examined the
issue of rape in plantation settings, but none have done so for the middle passage.73 Women
can only be characterised as profoundly sexually vulnerable aboard a slaving vessel, where
rape, as elsewhere, was a multi-faceted phenomenon. To understand such rapes, one must
balance questions of sex, dominance, and the mores of the day, both on board, and in terms
of the construction of the black female slave body.“ Rape on a slaving vessel emphasised in
the most intimate way possible the subjugation of the victim to her oppressor. It impressed
upon the slave woman that to her captors, and quite probably for the rest of her life, she was
regarded simply property, without the right to honour. By the legal ideals of a slave system,
she would intemalise or at least accept this. Rape, in the context of slavery in general and
the middle passage in particular, is a systematic and overt denial to the victim of the most
basic of self-deterrnination. On the middle passage it was part of a forcible learning process
about what western slavery meant to an enslaved woman, and one that continued under
land-based slavery. Rape and its threat were in many ways the functional equivalent for
women of the horriﬁc physical punishments inﬂicted on men. Both kept victims and

observers in a constant state of fear and uncertainty, and both expressed the Slaver’s power

 

’2 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 207.

73 For example, Thelma Jennings, "'Us Colored Women had to Go Through Plenty': Sexual Exploitation of
African-American Slave Women," Journal of Women's History 1, 3 (Winter 1990).

7‘ The question of domination is complex. Domination was not limited to that of white men vis a vis black
women, but of white people over black people, of whiteness over blackness. That this was the case during
the middle passage is conﬁrmed by comments such as those of Ottabah Cugoana, who years after his
middle passage, wrote bitterly about “the dirty ﬁlthy sailors” who would “take the Aﬁican women and lie
upon their bodies.” Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments of the Evil of Slavery (London: Dawsons of
Pall Mall, 1787), 10. The crew did not need to consciously use rape as a tool of racial dominance for it to

45

to control the slave’s body. Slavery in general, and rape in particular, both made this point in
the most unambiguous manner possible. Rape, however, was an even more intense and
personal violation than physical punishment. And, of course, women were subject to both.75
Consensual and even mutually caring sexual relations between black and white people, of
course, existed, possibly even when the woman concerned was a slave. Such relationships,
albeit exceptionally, did take place on land.76

Such relations, however, were not possible between slaver and slave on a slaving
ship. The power imbalances on a slaving vessel were too great for any sexual relationship
not to be, in some way, coerced. The passage was too transient and too overtly based on the
commodiﬁcation of slave women to allow a consensual relationship to develop. Not all
rapes were identical, of course, even on the middle passage. They differed by vessel and by
individual in the explicitness of the threat of violence, the level of violence used, and the
level of resistance offered. Individual slave women also made choices regarding self-
preservation vis a vis overt resistance. Nonetheless, the context of the middle passage
ensured that all sexual relations between slave women and crew were necessarily rape.
There were other important differences between the sexual exploitation of black women on
land on sea. On slave ships, men did not have to contend with white women’s resentment.
There were no white women (or white ‘society’) on board, and the sexual relationships on
the middle passage were so transient as to pose no threat to white ‘society.’ On a slaving

vessel, moreover, control over a woman’s reproductive capacity was not an issue of

 

function as such.

75 Foulcault has pointed out that the body is the ultimate locus of power; this provides an excellent
conceptual framework in which to study rape and physical punishment on the middle passage, and indeed,
slavery itself. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Pantheon, 1997).
76 Sexual exploitation on land was far more common than relationships based on mutual caring, but the
latter was possible. See for example, B. Bush, Slave Women, 115.

46

contention, as it could be on land.77

It is, of course, easy to condemn slavers for the sexual exploitation of enslaved
women. But in order to understand the phenomenon, it must be placed in its historical and
cultural context. Many of the female slaves aboard a slave ship had been slaves in Africa
before being sold to white traders, where they could not expect to retain control over their
sexuality either. The sexual exploitation on the middle passage will have come as no
surprise to many of them, although it was made more terrifying by the uncertainty of their
future, terrible conditions, and the added dimension of race.78 To African slave women and
girls who were sold into the Arabic trade (which accounted for as many slaves as did the
Atlantic trade), the prospects in this regard were at least equally bad.79

Rapes on slavers were also intimately connected to perceptions about black women
and their bodies. Darlene Clark Hine, writing about black women on land, notes the
existence of a “constructed view of black sexuality.” She argues that “This construct, which
was designed to justify [the master’s] own sexual passion toward her, also blamed the
female slave for the sexual exploitation at the hands of her master.”80 This argument also
applies to female slaves on the middle passage, and the crew of the vessel. On Dutch vessels

the female slave quarter was often referred to as the "hoeregat" (whore-hole), a term that

 

77 See for example D. Hine, "Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary
Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance," Signs 14 (Summer, 1989), 41.

78 See for example Robert Harms, "Sustaining the System: Trading Towns Along the Middle Zaire," in
Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1983). Slave women in Africa often did

not have a choice in reproductive matters. See also Darlene Clark Hine and David Barry Gaspar, eds., More
Than Chanel, 24.

79 This was reﬂected in the number of women slaves available to the Atlantic trade, and the price of young
female slaves in the interior of Africa. D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 109-110. The same
humiliating examination procedure was performed on them, and according to a contemporary viewer,
before leaving, they were “stripped naked and marched through the town, people laughing.” John
Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 52, 57.

8° Darlene Hine, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (Bloomington, IL:
Indiana University Press, 1997), 28.

47

clearly has a double meaning. 8’ The word simultaneously degrades women slaves and
makes them complicit in their own rape. Conditions aboard slavers also contributed to the
intensiﬁcation of the perception of black women as “different” from white women. The
nakedness and absolute lack of privacy left little with which to construe an image of
chasteness; the isolation of a ship on the Atlantic did not have the beneﬁt of the social
controls -— inadequate as they were — which all forms of land-based slavery had to some
degree. Nor did the slave women have time to learn about their circumstances and
oppressors which might have helped them formulate a response. The women were more
vulnerable, both physically and socially, and less able to resist effectively.

In fact, the denigration of the (black) rape victim may have been more necessary on
the middle passage than on land. The slaver needed to vindicate the justness of the trade and
his complicity in it, as well as his lust, honour and race. The extreme weakness of his
“opponent” made this all the more necessary. It seems a contradictory requirement; the
victim was debased by the oppressor, and the oppressor re-conﬁrmed his virtue through his
debasement of the victim. But it was essential to blame the victim. If the oppressor conceded
a common humanity to his victim, he would have to take responsibility for his acts. The rape
of slave women can thus be understood as a vindication of the crew in their role as slavers.
By raping (dominating) slave women, either with or without overt resistance, they afﬁrm
their power and simultaneously “prove” to themselves and, supposedly, their victims the
slave’s inferiority, with the corollary that they therefore deserve the treatment they receive.
Rape served slavers as a physical resolution for a mental dilemma. This process did not need
to be conscious for it to have the effect described.

It is difﬁcult to determine the number of rapes on slaving vessels. Certainly many

 

8' J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 243.

48

fewer incidents were reported than occurred. The reason for this omission is twofold: ﬁrst,
rape was not exceptional enough to elicit much comment; second, it was in no one’s interest
to do so. Even if captains or ranking ofﬁcers who were not involved in a rape wished to
complain about the matter, they would have been in danger of angering their superiors and
alienating their contemporaries. The merchants who ﬁnanced the voyages were often kept in
the dark, as they would fear for the value of their cargoes occurred on board the vessel.
Sympathetic crew members would have feared their captains and the derision of other crew.
Captains’ power, slave ships’ isolation, and the need to be employed were sufﬁcient
mechanisms to create a “conspiracy of silence.” Second, rapes were often also relatively
private affairs. It is highly doubtful whether any given captain — whether or not he allowed
the practice — knew exactly how many rapes occurred on his vessel.

Despite the fact that the evidence resists quantiﬁcation, therefore, it still suggests
that sexual exploitation was extremely common. Offhand references to the matter, a near
universal lack of protest against it, and the number of extreme cases discussed in surviving
accounts despite reasons for not documenting them, combine to suggest that the sexual
abuse of at least some women slaves was the rule rather than the exception. John Newton
conﬁrmed that rape was “commonly” and “generally prevalent.”82 Ottobah Cugoano, one of
the few Africans to have written about the middle passage, agrees. He believes that it was
“common” for sailors to abuse slave women.83 The commonness of sexual abuse may
account in part, for the lack of evidence regarding incidents of abuse that did not physically

damage the victim.“ 85

 

82 J. Newton, quoted in J. Pope-Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 100.
83 Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments, 10.

84As Newton noted, “the enormities frequently committed in an African ship were considered there,
only as a matter of course.” John Newton, The Journal, 105.

49

While rape was common on slaving vessels, it is not possible to establish what
percentage of women on a given slaving vessel were generally raped. It will certainly almost
always not have been all.86 It was probably the young, the pretty and the most vulnerable
who suffered rape the most.87 All women on board slaving vessels nonetheless suffered
from the constant fear of being raped, and terror is a potent form of violence.88

Slaving captains and merchants were hardly ever concerned with African women’s
modesty or chastity after they had been sexually abused, but rather with their value. Insofar
as rape lessened women’s economic value, it became a cause for concern. Most ﬁnanciers
understood that some abuse, especially sexual abuse, would occur on slave ships. Typically,
a ﬁnancier’s instructions were simply to treat slaves, including women, “as well as
circumstances allow[ed].” In 1705, for example, merchant Thomas Stark instructed his

captain, John Westrnore, to “take care that the Boatswaine and other ofﬁcers keep the Ship

cleane and them and no other of your Men abuse the Negroes.”89 Other ﬁnanciers

 

85 As an aside — owners were generally the individuals responsible for the names of slave vessels, and the
English slave trade transported women slaves on vessels called Bachelor’s Delight and the Jolly Bachelor.
Though it is doubtful whether the owners had the slave women in mind when naming the vessel (or not
changing a vessel’s name), the insensitivity is telling. Countless female slaves made the crossing on vessels
called the Venus; at least ﬁfty-six transatlantic slaving voyages were made on slavers by that name. The

A ”can Queen was another common name for slaving vessels.

The Atlantic Slavery database, however, indicates that the average slaver had just over 30 crew members.
Not all of these will have been rapists, but on many ships the adult women will not have outnumbered the
men by much, if at all. This is calculated on the basis of 10702 voyages on which the number of crew at the
outset of the voyage are known. Combined, there were 322095 crewmembers employed which returns an
average of 30.09 crew members per voyage.

87 It is not possible to be certain whether was in fact the case. Rape is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and
there are too few primary sources speciﬁc enough to allow conﬁdent generalization with regard to the slave
trade. Major M’Gregor, a special justice in the Bahamas is an example of a source supporting the notion.
He wrote “I shall not shock your feelings by entering into the details of the abominable conduct of the
captain and the crew of this vessel during the passage towards some of the youthful and best-looking on
boar ” with regard to a case that came before him. Quoted in TE. Buxton, African Slave Trade, 169. Crew
often had a choice of slave women, and the circumstances on a slaver almost certainly caused some
members to become rapists who would not have been so in other circumstances; peer pressure was
probably intense. Whether this effected their choice of victims is unclear.

Darlene Clark Hine compares the rape of black women to the lynching of black men as a tool of terror in
“Rape and the Inner Lives.”

89 Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 76.

50

mentioned sexual abuse speciﬁcally, as did the merchant who underwrote Captain Herpin’s
voyage in French slaver Aurore. Herpin was ordered “to take great care of the health of the
negroes, to prevent lewdness between the negresses and the negroes and the crew.”90

The psychological consequences of the experience of being raped must have differed
in each case. While all women who were raped suffered to some degree, they differed in
their resilience and ability to reconcile themselves to their experiences. Feelings of guilt,
shame, and the certainty of not being able to obtain any form of redress may have led
women to hide this part of their lives. How women who suffered sexual abuse and were
traumatised by it came to terms with their experiences is an unanswerable question. This
was all the more true if a slave woman became pregnant from a non-consensual relationship.
Feelings of distrust, vulnerability, suspicion, anger, and perhaps even guilt was some of the
baggage that rape burdened its victims with, beyond the “normal” consequences of the
experience of the middle passage.

Power is a relational concept and therefore its exercise is, to some degree, always
negotiated. The oppressed are often left with some measure of agency and some room to
manoeuvre. The immediate power of slavers, however, over the fates of their captives was
enormous—much greater than that of their future masters.” Female slaves, while not in a

position to reject the sexual advances of their captors unequivocally, did have the ability - at

great risk - to negotiate a portion of their fate. How much room they had to negotiate

 

9° Quoted in James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York: W. W. Norton,
1981), 296.

9' There are many reasons for this. There was no speciﬁc slave law on the seas and the middle passage was
a closed society with far fewer societal mores to restrict crew. The cultural differences between oppressor
and oppressed were greater than on land, and the relationship was a transient one. There was less incentive
for the crew to recognize the slaves’ individuality and no need for them to bargain over the conditions of
work or conﬁnement. The slave trade from Africa was, in the aggregate, a more brutal system than land-
based slave exploitation, and those that partook in it were often more hardened than their counterparts on
land. The differences between slavery on land and sea are addressed in the introduction and in various

51

depended on numerous factors, including whether the ship’s captain had a policy regarding
sexual contact and how seriously it was taken, the rank of the perpetrator, the ﬁnanciers’
strictures on not having women physically damaged, and the willingness of the individual
abuser to resort to greater physical violence.

The risk accompanying resistance varied from vessel to vessel, and among abusers.
Perhaps the most difﬁcult decision a woman slave faced was deciding whether or not to
resist. Not choosing to resist overtly might lead to self-blame, disgust and even hatred, but
resisting could be a very risky course of action. As Leonard, who was engaged in the
suppression of the trade in the early 1830s, writes of a vessel taken by the brig Plumber
“[o]ne of the female slaves had long and indignantly repulsed the disgusting advances of
the master of the schooner.” The master ﬁnally “ﬁnding himself foiled in his execrable
attempts on her person, became furious with disappointment, and murdered his unfortunate
and unoffending victim with most savage cruelty.”92 For a small minority of slave women,
death was preferable to rape. Others chose to acquiesce for a variety of reasons, foremost
among them survival.93

How typical acquiescence was is impossible to recover, as less violent cases of rape
were least likely to be reported. But they were certainly more common than those cases that
resulted in severe physical injury or death. This does not suggest that slave women were

complicit with their abuser, but that a slave woman might hope for some amelioration of her

 

pzlaces in this work.

Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 141-2.
93 In the context of slavery on land, Dadzie has noted that male historians tend to underestimate the trauma
of rape, and assume too quickly that women “took readily to prostituting their bodies”, while men “looked
irnpotently on.” This is a wise caution, but it should not stop questions being asked about the individual
decisions slave women on the middle passage were often forced to make. It is no way a condemnation or
judgment to consider the full range of coping strategies that women used to survive a potentially life
threatening situation. Stella Dadzie, "Searching for the Invisible Woman: Slavery and Resistance in
Jamaica," Race and Class 32, 2 (October-December 1990), 25.

52

situation by acceding to her captors’ advances. First, she might escape greater physical
violence or death. Further, she might hope for protection from the advances of other crew
members, or better living conditions.94

Some slave women, however, may have overestimated the beneﬁts they might
receive from crew members with whom they were sexually involved.95 Falconbridge stated
that some slave women took “the inconstancy of their paramours so much to heart as to leap
overboard and to drown themselves.”96 No doubt these were exceptional cases, but it
remains an interesting and complex observation; the women may have expected more from
their captors than they would give, perhaps even a permanent relationship. 97

For all practical purposes, however, the last word on the treatment of slave women
(and men) lay, not with crew members, but with the captain of the slaving vessel. His will
and example determined what was acceptable on a vessel, and what was not. As John

Newton wrote, the character of a ship “depends much upon the disposition and attention of

the captain.” Although “several commanders of African ships were prudent, respectable

 

9’ Patterson believes that a woman’s chances of survival were “Improved by their more spacious
accommodation in the hull of the ships, by the fact that they were not chained”, and also by the fact that
since the crew exploited them sexually, they may also have “ensured the better treatment of whatever
woman or women had taken their fancy.” He may be partly right about the ﬁrst point, though there is no
evidence to suggest that the very small amount of extra space they (sometimes) had effected mortality. See
Charles Garland and Herbert S. Klein et al, "The Allotment of Space for Slaves Aboard Eighteenth-Century
British Slave Ships," William and Mary Quarterly 42, 2 (1985), 238-248. He is probably right about the
second point. However, he is likely mistaken about the third; the (hypothetical) increased survival chances
of those women who were sexually exploited on board could not have been sufﬁcient to effect the statistics
for all women. Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 99.

95 Dadzie has convincingly argued that the amount of beneﬁt a slave (on land) could expect from allowing
sexual access is probably over-rated by historians. Her point is even more valid for the middle passage.
Stella Dadzie, “Searching for the Invisible,” 25-6.

9‘ A. Falconbridge, quoted in J. Pope-Hennessy, Sins ofthe Fathers, 100.

97 Hine and Gaspar point out that concubinage on land did not necessarily lead to manumission. This is all
the more true of concubinage on sea. Relationships varied in length from single contacts to the duration of
the voyage. To the crew, and to present-day observers, it seems an absurdly na'r've for slave women to hope
for a lasting relationship, perhaps one which would lift them out of their plight. But if the process of
obtaining “consent” were undertaken with enough securing concern for the woman concerned, and with
enough promises, it rrright have seemed to some women to offer a glimmer of hope. Darlene Clark Hine
and David Barry Gaspar, eds., More Than Chattel, 25.

53

men” who “maintained a proper discipline and regularity in their vessels,” there were also
“too many of a different character.” Speaking speciﬁcally about sexual exploitation, he
stated that in “some ships, perhaps the most, the licence allowed in this particular, was
almost unlimited. Moral turpitude was seldom considered.” Instead ofﬁcers and men “who
took care to do the ship’s business, might, in other respects, do what they pleased?”
Ofﬁcers in particular were likely to rape female slaves and employ overt violence. James
Arnold, in sworn testimony, claimed that Captain Williams of the brig Ruby usually sent for
a woman slave “especially a young one” near the beginning of a voyage. He forced these
women “to come to his cabin that he might lie with them. Sometimes they would refuse to
comply with his desires and would be severely beaten by him.”99

Captains could abuse a slave virtually with impunity. Crew were answerable to their
captain or ranking ofﬁcers for the harm they did slaves, but captains were answerable only
to their ﬁnanciers, who were generally far away, and unlikely to learn of any abuse. Most
reported cases of extreme sexual abuse are, not surprisingly, attributed to captains or other
ofﬁcers. Falconbridge, for example, while commenting on sexual abuse of women slaves in
general, noted “The ofﬁcers are permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure
and sometimes are guilty of such brutal excesses as disgrace human nature.”100 His
observation that ofﬁcers were usually responsible for extreme acts of sexual abuse is
accurate. This does not mean that common sailors never harmed the women they abused. It
does, however indicate that they almost certainly did so less frequently than their superiors.

The cases of extreme of sexual abuse — “brutal excesses” — that ofﬁcers were

 

’8 John Newton, The Journal, 102.

99James Arnold's testimony in the Report to the House of Lords on the Abolition of the Slave Trade,
London, 1789. Reprinted in G. Dow, Slave Ships, 175.

'00 A. Falconbridge, “Account of the Slave Trade”, reprinted in Dow, 145.

54

usually responsible for can be divided into two broad categories. The ﬁrst is aberrant sexual
behavior; the second is violence so extreme that the woman’s life was endangered. High and
low—ranking ofﬁcers could be guilty of aberrant sexual behavior. In 1753, Newton stated
that, while he and other ofﬁcers were off the deck a midshipman, William Cooney,
“seduced a woman slave down into the room and lay with her brutelike in view of the whole
quarter deck, for which I put him in irons. I hope this has been the ﬁrst affair of the kind on
board and I am determined to keep them quiet if possible. If anything happens to the woman
I shall impute it to him, for she was big with child. Her number is 83.”101 Although Newton
explicitly forbade sexual contacts between his crew and the slaves, he did not appear
surprised that such an incident took place. He was not certain that other rapes had not
occurred, which implies both that his restrictions were unpopular, and that the policing them
was very difﬁcult. Whether he intended to keep his junior ofﬁcers quiet if possible, or the
actual “affair[s]” themselves is not clear. In this instance the perpetrator was put in chains,
but whether it was for the rape, for very publicly disobeying an order, or because Cooney’s
victim was a heavily pregnant woman subject to considerable physical harm, is unclear.

In another case, a slaving captain had chosen a slave woman “as his favourite and
kept her in his cabin.” One day, however, “when she was playing with his son, she
accidentally tore his shirt. When the captain learned of it, he whipped her unmercifully with
the cat and beat her up with his ﬁsts until she threw herself from him against the pumps and
in doing so injured her head so severely that she died three days after.”102 A French slaving
captain, Liot, had a pattern of violent abuse towards female slaves; he endangered their

lives, and reduced their market value on arrival in the New World. On one voyage, both

 

'0’ J. Newton, The Journal, 75.
102 From James Arnold's testimony in the Report to the House of Lords on the Abolition of the Slave Trade,

55

were combined in one slave. He “mistreated a very pretty negress, broke two of her teeth,
and put her in a state of languish that she could only be sold for a very low price at Saint
Domingue where she died two weeks later.”103 An ordinary crewmember could not commit
such an act of violence without adverse consequences. While such extremes on the part of
ofﬁcers are not representative of all women’s experiences, they do illustrate what the system
made possible. Recovering both “typical” experiences and extreme behaviours are vital to
the writing of an African-American history that strives for completeness.

On some slave ships, sailors had ofﬁcial approval to have sexual relations with
slaves. Falconbridge stated that “On board some ships the common sailors are allowed to
have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure,” although
even then, physical harm was not tolerated. ‘04 In the world of slave transportation, the value
of a sailor's life could be less than that of a slave; a slave’s death represented a ﬁnancial loss
to captain and ﬁnancier, while the death of a sailor did not. Falconbridge does not elaborate
on the process of procuring "consent" from the slave women, but no sailor, of course, could
secure any consent that would not be coerced. Newton was explicit about this point. He
writes that “[w]here resistance or refusal, would be utterly in vain, even the solicitation of
consent is seldom thought of” and continued, “the licence allowed in this particular, was
almost unlimited?”

Even if sailors were not given permission to abuse women slaves, ships’ ofﬁcers

 

London, 1789. Reprinted in G. Dow, Slave Ships, p. 175.

“’3 R.L. Stein, The French Slave, 101. Stein suggests that Liot’s actions were reported due to “personal
contempt for Liot, along with the desire to justify a poor trade.” Of course there is no way to measure the
psychological damage that both sailors and ofﬁcers inﬂicted.

'0’ Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade, 234.

"’5 John Newton, The Journal, 102. Both Newton and Falconbridge became abolitionists later in life. Given
the corroborating evidence, this need not shake our faith in their assertions about the sexual vulnerability of
slave women.

56

could not oversee the actions of all the crew throughout the middle passage. '06 The logbook
of the ship Mary, which had a prohibition on sexually abusing women slaves, makes the
point. On May 6, 1796, the captain wrote “This morning found our Women Slave
Appartrnents had been attempted to have been opened by some of the Ship’s crew, the
Locks being Spoiled and sundered.”’°7 The chances of crewmen getting caught were not
very large: fear and language barriers would have inhibited the victims from complaining.
Finally, women’s roles in slave insurrections differed substantially from that of men.
Contemporary scholars do not agree on the degree of assertion West African women were
permitted in their own societies vis a vis men during the seventeenth through the nineteenth
centuries.108 Eighteenth-century European writers, however, frequently suggested that
women slaves were less dangerous than men. John Newton wrote that “From the women,

there is no danger of insurrection, and they are carefully kept from the men; I mean from the

 

'06 Even if forbidden to do so, the temptation for crew members to sexually abuse the women was great.
Williams reports a remark made by Newton in this respect. Newton, explicit about his monogamous
relationship with his wife, observed that he “had a number of women under his absolute command; and
knowing the danger of his situation on that account, he absolved to abstain from ﬂesh in his food, and to
drink nothing stronger than water, during the voyage.” He hoped “that, by abstemiousness, he might subdue
every improper emotion; and that, upon his setting sail, the sight of a certain point of land was the signal
for his beginning a rule which he was enabled to keep.” In Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool
Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (New York: Augustus M.
Kelley, 1966), p. 509. It is not possible to verify this account, but it nonetheless illustrates the point that
temptation was a fact of life on board a slaving vessel, even for the well intentioned.

’07 On this vessel action was undertaken for such breaches of discipline; in a separate incident 10 days later
ofﬁcer, Moore, was stripped of rank and privileges by Captain Nathan Sterry, being deemed “no longer [a]
ﬁt companion for the Cabin.” However, such sanctions against ofﬁcers are rare ﬁnds in the primary
literature. In Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 374.

’08 There is a large and complex literature on the question. There is little agreement for any given society,
and even less on broader generalisations. Writers on slavery are similarly divided. Claire Robertson and
Martin Klein have argued that in much of Africa women were the victims of “an ideology which assumed
female inferiority”, and were subjected to “submissive socialization.” They contend that “In many
[African] societies women were and are taught to obey men unquestioningly.” C.C. Robertson & M.A
Klein., Women and Slavery, 6. Drawing from the writings of Oluadah Equiano, Bush argues that Ibo
women had a tradition of combat. She insists, without further evidence, that “The Iboes were generally the
ringleaders of shipboard insurrections at Bonny and [that] the women took as active part as the men.” B.
Bush, Slave Women, 68. Terborg-Penn argues that in some African societies women had a tradition of
military training and offers the example of women soldiers in Dahomy. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, "Women
and Slavery in the African Diaspora: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Historical Analysis," Sage: A Scholarly
journal on Black Women 3, 2 (Fall 1986), 192.

57

black men.”109 This attitude was widely shared among slavers despite women’s involvement
in a number of violent uprisings on slavers. On some vessels, for example, the men were “all
under command of . . . arms from the quarter-deck, in case of any disturbance”, during meal
times (a time of heightened risk for resistance attempts) while women in general were not so
closely guarded.110

Numerous accounts indicate that women slaves participated in many resistance
activities aboard slavers, from passive resistance to outright mutiny, but that men dominated
organised violent resistance. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, writing about the resistance of
women slaves on land, put it in terms that apply equally to shipboard conditions. She
suggests that “It is probably safe to say that there is no form of insurrectionary struggle in
which some women have not engaged it is also true that historically, as in the
contemporary world, women are less likely to assume political and military leadership.”1 1’
When the question of leadership or planning resistance on slaving vessels was addressed in
contemporary accounts, a single man or a group of men were almost invariably identiﬁed as
the culprits.

On the other hand, female slaves often supported men in their efforts to rebel
collectively. Women, like men, took advantage of speciﬁc circumstances, to support
rebellions. Women slaves, for example, were generally less strictly conﬁned than men. They
were less frequently ironed or chained, and less heavily guarded. Some slavers were very

aware of the possibilities this afforded. Samuel Waldo, for example, owner of the Africa,

cautioned his captain to beware of both women and children slaves aboard his vessel, and

 

'09 John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 105.

“° Elizabeth Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 407.

m Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Strategies and Forms of Resistance: Focus on Slave Women in the United
States," in In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and Afro-American History, Gary Y. Okihiro

58

noted “For your safety as well as mine You'll have the needfull Guard over your Slaves.”
He continued “putt not too much conﬁdence in the Women nor Children least they happen
to be Instrumental to your being surprised which may be Fatall.”l ’2 Numerous accounts
indicate that women used their greater liberty on board in various ways. John Atkins
described an insurrection attempt led by a male slave named Tomba, who “had combined
with three or four of the stoutest of his Country-men to kill the Ship's Company, and attempt
their escape.” The plot had nearly succeeded, thanks to the work of a “Women-Slave, who,
being more at large, was to watch [for] the proper Opportunity. She brought him word one
night that there were no more than ﬁve white Men aboard the Deck, and they asleep,
bringing him a Hammer at the same time.”1 13 This attempt failed, but the advantages the
woman’s greater liberty afforded her, enabled her both to act as an informant and to secure
and deliver a weapon.

The same roles for female slaves — that of informants and procurers of weapons —
surfaced time and again in insunections. A mutiny on board the Thomas, for example, in
which female slaves passed males the weapons they used to take control of the ship, was
initially successful.114 A rare successful mutiny on the Virginie in 1841, which resulted in
the death of the entire crew revealed the same pattern. “The women”, owing to “the
incommodious size of the vessel, had been placed in the apartment containing the arms,

which they managed to convey unperceived to the men, who rushed upon deck well

 

(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 146.

”2 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Suffolk Court Files, no. 46527. Reproduced in E. Donnan,
Documents, vol. 3, 45.

“3 J. Atkins “A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and West-Indies”, reproduced in part in E. Donnan, Documents,
vol. 2, 266.

m The surviving crew members staged a successful counter-mutiny when the slaves were incapacitated by
the rum that they had seized. Related in D'Auvergne E.B., Human Livestock: An Account of the Share of
the English-Speaking Peoples in the Development, Maintenance and Suppression of Slavery and the Slave
Trade (London: Greyson & Greyson, 1933), 71.

59

prepared, and soon overwhelmed their weak and unprincipled opponents.”115 While the
crew’s short-sightedness in placing the women in the arms room was exceptional, the
women’s method of taking advantage of the opportunity was not.

On occasion, however, the women’s segregation from the male slaves led to defeat.
Sometimes, female slaves did not know that the men were rebelling. After Captain Bell
successfully suppressed a mutiny on his ship, for example, he wrote to the vessels owner
that “The women” had “no hand in the rebellion” as they had had “no time to consult about
it.” Otherwise, he noted “in all probability your property here at this time would have been
but small.”116 During other mutinies, slave women, even without warning, supported the
men in their violent efforts. Captain Conneau described one such, noting that “the women
in the cabin, seconding their fellow male prisoners, rose in a body on the man at the helm,
who, with his knife wounded several and silenced them.”117

On the other hand, women also are often named as the betrayers of violent resistance
on land and at sea. This characterisation has been the subject of controversy among
contemporary historians.118 As on land, the preliminary evidence suggests that women did
betray plots more frequently than men, especially in view of their relatively fewer numbers.
Ottobah Cugoana, for example, relates that there was a plot among the men and boy slaves
to "burn and blow up the ship, and to perish all together in the ﬂames" but that "we were
”119

betrayed by one of our own country-woman, who slept with the head-man of the ship.

Of course, in this case the woman in question may quite reasonably have decided that she

 

”5 P. Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 108.

"6 Letter of John Bell to John Fletcher, 1776. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 323.

”7 T. Conneau, Slaver’s Logbook, 208.

”8 For dissenting points of view, see Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel 's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave
Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993) and B. Bush, Slave
Women. There is no work that considers the matter for resistance on sea.

"9 O. Cugoana, “Thoughts and Sentiments” in J. Pope-Hennessy, 100.

60

had no desire to die rather than to be a slave. Nonetheless, clearly not everyone on board
was to be equally trusted with vital information.

The harshest punishments aboard slavers were reserved for failed mutineers, and
women’s sex often did not ameliorate these punishments. Women, when full participants in
resistance or mutinies, were subject to the full penalties for failure. This was as true for the
extremes of punishment as it was for more standard punishments.120 William Page, a British
sailor on the American vessel Kentucky, described the punishments meted out for a failed
mutiny attempt. These were very severe, and included a “ﬂogging” which was
“administered to six women and twenty men by means of a stick about 2 feet long, with four
or ﬁve strands of raw hide secured to the end of it (the hide was dry and hard and about 2
feet long)” as well as “a piece of the hide of a sea-horse; this was a strip about 4 feet long,
from half an inch to an inch wide, as thick as one’s ﬁnger or thicker, and hard as whalebone,
but more ﬂexible.” He added “All the women ﬂogged died at this time died.”m

Women slaves in general were less valuable then men, although this differential
probably did not often play a role in whether they received capital punishments more often
than did men for similar offences. Occasionally at least, the different ﬁnancial values of
male and female slaves did play a role, as John Atkins’s account of Captain Harding of the
slaver Robert indicates. In 1721, Harding put down an insurrection by ﬁve slaves that cost
the lives of three crew members. He thereupon weighed “the Stoutness and Worth of the

two Slaves” and decided to “whip and scarify them only.” The other three rebels, however,

 

120 Extreme punishments tend to be disproportionately represented in the primary literature, as their cruelty
made them remarkable and more likely to be recorded than standard punishments. They also resulted in
more deaths, also likely to be recorded. But the severity of a “normal” whipping should not be
underestimated.

121 RE. Conrad, Children of God 's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), 41. This example is not typical in terms of the numbers of slaves who
lost their lives - forty six slaves, including a woman, were executed; this excludes the women referred to

61

“Abettors, but not Actors, nor of strength for it, he sentenced to cruel Deaths; by making
them ﬁrst eat the Heart and Liver of one of them killed. The Woman he hoisted up by the
Thumbs, whipp'd, and slashed her with Knives before the other Slaves till she died.”122 This
punishment was not typical, but it conﬁrms that ﬁnancial considerations did, at least
occasionally, play a role in determining who was to be executed.123

On the other hand, women slaves engaged in individual acts of resistance at least as
often as their male counterparts.124 Suicide was one such activity. An entry in the logbook
of the Rhode Island slaver Othello was typical. It recounted the deaths of “Two Women”
who were “Lost Overboard Out the Vessel in the Ni [gh]t By Neglect of [the] Mate Not
Locking them up.” The captain did not seem to have regarded the deaths as unusual or
remarkable; indeed, women evidently committed suicide as often as men did.125

Slavers were nearly always less tolerant of both individual and collective resistance
than plantation owners.126 There was also less scope for individual resistance on a slaving

vessel. As women were more likely to use this type of resistance, it would be wrong to

believe that they were more accepting of their plight aboard a slaver than were men because

 

above. Several men recovered from the ﬂogging.

122Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 266.

123 There is little reason to doubt the veracity of the account. Atkins was a Royal Navy surgeon, and a
comparison of the details of his voyage and that of Harding (DuBois Atlantic slavery dataset, entry no.
16303) confums his account on all major points. Captain Harding slaved in the same year (1721), at the
same place where Atkins’ vessel was (Sierra Leone), and came from the port (Bristol) that Atkins
indicated.

124 Resistance to sexual abuse is another example.

”5 Reprinted in Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 235. The literature abounds with accounts of women
committing suicide. While jumping overboard was the most common, deliberate starvation was not
unusual. Falconbridge recounts an incident in which a woman “too sensible of her woes” stated her
intention not to eat or drink until she died, and did so. A. Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade, 31.
no There are several reasons for this, foremost among them the fact that the slaves greatly outnumbered the
crew on a slaver, and that there was no possibility of outside aid while at sea. White authority needed to be
more absolute on slavers, and thus any undermining of that authority was a dangerous precedent. For more
on this, see chapter 4, “Resistance and Rebellion.”

62

'27 Women slaves

they engaged in fewer violent uprisings on board than the men did.
adapted their resistance to their particular circumstances as did men slaves during the middle
passage.

In sum, the experience of women slaves had much in common with that of the men
on the middle passage - their commodiﬁed status as slaves was no different from that of
men, and they were subject to the same general physical environment of the slaving vessel.
In many respects, however, they went through a completely different experience. That
which they had in common with men they often experienced differently — the struggle to
survive, and the form their resistance tended to take, for example. They also had experiences
that men did not have. Their conﬁnement conditions often differed from those of the men.
They were far more commonly subject to rape and sexual abuse. They could be pregnant
and deliver children while onboard, neither uncommon in the trade. They were also

responsible for the care of infants, and often, the younger children on the vessel, the subject

of the following chapter.

 

127 For a representative discussion of the types of resistance in which women tended to engage on land, see

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Strategies and Forms of Resistance,” 153. For details on the nature of resistance
on board slaving vessels and how resistance contributed to the shaping of the slaving voyage, see chapter 4,
“Resistance and Rebellion.”

63

CHAPTER 2: CHILDREN AND INFANTS

“I recollect when I came on board ship.”1

Children shared many of the same experiences with the adults on the middle
passage, but in many respects their experiences differed from those of adults. It is wrong
to ask whether children understood what was happening to them. The historian’s
challenge is to try to recover the experience of children on the children’s own terms, and
in that context, explain how they understood and integrated what was happening to them
into their lives. They need to ask themselves not whether children of a given age
consciously experienced the middle passage, but rather how they experienced it.2

It is remarkable that so little attention has been paid to the experience of child
slaves on the middle passage. Other than some demographic work, no academic attention

has been paid to the history and experience of children on board slaving vessels. 3 It

 

' Testimony by Augustino, who was about twelve when he made the passage. R. E. Conrad, Children of
God 's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983), 38.

2 A poignant example of the fact that the children were aware of what was happening around them, though
they may have interpreted it differently is provided by Leonard, who describes the return to Africa of slaves
retrieved from a captured (illegal) slaver. He wrote that “A large canoe brought the children. These
were singing on board the schooner, in anticipation of the boat’s return, and continued their song all the
way on shore, laughing and clapping their hands. But the men and women, after they reached the yard,
when the momentary gratiﬁcation of setting foot on land once more had passed away, looked sullen and
dissatisﬁed, but not dejected. It struck me that on landing they expected to be allowed to go wherever they
pleased, and were consequently disappointed and angry. . ..” The adults were concerned with the future,
while the children were happy in the present. Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage to the Western Coast of
Africa in His Majesty '3 Ship Dryad, and of the Service on That Station for the Suppression of the Slave
Trade in the Years 1830, 1831, and 1832 (Nendeln: Kraus, 1973), 106.

3 To a degree, this is understandable. Primary sources seldom mention children speciﬁcally, and then
usually only ﬂeetingly. The data that does exist is usually record keeping, either by the slavers or by the
authorities at the various ports of destination. A great many must be searched before a sufﬁcient amount is
collected to allow generalizations. This makes archival research by any individual very time-consuming.
For demographic work, see David Richardson and Paul Lovejoy, "Competing Markets for Male and
Female Slaves: Prices in the Interior of West Africa, 1780-1850," International Journal of African
Historical Studies 28, 2 (Spring 1995), 280, 286; Stanley L. Engerman & David Eltis, "Was the Slave
Trade Dorrrinated by Men?" The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (Autumn 1992), 245; David Eltis,
"The Volume, Age/Sex Ratios, and African Impact of the Slave Trade: Some Reﬁnements of Paul
Lovejoy's Review of the Literature." The Journal of African History, 3 (August 1990); David Eltis,
"Fluctuations in the Age and Sex of Slaves in the N ineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trafﬁc," Slavery

64

leaves a major lacuna in the history of the Atlantic slave trade, and that of the middle
passage. A higher proportion of children left Africa than left Europe, and more children
than women made the middle passage.4 If one considers the difference in emotional
response most adults have when considering the sufferings of children as opposed to the
sufferings of adults, the lacuna becomes even more puzzling.S

In spite of the increasing sophistication of the published results regarding the
demographic composition of the trade, this chapter remains more a chapter of questions
than answers. As yet there is no conversation between scholars regarding the experiences
of children on the middle passage; this chapter is an attempt to start such a conversation.
Statistics are vital in framing the discussion, but they need to be considerably
supplemented by other data if the experiences of children on the middle passage are to be
recovered. Without question the trade can be seen as a continued and structural exercise
in child abuse, but it is necessary to move beyond that single-interpretation explanation,
and to document the content of the experience more fully.

The terms “child” and “childhood” are malleable, subject to individual and

cultural interpretation. An attempt to impose a deﬁnition of “child” that will hold for the

 

and Abolition 7, 3 (1986); D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behaviour in Early
English America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). and HS. Klein, The Middle Passage:
Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978). D. Eltis, S. Behrendt et.
al’s., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge: University of Cambridge
Press, 1999) is an indispensable reference work. C. Palmer, Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade to
Spanish America, 1700-1739 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981) and J .M. Postrna, The Dutch in
the Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1815 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990) both devote a few pages to
children.

4 Philip D. Morgan, “The Cultural Implication of the Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins,
American Destinations and New World Developments,” Slavery and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.), 123.
5 This emotional aspect was not lost on the abolitionist cause. One of their more graphic images of the slave
trade was that of a young boy, lacking the strength to rescue himself, drowning in the latrine buckets on a
slaver after falling in. Symbolically, however, it is a powerful image, equating the value of a living, abused
child with that of a tub of human faeces, in which the unloved child departs from this world. It features in
Equiano’s narrative (though almost certainly an imagined event), as well as Alexander Falconbridge’s An
Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (New York: AMS Press, 1973). It is reported seriously in

65

entire period of the Atlantic slave trade, across carriers of all nations, is a fruitless task.
This is all the more true when one considers that there is a world of difference between
children aged 3-5, 5-9, 9-12, and 12-15, for example. Primary documents sometimes
distinguished between men, men-boys and boys among the males, and women, women-
girls and girls among the females. An infant was usually a suckling child, but the dividing
line between infant and child was ﬂexible. When slavers kept records of children, the
deﬁnition of “child” they used varied from time to time, by nation and by individual. For
example, the Royal African Company deﬁned children as individuals ten years old or
younger in the period 1660-1730, though other slavers who attempted age estimates used
a different age to deﬁne a child. Height was also a common criterion — the British and
French adopted a length of about four feet, four inches to distinguish adults from
children. Some slavers used sexual maturity as a criterion to identify children.6

The sources identifying children must be acknowledged to be imprecise,
subjective and, unfortunately, largely incomplete. While this is inconvenient, the lack of
precision may be more problematic for scholars interested in determining exact
demographic or quantitative insights than it is for scholars attempting to reconstruct the
social history of the trade. For social historians it is more important to know that the
average age of slaves making the middle passage was approximately eighteen for women
and seventeen for men.7 It is important to know that at times, about a quarter of the slaves
who made the crossing were ﬁfteen or younger.8 One is between the age of 5 and 15 for

ten years, but between the age of 15 and 35 for twenty years. When seen is this light, it is

 

Pascoe Grenfell Hill’s Fifty Days On Board a Slaving Vessel in the Mozambique Channel in April and May
1843 (London: John Murray, 1844), 77.

6 The examples given here are drawn from D. Eltis, S. Behrendt et. al., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 10.
7 See C. Palmer, Human Cargoes, 121.

66

clear that the Atlantic slave trade effected a greater proportion of children compared to
adults than it might appear at ﬁrst glance. However one deﬁnes “child,” and for whatever
historical purpose, the Atlantic slave trade and the middle passage were inﬂicted heavily
on the young.

Age, height and sexual maturity measured only the physical characteristics of an
individual. They did not take into account the previous experiences of the person. Many
of the individuals taken on board a slaving vessel were children by physical or
chronological deﬁnitions but had had ﬁrst-hand experiences of the hardships of life that
easily rivaled those of most adults. Many had, even before boarding the slaving vessel,
suffered more and seen more suffering than many adults do in their entire lives. The life
experiences, the necessity of relying on themselves in order to survive, and the lack of
opportunity to do and grow up as ‘normal’ children did, ensured that many child-slaves
had prematurely and irrevocably left their childhood behind them. These youngsters were
a singular blend of the child and the adult, with aspects of each being contained in the
same individual. In terms of age, they were children. In other respects they were not even
remotely children.

Given all the confusion that an attempt at ﬁnding a workable universal deﬁnition
of “child” inevitably brings, the approach I have adopted is a simple one. If the primary
documentation referred to the individual(s) as a child, I have accepted that. If further
speciﬁcation regarding the age of the individual was present, that allowed greater
precision in contextualizing the individual’s experiences. Usually, however, that was not

the case. For infants, I have used a similar approach. If the primary sources refer to an

 

8 For example, in the Dutch trade in the mid to end seventeenth century. J .M. Postrna, The Dutch, 230. See
also Engerman and Eltis, "Was the Slave Trade", 245.

67

individual as an infant, I accept that. If the source does not, but the description leads me
to suspect that the child is either still nursing, or up to about two years of age, then I
consider the child an infant.

The question of how many children and infants were transported in the trade is
closely related to whether slavers actively sought out children and infants. Instructions
such as the one issued to Captain William Barry were common. He was ordered to “let
your endeavours be to buy none to exceed the years of 25 or under 10 if possible.”9
Sometimes slavers had to settle for what they could get, and this may on occasion have
meant buying more young slaves than they might have wanted. But the main reason for
slavers purchasing large numbers of children was that there was a demand for them, and
thus they actively sought them out.10 Some contemporary accounts explicitly directed
captains to buy young slaves, as the instructions to Captain Pollipus Hammond in 1746
did. He was instructed to “get most of them mere Boys and Girl, some Men, let them be
Young, No very small Children.”11 The “very small Children” referred to were likely to
have been infants, who were more common in the trade than has hitherto been
supposed.12 Hammond’s instructions were not universal by any means, but nor were they
exceptional. Some vessels even appear to have specialized in young slaves. Without any

suggesting that it was in any way unusual, Captain Newton recorded that he “Exchanged

with Captain Williams No.60, 61; 2 small boys (3 ft 8 inches) for a girl (4 foot 3 in) and

 

9 E. Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 2 (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930-35), 327.
’0 See David Engerman and Stanley L. Eltis, "Fluctuations in Sex and Age Ratios in the Transatlantic Slave
Trade, 1664-1864," Journal of Economic History 46, 2 (1993), 318 for possible reasons why New World
purchasers sometimes preferred children. The numbers carried ﬂuctuated by over time, region and
particularly, transportation costs.

E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 138.
’2 See the calculations on infants below.

68

No. 80, a small boy (3 ft 8 inches) for a woman, he being only for small slaves.”l3 The
pertinent phrase here is of course, “he being only for small slaves.” This specialization
was certainly not typical, but how atypical is not clear.

The scholarly debate on the proportion of children carried on slaving vessels has
not reached a consensus. In part this is because of the variation in the proportion of
children canied over time (it tended to rise over the trade, and to decline with higher
transportation costs), and partly because of the nature of the sources.14 In 1990 David
Eltis argued that “between a quarter and a third were children, deﬁned as individuals
below 14 or 15 years of age.”15 If he excludes infants from this total, he is likely to be
substantially correct, though possibly on the low side.

In 1993, in collaboration with Stanley Engerman, Eltis published the following
synopsis of child ratios — the ﬁgures include infants — taken over the entire Atlantic slave

trade:

 

1663-1700 0.122

 

1701 -1 809 0.227

 

 

 

 

1810-1869 0.461

 

Table 2.1. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman’s Proportion Children Carried16

 

'3 John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754 (With Newton's Thoughts upon the African
Slave Trade '), Bernard Martin and M. Spurrell (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 41.

'4 For the relation between the price of slaves, the cost of transporting slaves, and the number of children
transported, see D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 63-64, 97-114.

‘5 David Eltis, "The Volume, Age/Sex Ratios,” 489.

’6 David Eltis & Stanley L. Engerman, "Fluctuations in Sex and Age,” 311. This is the most sophisticated
article on child ratios yet published, and attempts to establish whether the ﬂuctuations reﬂected African
agency or New World preferences. It does, however, not control for infants carried, possible mis-assigning
of children (usually as women, sometimes divided by sex among the women and men), or for the
nationality of the slaver (although controlling for port of embarkation may ameliorate this to some degree).
Especially the ﬁrst is likely to have caused the number of children in the trade to be underestimated. No
scholars have as yet taken this into consideration in their calculations. See chapter 1, Women for more on
this. For more recent work on the demographics of the Atlantic slave trade, see David Eltis and David
Richardson, "West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: New Evidence of Long-Run Trends," Slavery

69

The rise in the number of young slaves, even more than the substantial numbers carried,
is the most striking of this overview. This may have had as much to do with the greater
recording and inclusion of infants in the ﬁgures and a greater tendency to count children
as a separate category (rather than including them with the women, or the men and
women, according to sex), as an actual rise in the number of children transported. Neither
of these factors is controlled for in Eltis and Engerman’s work.

A review of the much larger Atlantic slavery dataset yields a somewhat different
picture. Excluding infants yields the following results for all voyages that allow the

calculations to be made.

 

1663-1700 0.113
1701-1809 0.218
1810-1869 0.295

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2.2. Proportion Children, Excluding Infantsl7

When the same calculations are made using only voyages for which the number of
infants disembarking is recorded, the ﬁgures change substantially, as shown in Table 2.3.

below.

 

N

and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.), 29.

’7 For 1663-1700, taken over 263 voyages 5584 boys disembarked, 2570 girls disembarked, and 71812

slaves disembarked in total. For 1701-1809, taken over 1647 voyages 52997 boys disembarked, 33307 g. \s
disembarked, and 407307 slaves disembarked in total. For 1810-1869, taken over 732 voyages, 32284 b“ 9
disembarked, 20468 girls disembarked, and 178854 slaves disembarked in total. Over the entire trade‘ QQ‘J ’2-
voyages contained enough information to make the calculations speciﬁed above. This calculation does

control for region of embarkation, limiting its usefulness in comparisons with Eltis and Engerman’s w “(9'

Q‘\‘.

70

—

 

 

1663-1700 0.113"

 

1701-1809 0.363

 

 

1810-1870 0.493

 

 

 

Table 2.3. Proportion Children, Including infants18

*No voyages reported infants separately.

What is to be made of this? The records in the Atlantic slavery dataset that contain
any information on children or infants is on average derived from more sources than the
average journey in the dataset — 3.66 sources per record compared with 2.59. There are
3088 records (11.4%) that contain some information on children or infants (indications
that a certain number boarded, disembarked, died, and or other information). This
information is, however, nearly always incomplete. In only 2.71 percent of all voyages
was any information recorded at all on the age groupings of the slaves at embarkation.19
Even in these cases the reliability is questionable. Information recorded at disembarkation
was probably more accurate, and is certainly more complete. Some information is
recorded about the age groupings of slaves at disembarkation in 9.89 percent of the
voyages included in the dataset.20 The average date of departure from Africa for voyages

that contain some information on the age of the slaves on board is slightly later than the

 

‘8 For 1663-1700, no voyages preserve information on the number of infants disembarking. For 1701-1809,
taken over 224 voyages 2147 boys disembarked (20% reported no boys disembarking), 1384 girls
disembarked (25% reported no girls disembarking), 8730 infants disembarked, and 33723 slaves
disembarked in total. For 1810-1869, taken over 732 voyages, 10025 boys disembarked (2% reported no
boys disembarking), 6559 girls disembarked (3% reported no girls disembarking), and 41349 slaves
disembarked in total. Over the entire trade, 574 voyages contained sufﬁcient information to make the
calculations speciﬁed above. The region of embarkation is not controlled for.

'9 739 records out of 27,233

2° 2,694 records out of 27,233. In a similar vein, the dataset contains 698 cases where data is available to
calculate the proportion of children to adults on board at embarkation, but 2644 cases where the same data

71

average date of departure taken over the entire trade (1774.35 compared to 1772). There
are several reasons for this: British vessels recorded the age and sex of slaves from
captured slavers the illegal trade, slavers may have become more meticulous in recording
the age of slaves as their numbers rose late in the trade, and recent records tended to
survive better than older records. Records that provide some information on the age
groupings of slaves also contain considerably more complete information on other
aspects of the voyage, and are thus likely to be more reliable.

Voyages that recorded any data on boys at disembarkation reported disembarkin g
an average of 35.46 boys out of an average of 243.94 total slaves disembarked.21 For
girls, the same calculation returns an average of 22.95 girls disembarking out of an
average of 249.39 total slaves. 22 This cannot be conﬁdently extrapolated to the entire
trade — there are too much missing data to do so, and the dataset from which the numbers
are calculated are not representative of all voyages.23 They do, however, give an
indication of the demographic composition of voyages that reported any children on
board. Of course, the number of children on any vessel could vary enormously, even
within any given nationality. For example, the English vessel Maria disembarked 73
slaves in 1791, all of them children, while another English vessel, Kitty, disembarked 440

(or 442?) slaves, of which only 5 were children.24

 

can be calculated at disembarkation.

2' 91,364 boys disembarking from 2,576 voyages. The same 2,576 voyages reported 628,400 slaves
disembarking in total. This calculation and the one on girls excludes infants.

22 56,594 girls disembarking from 2,465 voyages. The same 2,465 voyages reported 614,754 slaves
disembarking in total.

23 Though the dataset from which these calculations are made is larger and more representative of the trade
than the dataset from which the calculations on infants, below, are made.

24 Maria disembarked 24 girls and 49 boys. The vessel also had 20 adult slaves on board, but all of them
died before disembarkation, as did one girl. The sources are not clear whether Kitty disembarked 440 or
442 slaves. However, this hardly matters to the extremely high ratio of adults to children.

72

There are considerable differences in the proportion of children reported
disembarking by slavers of different nationalities. Dividing the proportion of children
reported disembarking into 3 categories as follows: Low < 0.15, Medium 0.15 to 0.29,

High => 0.30, yields the following table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Low Medium High
English 933 cases (48% of all voyaggin dataset) 48% (447) 35% (326) 17% (160)
French 621 cases (26% of dataset) 16% (110) 39% (264) 45% (307)
Spanish 484 cases (18% of dataset) 1% (6) 13% (64) 86% (414)
United States 178 cases (7% of dataset) 6% (10) 21% (37) 74% (131)
Portuguese 130 cases (5% of dataset) 8% (10) 23% (30) 69% (90)
Danish 108 cases (4% of dataset) 22% (24) 45% (49) 32% (35)
Overall 264411 00% of dataset) 25% (613) 30% (806) 46% (1225)

 

 

Table 2.4. Proportion of Children Reported Disembarking by Nationality

Slavers kept sketchy records on the number of children they carried at the best of
times. As a general rule, the younger the children were, the worse the record keeping
was. In addition to the problems of deﬁnition discussed above, they did not always
include children as a separate category of slaves to be recorded. For example, James
Houstoun, after working for the Royal African Company in Africa, sailed as a surgeon on
the slaver Chandos in 1722. He made the complaint to his superiors that his captain, with
whom he found much fault, had entered “several Children in the Company’s books for
Women, that were not Ten years of Age.”25 How typical this practice was varied by

captain and nationality, and cannot be accurately recovered. Occasionally all the children

 

25 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 289. Donnan, in her monumental collection of primary documents, is the
only scholar who has noted the habit of some slavers of sometimes entering children as women in slavers’
accounts; how widespread this practice was is uncertain. See also chapter 1, Women.

73

were counted with the women, and sometimes the male children were counted with the
men, and female children were counted as women. Children, and especially infants,
tended to be counted as separate categories more frequently later in the trade. A possible
explanation for the large discrepancies in the number of children reported carried
between nations in Table 2.4 may be partly related to the manner in which children were
(or were not) counted. The record keeping on infants was worse yet than on children.

The only data available on infants in the Atlantic dataset is that of disembarkation
at the ﬁrst port of disembarkation (for both male and female infants).26 The dataset
contains 548 voyages that contain information on the number of male and female infants
disembarking. It is important to note these voyages in the dataset are not representative of
the entire Atlantic slave trade in several respects. 27 The ﬁgures below thus cannot be
extrapolated to the entire trade. These voyages are, however, the only ones for which any
record keeping on the number of male and female infants disembarking exists. They must
therefore form the starting point for any discussion on the number of infants carried in the
Atlantic slave trade.

The available data suggests that many more infants made the middle passage than
has been previously supposed. They also suggest that the lack of attention to infants on
the middle passage cannot be justiﬁed by claiming a (virtual) absence of infants in the

trade. The lack of scholarship on infants on slaving vessels implies that this reﬂected

 

2‘ Mortality calculations are thus not possible.

27 Only 2.04% (558) of voyages collected in the Atlantic slavery dataset contain the number of female
infants on board and 2.09% (570) contain the number of boys on board. The average date of departure from
Africa was 1809 (1812 was the median date, and 1763 the earliest), which was very late in the trade. This
was a time when the proportion of young slaves to adults on vessels was known to be very high. There is as
yet no work focusing on infants, but their numbers almost certainly also rose sharply. Spanish and
American vessels are disproportionaly represented in the data set (62% and 26% of the dataset
respectively), and those of other nationalities are greatly underrepresented. Nearly all the voyages delivered
their slaves in the Caribbean, and Havana, Cuba received the vast majority.

74

historical reality. This was not the case. The available data makes a strong argument for
the necessity of more work on infants.

Taken over all the voyages that reported the number of infants disembarking, the
average number of male infants disembarking per vessel was a surprisingly high 39.89.
The average number of female infants reported disembarking per vessel in the same
collection of 548 voyages is 20.28 per vessel.28 To place this in context: 543 voyages
contain information on male and female infants disembarked, adult slaves disembarked,
female slaves disembarked and total number of slaves disembarked. The ratio of total
slaves disembarked to all infants disembarked in the dataset is 1 infant to every 2.48 non-
infant slaves and 1 infant to every 1.88 adult slaves.29 In the sample of 543 voyages, the
total of male and female infants actually considerably outnumbered the total of adult
women slaves, with 0.5 women disembarking for every infant.30

As with children, the maximum and minimum numbers of infants per vessel
ﬂuctuated considerably. For example, of the vessels that reported any infants

disembarking, the Spanish slaver Alerta reported delivering 286 infants to Havana, while

 

2” It is possible that the number of infants disembarking may be slightly overstated, as some ports of
disembarkation charged a lower tax on infants than on children or adult slaves. In the Portuguese trade,
nursing children were landed tax-free, while young children were taxed at half the rate of adults. See H.S.
Klein, The Middle Passage, 35 - 37.

29 All calculations are based on the same 543 voyages. The total number of infants disembarked is 32,825
(21,736 males and 11,089 females). The total number of all slaves disembarked is 114,264 of whom 61,738
were adults, and of the adults, 16,276 were women. The remainder were children, both male and female.
114,264 total slaves, subtracting 32,825 infants gives a ratio of 1 infant to every 2.48 non-infant slaves.

3° There is an unusually low ratio women to men in the sample: 1 adult woman disembarking for 2.79 adult
men disembarking. The ratio for women to men disembarking calculated over the 2,654 voyages that do
contain information on the number of men and women disembarking is one women to every 1.91 men
disembarking (308,457 men to 161,594 women). But is important to note that only a very small minority of
these 2,654 voyages contain information on the number of children and infants disembarking. Girls and
infants, and occasionally even boys, were sometimes counted as women, so it is likely that the number of
women are overstated in the larger sample, in spite of its size. See chapter 1, “Women” for the calculations
that support this contention. ‘

75

the American slaver the Morning Star disembarked only three infants.31 However, the
high average number of infants reported when any information is recorded, and the fact
that nearly all the voyages that contain information on either male or female infants
indicate that infants of both sexes were on board (more than 96%) suggest that many
more infants were carried than were recorded in the disembarkation records. This is
conﬁrmed by the fact that the ratio of male infants to female infants reﬂects slaver
preferences (as discussed below).

Only two slaving nations that contain sufficient information to allow a calculation
of the average number of male and female infants disembarking by nation are the United
States and Spain. There was a large difference between the two, with Spanish vessels
carrying considerably more infants per vessel on average (47.33 male and 24.48 female
infants per voyage) than the United States (25.24 male and 11.09 female infants per
voyage).32 There is not sufﬁcient vessel tonnage data available to determine if this is due
to larger Spanish vessels. But by approaching the matter indirectly, it appears that larger
vessels are very likely to have accounted for most of the difference. In the same sample
used to calculate the average number of infants above, Spanish slavers disembarked an
average of 123.57 adults per voyage, while the American slavers disembarked only 74.11
adults per voyage.33 Thus the Spanish vessels reported disembarking 1.72 adults for every

infant, while American vessels reported 2.03 adults per infant. The ratios are

 

3' The Alerta was a highly unusual slaving voyage: the vessel disembarked 190 boys, 28 girls, 250 male
infants and 36 female infants, but only 102 adults. This spread suggests strongly that the extremely young
average age of the slaves was a deliberate choice on the part of the slaver, especially considering the degree
to which males outnumber females in all categories, a typical slaver preference. The Morning Star
disembarked 7 boys, 3 girls and 69 adults in addition to the three infants.

32 Over 341 voyages, Spain delivered 16,138 male infants and 8,347 female infants. The United States
slavers delivered 3,533 male infants and 1,552 female infants in 140 voyages.

33 This is based on the inputed number of adults disembarked. Spanish slavers disembarked 82,636 adults
over 341 voyages, while American slavers disembarked only 10,376 adults over 140 voyages.

76

considerably closer than the absolute numbers, strongly suggesting that the Spanish
vessels were considerably larger.

In the aggregate, the data suggests that many more infants made the voyage than
has previously been assumed, and possibly slightly more children made the passage. The
lack of accurate record keeping, especially with regard to infants and the (less common)
this-assignment of children as women, or women and men according to sex were the
cause. If the age of infants is taken into account, the average age of the victims of the
slave trade will almost certainly need to be revised downward considerably.

In spite of the large number of children and infants transported, it does not appear
that slavers were often forced to fill otherwise incomplete cargoes by purchasing
children.34 Both the overall sex ratios of the children and infants in the trade and the
proportion of young slaves carried per vessel suggest this. If one is willing to assume, as
a crude rule of thumb, that a low number of slaves per ton tended to indicate a less
crowded vessel it becomes possible to test the statement.35 If vessels with a low slave to
tonnage ratio were more likely to have departed Africa without a full cargo than those
with a high ratio, it is reasonable to assume they would have been forced to be less
discriminating in their choice of slaves. If they carried more children, it would suggest
that they were forced to do by the market, and not their preferences. Table 2.5 shows the

results of this experiment.

 

3‘ If one wishes to argue otherwise, one must accept that there were nearly always a large number of
children readily available to make up the difference. While possible, it is not likely that this held true
consistently enough to produce the ﬁgures presented below.

35 This is by no means a perfect measure: it does not take into account any given vessel or nations operating
efﬁciency or the particular build of any vessel. However, when taken over the entire trade, it is an effective
rough indicator of crowding on vessels. When nations regulated the crowding of vessels in the slave trade,
this was the measure they used.

77

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slaves per Ave. proportion Median proportion
Ton children disembarked children disembarked
Low (312 cases) 0 - 1.24 0.3 0.29
Medium (393 cases) 1.25 - 1.74 0.22 0.2
Hi h (262 cases) > 1.75 0.31 0.3
Top 5% (51 cases) > 3.15 0.33 0.34
[Total (967 cases) I all 1 0.27 l 0.26 ]

 

Table 2.5. Children Disembarked per Ton Contrasted with Slaves per ton Carried‘

* Figures exclude infants. The ﬁgures above are based on samples that contain data on both girls and boys
disembarked, total number of adults on board, and the tonnage of the vessel, a total of 967 voyages.

The table indicates that there was a slight tendency to disembark a greater
proportion of children on vessels carrying many slaves per ton, not on those carrying few
slaves per ton. This was true for both highly crowded vessels and the most crowded
vessels - the top 5%. Uncrowded and moderately crowded vessels actually carried fewer
child slaves than fully crowded vessels, suggesting that they were not forced to carry
children against their preferences. This suggests that slavers did not buy children to
complete cargoes in the absence of adults, but rather that they bought them for the same
reasons they bought adult slaves. The ﬁnding may be slightly nuanced by the fact that it
was possible to carry more child slaves per ton than it was to carry adult slaves per ton.
Thus vessels that carried a greater proportion of children might automatically have

carried more people than vessels carrying a greater proportion of adults.36

 

3" This substantiates the testimony offered to The Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1838 the
ﬁrst part of the testimony Q. Why do they bring them at so early an age? A. Because at that age they are
smaller and pack more conveniently ...” In R. E. Conrad, Children of God 's Fire, 39.

78

There is another way to test the conclusion reached above. Slavers had a
preference for boys over girls.37 If slavers had difﬁculty ﬁlling their vessels, and thus
took in a large number of children to make up for the unavailable adult slaves, those
vessels would have shown a greater proportion of girls to boys. This is because they
would not be able to ﬁll their ship as they chose, but were forced to settle for what was

available. The data are presented below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avera 9 Pro rtion . Ratio
Slaves per ton Childrgn on $3M“ Boys Glrls Boys/Girls
Low (312 cases) 0.3 8078 5097 1.58
Medium (393 cases) 0.22 15600 9360 1.67
High (262 cases) 0.31 16697 9985 1.67
Overall (972 cases) 0.27 40375 24440 1.65
[Top 5% (51 casesu 0.33 [_4186 ] 2350 | 1.78 l

 

Table 2.6. Ratio of Boys to Girls by Vessel Tonnage

1 Figures exclude infants where listed separately in the Atlantic slavery dataset. The ﬁgures above are
based on samples that contain data on both girls and boys disembarked, total number of adults on board,
and the tonnage of the vessel, a total of 967 voyages.

The data indicate that, on average, all vessels, whether or not they carried a large
proportion of children, managed to ﬁll their vessels with the ratio of boys to girls they
preferred.38 Indeed, the vessels carrying the most slaves managed to get a slightly higher
proportion of boys to girls than the vessels carrying a low proportion of children. This

clearly indicates that carrying (a large) proportion of children to adults reﬂected a

 

37 The question of African agency is not entered in here. No work has been done on the question with
regard to children. It is, however, instructive to note that one of the two main arguments for Africans to
have preferred to sell adult males into the Atlantic trade - the difﬁculty and danger of integrating adult
male slaves into African societies -— does not apply to male children. This might have made them relatively
more attractive to Africans, and perhaps to the Arabic trade. The other - the attractiveness of female slaves
to the Arabic trade — might also be somewhat less persuasive when applied to children, though this is more
speculative.

79

deliberate choice on the part of the slavers, and that they were generally not carried to fill
spaces that would otherwise have been vacant. The ratio of male to female declined
slightly over time for both children and infants. It may have been that slavers were forced
to be less discriminating in who they bought, especially as the end of the legal trade was
anticipated, or that there was a greater demand for females in the New World. The
change, however, was very slight, and slavers still managed to obtain considerably more
young males than females.

There was a remarkable similarity between the ratio of male to female young

slaves between the slaving nations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voyages Boys Girls Ratio
ﬂglish 871 23324 15009 1 .55
French 644 29620 18359 1 .61
Spanish 458 17190 1 1374 1 .51
United States 125 1425 880 1.62
Pomuese 1 19 6538 4345 1 .5
Total 2217 78097 49967 1 .56

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2.7. Ratio of Boys to Girls by Slaving Nation.

*Figures exclude infants where listed separately in the Atlantic slavery dataset. Minor slaving nations and
vessels with unknown nationality have been excluded. When included the total ratio was approximately
1.54.

It is important to note that these are averages — actual ﬁgures varied wildly between
voyages, even between slavers of the same nationality. For example, the Spanish slaver
Amalia disembarked 166 boys but only 2 girls, giving a ratio of 88 boys to every girl. On

the other extreme, the Piragua, also Spanish, disembarked 15 girls, but only one boy, a

 

38 To a degree this reﬂects African preferences, See Eltis and Engerman, “Fluctuations in Sex and Age."

80

ratio of 0.07 boys to every girl. Several voyages reported carrying some boys, but no
girls, and vice versa.

The ratio of male infants to female infants was even more biased to slaver
preferences than that of boys and girls. Taken over all the voyages that contain data on
both male and female infants disembarking, the ratio is 1.97 male infants to every female
infant.39 Only two slaving nations, the United States and Spain, offer enough voyages to

allow for a statistically reliable ratio breakdown by nation.

 

 

 

 

 

Male infants Female infants Ratio
Spanish (341 cases) 16138 8347 1.93
United States (140 cases) 3533 1552 2.28
Total 19671 9899 1 .99

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2.8. Ratio of Male to Female Infants on the Middle Passage

The ﬁnal ratio of male infants to female infants is very similar, although United
States slavers carried a somewhat greater number of male infants in proportion to the
number of female infants carried. The ratio of male to female infants in non-American or
Spanish vessels, though less extreme, was also within the range of the ﬁgures in the table
above: 1.8 male infants to every female infant.40 It is not clear why the number ’of male
infants outnumbered the female infants to such a degree in the trade, especially

considering that the ratio of male children to female children was about 1.55, although

 

39 This is calculated on the number of infants disembarking at the ﬁrst port of disembarkation (where the
vast majority of slaves disembarked), the only data available to me. The very small number of infants
disembarking at other ports will not inﬂuence the ratios in any case. 548 distinct voyages were used in the
calculation, for a total of 21,861 male infants and 11,116 female infants. This gives a ratio 1.966 boys to
every girl.

‘0 There are 68 non-American or Spanish voyages in the dataset that contain sufﬁcient information to
calculate the ratios. They delivered 1224 female infants and 2198 male infants, a ratio of 1 to 1.795.

81

this does reﬂect slaver preferences. It is possible that this may have had to do with a
greater African reluctance to part with female infants.

The statistical evidence strongly suggests that the middle passage was deliberately
inﬂicted on the young, and that children were a deliberate target of slavers. Though the
ratio of young slaves carried varied by region of embarkation, date, slaving nation, and
the shipping costs of slaves over time, there was a market for them in the New World.
Qualitative evidence conﬁrms that slavers sought out and purchased child slaves
deliberately.

Whether infants were similarly a deliberate target of slavers is much more
complicated. On the one hand, the unexpectedly large numbers in which they were
carried, and the ratio in which slavers acquired male and female infants seems to suggest
that they were.41 On the other hand, their low price argues against this. For example, in a
letter from Edwyn Stede and Stephen Gascoigne to the Royal African Company dated 11
April 1683, they describe a vessel that arrived with a very large number of infants. They
write that “abt 1/3d part of those he did bring were very small most of them noe better then
sucking Children nay many of them did suck theire Mothers that were on board. Their
objections to the large number of infants the vessel carried was purely an economic one,
noting that “the most part of those small ones not worth above 55 per head.” This, they
believed, would not cover the cost of their voyage; they “wondred to see soe many small
Children brought by him for that they were not worth theire Freight.” The retort was equally

instructive: “he replyed they cost not much and the Shipp had as good bring them as

 

‘1 But this is complicated - as noted, the sources are not representative of the entire trade. To what degree
the effect noted above and chapter one inﬂuenced the rest of the trade requires further investigation. The
high male / female sex ratio may also, at least to a degree, reﬂect African preferences, or indicate that
slavers could afford to be more discerning in their choices with regard to infants. At this stage it is not

82

nothing.”42 The number of infants on board a given vessel sometimes reﬂected unfavourable
trading conditions in Africa, as in the example given. The value of infants when landed in
the New World was low, and as they were generally sold with their mothers an increase in
the mother’s price would have had to justify the cost of the infant’s transportation.

The sporadic record keeping on infants and, on whether a woman was pregnant also
reﬂects the questionable value of infants to an Atlantic trader. No voyages recorded the
number of infants embarked (all calculations made above rely on disembarkation ﬁgures).
This stands in contrast to the record keeping on economically viable adult slaves, and to
lesser degree, children. 43 There is very little qualitative evidence to suggest that slavers
actively sought out pregnant women, or women with nursing infants, as they did children.
Often slavers were instructed not to buy them, if at all possible. A typical example is the
letter from agents in Jamaica who wrote that “there are a great many very small Boys and
Girls amongst ye Faulconburgh’s Negroes of which great care must be taken to prevent ye
like complaints.”44 I have not been able to locate any secondary literature that contrasts the
prices of pregnant women with those who were not, or which contrasts the price of women
with nursing infants with those without, that might shed further light on the motivations of
slavers when purchasing such women.

There is, however, qualitative evidence that when the end of the legal trade was

expected, more infants and as well as children, were bought and transported to the New

 

possible to establish what the case was.

2 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 306-7. Galenson has related the price of child slaves to shipping costs,
and argued that when slaving costs were relatively low, more children tended to be carried. It is quite
possible that this may have held for infants too. D. Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves, 63-64, 97-114.

3 One frequently comes across casual references such as the following from 1750 “Wednesday 20'” March
Went on board the sloop, bought a cask of pork for Mr Tucker, who came on board about noon with 4
slaves, 2 men, 1 woman girl, and 1 woman with a small child; settled accounts with him and paid the
balance.” John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 41. However, all captains did not keep a journal,
and formal record bookkeeping was very inconsistent. See J .M. Postma, The Dutch, 231.

83

World. For example, the testimony of Dr. Joseph Cliffe to the British parliamentary
commission stated that when slavers were “expecting that the Slave Trade was to have
been stopped Everything that could be bought, young and old, women with little
babies, and women that were pregnant; everything was brought over then.” 45 The
statistical evidence supports the notion, at least for female slaves brought to some New
World destinations, but this cannot account for the very large number of infants sold to
the New World throughout the duration of the trade.46

It is not possible at this stage to conclude with any certainty what slaver policy
was with regard to infants. It appears most likely that slavers did carry more infant slaves
when shipping costs were relatively low, and when the end of the legal trade was
anticipated. However, many more infants were carried than has previously been
acknowledged, also at times when these conditions were not present. Exactly how many,
and what the motivations to do so were, cannot be determined with certainty.

The embarkation ﬁgures are too limited and inaccurate to allow a calculation of
average mortality for boys and girls.47 I have therefor used deaths reported on the middle
passage as a crude measure for estimating the mortality rate. The 99 cases that give both
the number of boys disembarked and the number of boys who died on the middle passage

returns an average mortality of 14.89% for boys, taken over the entire duration of the

 

“ D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 113.

‘5 In R. Conrad, Children of God 's F ire, 31.

‘6 Eltis and Engerman, “Fluctuations in the Sex and Age”, 312.

‘7 Because records are much better at disembarkation than embarkation, it is not possible to calculate
mortality by comparing embarkation and disembarkation data. There many cases where several times as
many boys or girls disembarked than embarked - obviously this is due to the lack of care taken in
identifying age upon embarkation. To illustrate the point: in 331 voyages the number of boys is recorded at
both embarkation and disembarkation. Using those ﬁgures, calculation shows that boys on average suffered
2.37% mortality. The same calculation for girls (301 cases) shows a mortality of 0.47%. Clearly both these
ﬁgures are unrealistic.

84

trade.48 The 60 cases that give both the number of girls disembarked and the number of
girls who died on the middle passage returns an average mortality of 15.34% for girls,
also taken over the entire duration of the trade.49 These ﬁgures may be slightly
underestimated, as the deﬁnition of “middle passage” used by the Atlantic slavery dataset
excludes time spent on board while not sailing from Africa to the New World. But the
fact that boys tended to die at approximately equal rates to girls is likely to be an accurate
observation. There is no reason to suppose that the errors in identifying age should be
much more inaccurate between the sexes, and deaths were generally well recorded.

As there are no sources extant that record both the number of infants at
embarkation and at disembarkation, and the Atlantic slavery dataset does not record the
number of infant deaths on the middle passage, it is not possible to make reliable
calculations regarding the mortality rates of infants. The unhygienic conditions on board
a slaver must, however, have caused very high infection rates. Newborn and very young
infants were most vulnerable. Births occurred regularly on the middle passage, and very
young infants, still at the breast were also a common sight. Both infants and newborns
must have suffered from the nutritional inadequacies of a slaving vessel diet. Leonard, for
example, commenting on the capture of the Primeira, writes that there were “four infants

at the breast, one of whom was born since the period of capture.” He goes on to note that

 

‘8 2,769 disembarkations plus 484 deaths while sailing to the New World gives a total of 3253 boys, of
whom 484 died: 14.89%. Because of the relatively small number of cases available, these ﬁgures may not
be quite as reliable as the other statistics 1 present here. My ﬁgures are, however, calculated over far larger
dataset than previous work. See H.S. Klein, The Middle Passage, 37 and 162. Klein argues that the
mortality for children in the Portuguese trade hovered around 6%, and that of the British trade 15 ,9% for
girls and 22.5% for boys. To me these great variations indicate the hazards of working with national data,
which do not provide enough data to allow researchers generalize conﬁdently. As is evident from my
calculations, 1 also disagree with Klein’s contention that boys suffered a substantially higher mortality than

'rls.

9 1,418 disembarkations plus 257 deaths while sailing to the New World gives a total of 1,675 girls, of
whom 257 died: 15.34%

85

the child’s “mother, unhappy creature, sickly and emaciated, was suckling it on deck,
with hardly a rag to cover either herself or her offspring.”50 On land, high infant mortality
has been linked to nutritional defects.51 On the middle passage these defects were without
doubt very much worse. The nutritional standards on board were woefully inadequate to
provide the mother with the necessary nutrients to nurse her baby adequately. No research
has been done to establish what the typical failings of a shipboard diet were by the standards
of a nursing mother. A potentially even more serious problem was the rationing of water on

1.52 A British physician, Thomas Nelson, described the women who had

a slaving vesse
arrived on a slaver in Brazil in 1843 with nursing children as follows: “I remarked on the
poop another wretched group, composed entirely of females. Some were mothers with
infants who were vainly endeavoring to suck a few drops of moisture from the lank,
withered and skinny breast of their wretched mothers.”53 Lack of water may have
contributed to the inadequate amount of milk of the mother as able to offer her child.

Mothers were also powerless to shield their infants from the abominable sanitary

conditions on board a slaver, the often-rampant diseases. 54 More so then on land, the

 

5° Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 104.

5' Kenneth F. Kiple, and Virginia H. Kiple, "Slave Child Mortality: Some Nutritional Answers to a
Perennial Puzzle." Journal of Social History 10, 3 (March 1977). See especially 287-88. For details on
infant mortality in Jamaica under slavery, see Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 101.

52 See Kenneth F. Kiple, and Brian Higgins, "Mortality Caused by Dehydration During the Middle
Passage," Unpublished paper, Conference on the Atlantic Slave Trade: Who Won and Who Lost?,
Frederick Douglass Institute (University of Rochester, 21-23 October 1988) for details on the dehydration
onboard slavers.

’3 In R. Conrad, World ofSorrow, 44.

5‘ Mothers were also incapable of protecting their infants from the occasional and irrational extremes of cruelty
on board. Newton, a generally reliable source, reports that he had heard while on the coast of Africa trading for
slaves “A mate of a ship ... purchased a young woman, with a ﬁne child, of about a year old in her arms. In the
night, the child cried much, and disturbed his sleep At length he tore the child from the mother and threw
it into the sea.” This is certainly not typical, but is representative of some of the accounts of extreme abuse with
which the trade abounds. Whatever the truth of this particular incident may have been, it illustrates the central
truth that mothers and their young children were completely subjected to the will of their owners. A mother had
no power to oppose any decree of her oppressors, and had no recourse to any higher authority. John Newton,
The Journal of a Slave Trader, 104. These types of incidents may be isolated, but they are not unique.
Walvin, for example, recounts an incident in which a captain ﬂogged to death a nine-month-old infant. An

86

women on board were also more likely to be suffering from depression or other ailments
themselves on the middle passage. If an infant’s mother were to die on the journey, it is
probable that care for the child became the responsibility of one of the other female
slaves, though there is little documentary evidence for this. In the case of nursing infants,
this would mean that there would have to be at least one extra lactating slave woman on
board, otherwise the survival chances of the baby would be slight indeed.

The conditions of confinement for children on board a slaver varied widely. The
number of children on board, the age of the child, the level of crowding on the vessel, the
construction of the vessel and the policies of the commanding ofﬁcers all played a role in
determining how the children would accommodated. There are, however, indications to
suggest that children often had some protection from the worse excesses of slave
accommodation, especially the younger ones. Many sources indicate that as children
were considered less of a security risk than adult slaves, they were more often allowed to
come on deck, and were less frequently shackled or chained to the sides of the vessel than
adults. In the report of the Lords to the British Privy Council in 1789 on the nature of the
trade in slaves describes the general conﬁnement of young slaves when purchased as “if
a Boy, he is put on the Main Deck loose; if a Woman or a Girl, they are placed (without
Irons) on the Quarter Deck.” 55 But this was by no means universal; the number of
children who made the middle passage, and the high proportion they represented in some
vessels, precluded the possibility of universally better conditions.

On many vessels male children were regulated to the hold with the adult male

slaves. Occasionally slave children of both sexes were housed with the women, and

 

incident as bizarre as this one causes one to wonder who was being punished — the infant or its mother?
James Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade (U. of Mississippi, 1983), 59.

87

occasionally they had their own accommodations provided for them. On Falconbridge’s
vessel there was segregation was maintained between the men, women and boys - he
writes that “. .. women likewise are placed in a separate apartment between decks, but
without being ironed. And an adjoining room, on the same deck, is besides appointed for
the boys. Thus are they all placed in different apartments.”56
Even though children generally had more freedom of movement on board than
adult slaves did, their conditions of conﬁnement were by no means benign. William
Chancellor, surgeon on the slaver Wolf, bemoaned the conditions on board his vessel for
the accommodation for children slaves (of which his ship carried a great many). In his
opinion, “there is not a vessel in the harbour” that was “so unﬁt for Slaves, for we have
no quarter deck no platform abf [?] aft for Children which we have of 3 & 4 years old,
that they lie on Casks & it is no wonder we loose them so fast.”57 Children could not
escape the horrendous conditions and deprivations which existed on board of a slaving
vessel, and which everyone necessarily shared in. Nor could they escape the violence and
disease that were often rampant on board. If there was hunger or thirst on board a vessel,

the children suffered it as the adults did.58 If there were incidents of extreme violence on

board, the children witnessed it just as their fellow captives did. Seen from the

 

55 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 595.

56 Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade, 19-20.

57 Darold D. Wax, "A Philadelphia Surgeon on a Slaving Voyage to Africa," Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography 92, 4 (1968), 468.

58 For example, as late as 1836 the Jesus Maria was captured and brought in to Havana with a cargo of
mostly child-slaves; according to Commander Stewart, the vessels captor ”The negroes are dreadfully
crowded; several of them are in very emaciated condition when I fell in with her she was short of water,
which I believe is the cause of so many deaths. ...” Water shortage was the cause of immense suffering and
mortality in the trade, and children were as susceptible as adults. Many more examples may readily be
found. In Society of Friends: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, An Exposition of the African Slave Trade, From
the Year 1840-1850, Inclusive: Prepared From Official Documents (Detroit: Negro History Press, 1851,
reprint 1969), 19-20.

88

perspective of the slave child, the particular conﬁnement conditions they would face were
largely a lottery draw.

The conditions for all slaves generally worsened in the post 1807 illegal trade, and
this was experienced as much by children as by adults. The Select Committee of the
House of Commons in Britain was presented with the following testimony in 1838. It
indicated both the increase in children canied late in the trade, and showed that the more
children a particular vessel carried, the worse the conditions for children were likely to
be.

Q. Are they permitted to get up?

A. Small boys would be. Small boys are never conﬁned, but the way in which they

are put in now, is, that they are generally jammed in such masses, even allowing

that there was elevation sufﬁcient for them to rise up, they could not rise without
the whole section rising...

Q. Are these men shackled?

A. No, the little ones which they bring now are not shackled. The most favourite

cargoes, at the present, are boys of eight to twelve years of age.59
This testimony is not universally applicable by any means; it is more reﬂective of the
later slave trade, a time when far more very young slaves were being transported than
before.

Leslie Owen’s observation that “children are often so closely connected with the
behaviour of adults and parents that the historical record needs considerable maturing” is
a profound one.60 It held especially true of children on a slaving voyage. Scholars
necessarily project their concerns and interpretations upon the children. In addition, the

normal relationship between slave children who suffered the middle passage and adults

was perverted. This was true for their relationships with other slaves, and with crew. It

 

5’ R.E. Conrad, Children ofGod's Fire, 39.
6° Leslie Owens, "The African in the Garden: Reﬂections About New World Slavery and Its Lifelines," in

89

held for both the majority of children who suffered the middle passage without parental
support, and for the minority who made the journey accompanied by one or both parents.
Every child, like every adult, came on board a slaving vessel taking his or her previous
life experiences with him or her. Some were free in Africa, others were slaves for an
extended period before they came on board. Some had known security with their parents,
others had been subjected to severe hardships in Africa. Their sex and their age covered
the entire spectrum. All these factors, as well as their individual temperament inﬂuenced
how they experienced the middle passage, and what they internalized. But children need
support and protection from adults, and the middle passage replaced that with terror or
impotence.

All children on the middle passage had already lost that which children need most
from adults. They had lost any security that they may have had, and the value of their
individuality was similarly lost. They knew that they could not rely on the protection of a
loving guardian, be it a parent or someone else. Individuals who did not have their best
interests at heart exercised control over their lives. While many of the children would not
have experienced this for the ﬁrst time on the middle passage, the middle passage
emphasized it unambiguously. Whether this translated into the knowledge that they
would henceforth be treated as if their entire selves belonged to another, and that while
on the slaving vessel, their value was directly proportional to their sex and size, varied by
age and individual. But all would have had impressed upon them that skin colour was an
important predictor of power. Though many of them will have experienced that some

Africans could exercise a similar control, on board a slaving vessel they would learn that

 

The State of Afro-American History Past, Present, and Future, Darlene Hine, (Baton Rouge: 1986), 33-34.

90

a white skin almost per deﬁnition assumed power over a black skin.61 In this, the middle
passage was an early start of their socialization into New World slavery. While the same
might be argued for the adult slaves on board the vessel, adults had the beneﬁt of being
able to realize the context of their experiences, an ability less developed in children,
according to their age.

Thornton has suggested that slave cargoes were more homogenous in terms of
ethnicity and origin than has been generally believed. He argues that “an entire ship
might be ﬁlled, not just with people possessing the same culture, but with people who
grew up together.”62 If he is correct in this, many more children would have made the
journey with people familiar to them, perhaps parents and other family members, than
has been hitherto suspected.63 If a child’s parent was on board, the child would have
witnessed the complete usurpation of that parent’s authority by the slavers. The child
would also have witnessed the inability of the parent to protect him or her from the
cruelties, dangers, and conditions surrounding him or her. The child would have learned

that the basis for the transfer of power lay in the control of violence.

 

6’ Yet one must not make too much of this; children were clearly able to discriminate between people who
had their best interests at heart regardless of skin colour. A British medical ofﬁcer who was employed in
treating the slaves on board captured slavers off the Brazilian coast, reports that “It is astonishing to witness
the sagacity, ifl may so call it, and the fortitude with which the poor creatures submit, nay, press to be
treated with the different remedies. Not only do they appear perfectly aware that their interest is consulted,
and give no trouble, but exhort each other to stand ﬁrm while the necessary painful operations of scarifying
and of touching the inﬂamed and ulcerated parts are performed. Children not more than ﬁve or six years
old will go down on their knees, and opening their swollen eyelids with their own ﬁngers, will remain ﬁrm
and unﬂinching whilst the pungent remedies are applied to their eyes.” Not only did children realize when
their best interests were being consulted, they were also capable of considerable bravery and trust in those
circumstances. In R.E. Conrad, Children of God 's Fire, 48.

62 See John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge:
1992).

63 It appears that this can be extrapolated beyond 1680. Philip D. Morgan has supported the notion of
greater ethnic homogeneity in slaving vessels in his article "The Cultural Implication of the Atlantic Slave
Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments," Slavery and
Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.), 123.

91

Greater ethnic homogeneity on board would also have increased the chance that
there would have been one or more adults on board, who could perhaps have been turned
to for guidance and comfort. Even though these adults could offer little in concrete terms,
their presence would have in and of itself been a source of support. This drawing of
comfort and support was not necessarily a one way street. If an adult slave chose to look
after a child, whether their own or not, it is possible that they would have derived some
beneﬁts as well. A greater sense of purpose and something to distract one from pondering
on one’s own fate and uncertain future might have ameliorated the horrors of the middle
passage somewhat. Children could also support adults in a more direct fashion:
Commander Sprigg of the Ferret captured an illegal slaver, the Malaga, in 1847, and
wrote that “I cannot refrain from mentioning an humble individual, in the person of a
liberated African boy, on board, in soothing the suffering of the slaves whose dialect was
his own.”64 This is an intriguing reference, but the document provides no further
information.

Some of the children on slavers made the Atlantic crossing with other children
whom they knew from their homes in Africa. The children and women in the Atlantic
trade were more frequently obtained from coastal regions than adult male slaves, a larger
proportion of who came from the interior. This increased the chance that other Children
whom they knew would share their fate. Although speculation, it is quite possible that
older children looked after younger children whom they knew. Children generally make
friends readily, and the strains of the middle passage created the conditions necessary to

form mutual support networks. Among adults, deep and lasting friendships, more akin to

 

6‘ Society of Friends: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, An Exposition of the African Slave Trade, 107.

92

family ties than ordinary friendship, were forged during the middle passage.65 Children
probably also made friends, especially among children of their own age. Whether these
friendships resulted in ties as deep and lasting as those of some adults, we do not know.
No friendship or relationship could have negated the horrors of the middle passage, but
they will have made them a little more bearable.

Many children who made the middle passage will not have had a parent or a
guardian on board with. This raises makes the question of how slave children interacted
with adult slaves, and how adult slaves saw their responsibility (or perhaps lack thereof)
to slave children all the more pertinent. Even on the middle passage, adult slaves had
some measure of power and authority over children. This role was severely restricted and
expressed at the whim of their enslavers, but nonetheless they had the potential to
dominate children, and not vice versa. This position could be used for the good of the
child, or not. This is especially true for when the slaves were locked in the holds, away
from the immediate control of the slavers. That both occurred we know. In what
proportions, we do not know. As with much of the information on the trade, examples of
extremes tended to survive, and typical day-to-day events tended not to be recorded.
There are sources extant that indicate that interactions between adult and slave children
were not always harmonious. Life on board a slaving vessel was a battle to survive for all
who were on board, and not all individuals were equally noble in ﬁghting that battle. For
example, the surgeon of the Wolf “found a little girl dead” and “on Inquiry among the
Slaves found one of the women had beat her in the night?‘56 This was not typical, but it

does indicate the potential power relations between adults and children.

 

‘55 Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 150. He does not, however, discuss children.
6‘ Darold D. Wax, "A Philadelphia Surgeon", 484.

93

The slavers, of course, exercised had greater power over the children than adult
slaves did. For many of the children, the middle passage was the ﬁrst or the first
sustained contact that they had with white people. It is reasonable to expect them to have
associated whiteness and the white world with violence, oppression and power. Yet
individual acts of kindness from the crew towards a certain child did occur.
Contemporary accounts occasionally indicate that a crew member took a young slave
under their wing for the duration of the passage. Contradictory as it may seem, some
slavers developed a liking for some of the children that they were carrying into a lifetime
of bondage. William Chancellor, for example, felt his responsibility to his charges
keenly. He wrote the following heartfelt lament in his diary: “1 found a boy dead, at noon
another, and in the afternoon, another. Oh Reader, whoever thou art, it is impossible for
you to conceive or me to describe the Torture I sustain at the loss of these Slaves we have
committed to a watry grave.” He does, however, add that among the dead children was
“one of web. boys was to have been my own.” Yet when read in the context of the
remainder of the diary, it is easy to believe that Chancellor was bemoaning more than a
loss of a personal possession, or giving vent to an injured professional pride. He refers to
the children slaves in his care as “our little creatures” and repeatedly writes how, for him
it “is hard to See Young Creatures suffering in this manner in short it renders my life a
misery to me? And Chancellor was by no means a critic of the slave trade. He reconciled
this contradictory position with a ﬁrm and sincere belief that although “It is accounted by
numberless people that a voyage to Africa in regard to the purchasing Slaves is very
vile”, it was in the slaves’ own interests. He argued that “tis redeeming an unhappy

people from inconceivable misery under which they continually labour, and from those

94

miserys of life into which they are every day precipated 3’67 There is no reason to doubt
Chancellor’s sincerity; he was not writing for any particular audience, was not testifying
to any investigative committee, and was not an opponent of the trade. While Chancellor
was not typical of the crew on board a slaver, he was also not unique. For the modern
reader his reasoning seems difﬁcult to understand; however to understand him, it is ﬁrst
and foremost necessary to believe him. To believe him is to accept his premises,
including those of the cultural inferiority of Africans. This makes him both consistent,
and even reasonable. But the vast majority of children did not attract friendly attention
from the crew, and most surgeons did not suffer the torments Chancellor did.

For most children, the relationship with their enslavers was far from benign. Some
children attracted an altogether different form of attention from their enslavers. Their
captors abused them sexually. Even very young children are known to have suffered. The
French slaving captain, Philippe Liot “pushed his brutality to the point of violating a little
Negro girl of eight to ten years, whose mouth he closed to prevent her from screaming. This
he did on three nights and put her in a deathly state.”68 It is not possible to establish how
common this was for any particular age group. Many of older girls suffered sexual abuse,
but almost certainly, the younger the child, the less prevalent sexual abuse was.

Many “girl-women”, to use a term from the trade, however, were victims. Captain
John Newton explicitly mentioned that both mature women and girls were at risk of being
sexually abused by members of the crew. He wrote, “When the women and girls are

taken on board a ship they are often exposed to the wanton rudeness of white

 

‘7 Darold D. Wax, "A Philadelphia Surgeon”, 487-490.
68 R.L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 101.

95

savages.”69 The phrase “women and girls” is the pertinent one here. There are some
indications to suggest that not only female children suffered such brutalities at the hands
of their captors. Postma, noting that “Captains of slave ships frequently had privately
owned male or female companions, which usually were sold along with other slaves at
the end of the middle passage” implies that there could have been sexual overtones in the
relationship, though without offering hard evidence.70 That crewmembers occasionally
had privately owned slaves on board is a fact. That they had an increased risk of being
abused by their owners is likely. How often it actually occurred is impossible to establish.

The emotional consequences to a child of sexual abuse on a slaver can hardly be
overestimated. They were in an extremely vulnerable position in a dangerous and
unpredictable environment, and they had no avenue of protection to turn to. Nor would
they generally have had a trusted support network to fall back upon after having suffered
a violation, almost certainly not their parents. Perhaps other slaves on board might have
provided some comfort, but if so, they could do little for the child. Certainly they were
powerless to intervene.

Most children on board a slaver will have experienced neither the unusual
friendship of crewmembers, nor sexual exploitation by them. Nonetheless, all children
had to come to terms with, and to formulate a response to, their white abductors. In by far
the most cases this process took its course in an unremarked upon fashion, leaving the
social historian with little to reconstruct the details of an ‘average’ experience. As with
adult slaves, children will have quickly learned that the best way to survive was to master

the ship board routines, and not to be noticed insofar as possible. Another possible

 

"9 J. Newton, The Journal, 105.
7° J .M. Postma, The Dutch , 43.

96

response was resistance. Samuel Waldo, the owner of the slaver Africa, cautioned his
captain to “have the needfull Guard over your Slaves, and putt not too much conﬁdence in
the Women nor Children least they happen to be Instrumental to your being surprised which
may be Fatall.”71 Not all captains “putt too much conﬁdence in the Children.” On the
wreck of the Henrietta Marie, a slaving vessel of the late 17th century, almost one hundred
pairs of small shackles were recovered. These could only have been intended for children,
given their size. 72 They do not prove that all the children were generally shackled, or that
they were chained. What it does offer evidence for, is that children were routinely shackled
on some vessels, and probably chained too. While children did often have more liberty on
board than adults, slavers did retain the option to secure them as they did adults. The
shackles on the Henrietta Marie would not have been specially commissioned for that
particular voyage. Rather, they were part of the ﬁttings of a slaving vessel for its journey.

There is little in the primary sources to suggest that children often played important
roles in slave mutinies or other forms of resistance. Little evidence has surfaced to suggest
that slave children undertook acts of resistance to free themselves or their fellow sufferers
on their own initiative. Children taking part in structural resistance was in and of itself
rare, and when they did so they tended to be agents of the adults. Cugoano, who made the
journey a young boy, did claim that “when we found ourselves at last taken away, death
was more preferable than life, and a plot was concerted among us [the men and boys],
that we might burn and blow up the ship, and perish all together in the ﬂames.”73 But

Cugoano was an adult when writing his account, and involved in the abolitionist cause. If

 

7’ Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Suffolk Court Files, no. 46527. Reproduced in E. Donnan

Documents, vol. 3, 45.
72 M. Burnside, Spirit of the Passage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 122. The book offers detailed
information on the excavation of the Henrietta Marie.

97

the incident did indeed occur as he relates it, it was atypical, and the role of the boys was
probably exaggerated. There is very little evidence to conﬁrm that children played any
role of signiﬁcance in the planning and executing of plots this serious, and less yet to
suggest that they did so on their own initiative.

The question of whether children were more likely to betray plots or to take the
side of their oppressors than other slaves is one that deserves consideration. While
contemporary documents do not unambiguously indicate that women betrayed plots more
frequently than men on slaving vessels, the case is different with regard to children.
When referred to in the context of resistance, the sources disproportionaly indicate that
the children, either voluntarily or involuntarily, aided rather than opposed the slavers’
interests. This can be partly accounted for by the fact that the children were seen and
exploited as, the weakest link when mutiny was being planned. For example, Captain
Newton had boy slaves betray a plot by the men twice during the same voyage. He writes
in his journal that it was “upon the information of 3 of the boys” that he “found some
knives, stones, shot etc. and a cold chissel.” Three boys betrayed the plot, but “Upon
enquiry there appeared 8 [men] principally concerned to move in projecting the mischeif
and 4 boys in supplying them with the above instruments?“ The four boys who supplied
the tools for the mutiny attempt were most likely instruments of the adults. They almost
certainly acted in accordance to the instructions of the adults, who used the greater
mobility allowed to the youngsters to further a plot of the their making.

It is not clear if the three boys who gave Newton the information on where to

search did so voluntarily. It is possible that they did so under duress. Though by the

 

73 Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments of the Evil of Slavery (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1787),
10.

98

standards of the trade a humane slaver, Newton subsequently “put the boys in irons and
slightly in the thumbscrews to urge them to a full confession.”75 The boys put in
thumbscrews were almost certainly the four who were actively involved in the plot. It is
however, instructive that he chose the boys as his source for “a full confession.” He
almost certainly saw them as easier to break than the men whom he had already identiﬁed
as part of the conspiracy. When another mutiny attempt was conceived some two months
later, Newton could note the incident as follows: “The boy slaves impeached the men of
an intention to rise upon us. Found 4 principally concerned and put them in neck
yokes.”76 This time it seems that the boys had learned their lesson, and impeached the
plot without coercion on the part of Newton.

There are several sources that indicate that children, particularly boys, aided the
crew in times of mutiny in various ways. For example, when there was a mutiny on
Captain Snelgrave’s vessel in 1704, his son, later to be a slaving captain in his own right,
recounts that “a lusty Slave struck him with a Billet so hard, that he was almost stunned.
The Slave was going to repeat his Blow, when a young lad about seventeen years old,
whom we had been kind to, interposed his Arm, and received the Blow, by which his
Arm-bone was fractured.” 77 Similarly, when the slaves mutinied on the Wolf, the surgeon
was wounded in endeavoring to suppress the uprising. He was supported by “One of the

little boys to whom I had taken a liking and he to me, [who] attended me with Balls Pistol

 

7‘ J. Newton, The Journal, 71.

75 There is little reason to doubt Newton’s humanity — when judged in the context of the trade. Only three
weeks before this incident he had written in his diary that “I can sincerely say that I have endeavored to
do my duty by them, without oppression, ill language or any kind of abuse as remembering that I also have
a Master in Heaven and that there is no respecter of Persons with him. And I resolve to entertain no
personal hatred or ill will I will treat them with humanity while under my power and not render their
conﬁnement unnecessarily grievous...” J. Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 71.

76 J. Newton, The Journal, 77.

77 W. Snelgrave, in E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 354. The slave was freed for his intervention upon

99

and Cutlass, & during the time that I was fainting with the loss of blood got me some
water to web. I attribute my being able to keep myself up?78

In the small sample of documents that relate acts of active resistance and mutiny
in which children are mentioned, the majority indicate that children either betrayed their
fellow slaves or aided their captors in some other way. The acts of resistance which
children did take part in of their own initiative were nearly always intended to ameliorate
their immediate conditions, and did not challenge the structure of the trade on any
meaningful level. Children’s resistance tended to be actions such as taking more water or
food than allowed. They very rarely seem to have threatened white lives, the success of
the voyage, or have overtly challenged the authority of the slavers to own and transport
them.

The same is true of suicide among children on slaving vessels. While children did
occasionally commit suicide, they did so less frequently than adults, and often for
different reasons. Children were more resilient than adults in some respects, and
resistance to suicide was one of them. There are very few accounts of children
committing suicide on their own initiative extant. It is probable that this is because that
although the children on a slaver generally shared the extreme harshness of the
conditions, they did not appear to share the despondency and lack of hope to the same
degree. They probably pondered less on their futures, and related the happenings on

board less to their future prospects than adults did. The surviving sources suggest that

when children did commit suicide, they did do so not out of a principled and considered

 

arrival in Virginia.
’8 Darold D. Wax, "A Philadelphia Surgeon”, 485.

100

reaction to being enslaved. Rather, they did so in order to end an immediate and concrete
suffering.

When children chose to commit suicide, they nearly always did so either because
of unbearable physical pain, or as a result of extreme fear. An example of the first kind of
suicide is provided in the journal of the Rhode Island slaver the Mary, kept from 1795-
1796. The entry for June 25‘", 1796 noted that at “About 10 A.M. a Slave boy jumped
overboard and drownd him self to get clear of a pain in his bowels, Occasioned by a
Dysentry. No. 16.”79 The boy committed suicide because the conditions in slavery were
unbearable, not because the condition of slavery was unbearable. An example of the
second kind is provided by Augustino, who made the journey from Africa on a slaver
while a boy of about 12 years of age. He testiﬁed to the Select Committee of the House
of Lords in 1849 that on his journey in 1830 “The young ones had the right of coming on
deck, but several of those jumped overboard, for fear they were being fattened to be
eaten.”80 Again, the cause of the suicide had little to do with resistance to the institution
of slavery, although that institution created the conditions for it.81

In suicide attempts, as in other acts of resistance, children were susceptible to
being used and abused by the adults around them. This was nowhere better reﬂected than

in the following account of the suicide — murder — of slave children on board a slaving

 

7’ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 376.

8° In R. E. Conrad, Children of God ’s Fire, 39. The fear of being cannibalized was a fear that surfaced often
during the course of the trade. For more information on this aspect of the middle passage, see chapter 5,
Mutiny.

8‘ An exception to this generalization is to be found in Equiano’s narrative, in which he indicates that he
(then a young boy) would gladly have committed suicide by jumping overboard. But this is unlikely to be
true; in the ﬁrst place, given his prominent position in the abolitionist movement, and the years that went
by, there is a great chance of projection. Second, and more importantly, is the fact that the authenticity of
this early part of his narrative as been drawn into severe question. See Vincent Carretta, "Olaudah Equiano
or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity," Slavery and Abolition 20,
3 (December, 1999).

101

vessel. After a bloody but failed mutiny attempt on board the Danish slaver the
Christiansborg a mass suicide attempt occurred. According to the letter of an eyewitness,
Paul Isert, some of the slaves returned to their quarters quietly after the mutiny was
suppressed. “The others, however, when they saw they could not succeed all sprang
overboard into the sea.” This was not unusual -— the aftermath of failed mutinies often led
to suicide attempts. But “Some boys from the same nation as the rebels, but lacking the
courage to take such a drastic step were deliberately pushed over by the older ones.”82
Children in general do not commit suicide easily, and nor do they escape the inﬂuence of
adults easily. Both were as true on the middle passage as elsewhere.

Life on board a slaving vessel was violent. The violence could be latent at times,
and at other times overt, but violence and the threat of violence was the most important
formative factor of the middle passage. Punishment was one of the many forms which
violence could take. Understanding the effect of punishment on board a slaver had on a
child being punished, requires a consideration of not only the physical violence, pain and
violation of the child. The context of the punishment - who it was administered by (a
stranger, a white person, a person of enormous power), and the spirit in which it was
administered (not a correction by a trusted authority ﬁgure, whose ultimate forgiveness
could be relied upon) was as important as the punishment itself.

The punishment children received on board, though unquestionably extremely
harsh by modern standards, generally did take into account the type and severity of their
transgressions and their age. Children were not, or very seldom, executed, as men and
women were. Whipping was by far the most common form of punishment for children.

The extreme pain of whipping, however, should not be underestimated. Though not often

 

82 P. E. Isert, Letters on West Africa and the Slave Trade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 178.

102

recorded in detail, the references that are made to children being punished for a
transgression generally read as the following: “There was no. ﬂogging [after a mutiny
attempt] excepting of the boys for stealing water, farina and so forth, when it was not
allowed them.”83 If, however, a child had information that the slaver needed, then age
was no impediment to the tortures that the child could be exposed to.

In order to fully understand the effect of punishment on children on slaving
vessels historians need to ask not only what effect the punishment of a given child had on
that child. They also need to consider what the effect of seeing and hearing extremely
painful punishments, including execution, being inﬂicted on other — usually adult - slaves
would have had on them. Punishment on board a slaving vessel was a public affair, and
children were not shielded from it in any way. These were, presumably, the things which
memories that lasted a lifetime were made of. This, like much on the experience of
children on the middle passage, requires further investigation.

Much work still remains to be done on children in the Atlantic slave trade in
general, and the middle passage in particular. New questions need to be formulated, and
new ways of arriving at answers need to be developed. Whatever form these questions
may take, they must necessarily center on two main issues. First is the actual experience
of the middle passage: how did the children themselves experience what they were
subjected to? The children themselves, after all, were the ones who experienced their
journey — not adults. In order to answer this question, it is necessary to learn more about
the facts of the middle passage as it pertained to children, and about the lives of the

children themselves. The seeking for more facts to use for further analysis should not

 

83 R. E. Conrad, Children of God 's Fire, 42. Equiano recounts a similar incident, in which a number of boys
were severely ﬂogged for attempting to steal some ﬁsh. However, as noted above, the authenticity of this

103

restrict itself to the actual middle passage. It is also important to recover the lives of
children before they were sold into the Atlantic trade, whether they were free whether
they were enslaved in Africa. The sale, transport to the coast, time waiting to be sold in
the barracoons and other formative events from their young lives need to be recovered.
Only then will it be posssible to understand how the children understood and made sense
of, or did not make sense of, the world around them.

Future work must also necessarily devote itself to the question of the effect that
the middle passage had on the children who suffered it. This is an area of investigation
that will necessarily include interdisciplinary work. Child psychologists and historians
have much to offer each other, and much to learn from each other in this regard. Of
course exact answers will vary from individual to individual and according to their
speciﬁc circumstances. Nonetheless, if historians wish to gain a more complete
understanding of the middle passage, they must ask what consequences it had on the
development of the child into adulthood, how it effected their sense of self and sense of
others. This question is far more profound than only attempting to recover the trauma
suffered by the children. The middle passage was a formative experience for children; the
question that needs working out is, in what ways it was formative. This question need not
restrict itself to the development of the individual — it can and also should cover issues
such as the role of the middle passage in the socialization of the newly arrived slave-child
into New World slavery, and other group-based investigations. How and when did the
child understand that the self did not belong to the self, but rather to another? How did
children who made the middle passage differ in their adaptation to a lifetime of slavery

compared to those born into New World slavery? At this stage of our knowledge, it is

 

early part of his narrative has been brought into question.

104

quite reasonable to ask whether indeed the middle passage served any socialization
function, or whether it was generally experienced as a horriﬁc ordeal, mercifully over,
but one with little relevance to their new lives. Other questions that need to be considered
include on which groups of children — boys or girls, in which age group, from what
background — did particular effects tend to develop? What was universal, and what
individual? Comparative studies with slave children born and raised on land will be
indispensable in answering the kinds of questions posed here.84 It would be surprising
indeed if the middle passage did not turn out to formative in some regards; what children
learn depends mainly on what they are taught, and on what they observe. The middle
passage took too much away from the children who made the journey, and added too
many new experiences not to have had a lasting impact on its victims.

This chapter offers more hints than answers, and more suggestions than
conclusions. Yet one conclusion is already possible. Even though the immorality of the
slave trade has received much attention especially in the last ﬁfty years or so, the
magnitude of that immorality will not be fully charted until the experiences of children
have been added to the historical record next to that of adult slaves. The fact that children
tended not to draw as much attention while on board should not blind scholars to the fact
that they formed an integral part of the trade in human beings from Africa. The very
large number of children (and infants) who made the voyage make an eloquent case for
the re-writing of much of the work on the middle passage, both demographic and

otherwise.

 

3‘ This too is an area in which very little work has been done. The only full-length study that has been
completed on the topic is Wilma King’s Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

105

CHAPTER 3: CREW

“[They] must have neither dainty ﬁngers nor dainty noses.”l

Slaves and crew contributed equally to form the middle passage took. They relied
on each other for their roles and public identities, and acted and reacted according to the
spaces which each deliberately or inadvertently allowed the other. An understanding of
the social history of the crew of an Atlantic slaver is vital to understanding the experience
of slaves, just as an understanding of the social history of the slaves is vital to the
understanding of the experience of the crew. This chapter primarily focuses on the crew
of slavers while they were on the Atlantic crossing. Some attention is paid to the time that
they spent on the African coast while preparing the vessel for slaves, and the process of
slaving, as well as on the structural aspects of their voyage. The middle passage was only
one of the two, or more commonly, three legs of their journey.

As with women and children, a complete history of the crew of Atlantic slavers
remains to be written. The work that has been done concentrates on demographics. The
Atlantic Slavery database will cause these to be reﬁned further, though adjustments are
likely to be minor.2 Much less work has been done on the social history of crew. Sporadic
information can be derived from various works, but no complete social history exists.
The combination of traditional research into the primary documents with the use of

statistical data is necessary to address the lacuna.

 

‘ Advice given to the Royal African Company in 1706 by Sir Dalby Thomas regarding the hiring of crew.
Quoted in C. Palmer, Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700-1739 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1981), 47.

2 The best demographic work currently available on crew, Stephen. D. Behrendt’s, "Crew Mortality in the
TransAtlantic Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century," Slavery and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.) is
based on (a pre-release of) the Atlantic Slavery database.

106

The entire Atlantic slave trade to the Americas was made up of approximately
40,000 voyages.3 The average number of crew on board a slaver was fractionally over 30
people.‘ Crews sizes ﬂuctuated over time, but were considerably larger than those of
other merchant vessels.5 As James Penny noted in 1789, “The Slave Ships are double

manned.”6

Slavers frequently carried crews 50% larger than those of non-slaving voyages
in order to manage and guard the slaves.7 Outward-bound slavers had crews that were
substantially — between 30 and 50% — larger than those on the return leg, as slavers often
discharged crewmembers when they were no longer needed to maintain and control the

slaves.8 Desertions and mortality also both reduced the number of crew by the voyage’s

end. The ﬁnancial burden of employing a large number of crewmembers was an incentive

 

3 This ﬁgure relies on an estimate by the editors of the Atlantic Slavery dataset, which contains some
records of 27233 voyages. This number is may still to be too low; uses a conservative total number of
slaves exported from Africa, and does not take into account voyages that took place before 1600. The
illegal trade is also likely to be underrepresented.

‘ 30.09, but the ﬁgure must be taken as a rule of thumb, as it does not take into account national variations.
It is calculated from a set of 10702 voyages on which the number of crew at the outset of the voyage are
known. Combined, there were 322095 crewmembers employed (including repeat journeys).

5 The ﬁgures here are overview ﬁgures; there was change over time, by vessel size, and some areas of the
African coast required vessels to have larger crews than others. Crew sizes also declined in the eighteenth
century as operating efﬁciency increased. Donnan, basing her conclusions on the investigations of Thomas
Clarkson, writes, “a vessel to the Windward Coast of West Africa carried a larger crew than one to the
Leeward Coast, because the Windward trade was carried on by boats manned from the vessel.” Elizabeth
Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 2 (Washington, DC:
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930-35), 559. Minchinton has shown that the size of the crew of
slavers increased in times of war, and fell in times of peace. He has further demonstrated that larger vessels
were manned proportionately less than smaller vessels, reckoned by weight. But the value of this last
observation is questionable; the correlation between vessel weight and the number of crew required is not
perfect. A more meaningful comparison is the number of slaves per crewmember, though the same
criticism applies, but to a lesser degree. Walter E. Minchinton, "The British Slave Fleet, 1680-1775: The
Evidence of the Naval Ofﬁce Shipping Lists," in Dela traite l'esclavage, vol. 1, Daget, 70.

6 Reproduced in Michael Craton and James Walvin et. al., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation (London:
Longrnan, 1976), 37.

7 See S. Behrendt, "Crew Mortality” and Hebert S. Klein, "Recent Trends in the Study of the Atlantic Slave
Trade," Indian Historical Review 15, 1-2 (1988-89), 7, for earlier work on the relative size of slaving vessel
crews.

8 David Richardson suggests that a typical range was 3.2 — 4 tons per man on the outward legs, and 5.7 -
6.8 tons per man on the return voyage. Over the entire voyage, between a third and a half fewer crew
manned the vessel on the return leg. D. Richardson, "The Costs of Survival: The Transport of Slaves in the
Middle Passage and the Proﬁtability of the 18th-Century British Slave Trade," Explorations in Economic
History 24, 2 (1987), 189.

107

to complete the voyage as quickly as possible. The age of crewmembers varied greatly,
generally in the range of fourteen to ﬁfty, but the bulk were in their late teens to early
twenties.

Crewmembers lived with the knowledge that their profession was an
exceptionally dangerous one. Many contemporary documents mourned the high mortality
of slaving crew. Captain John Blake for example, wrote in 1652 that “It hath pleased the
Lord Aﬂickt us with much Sickness that we have bured three and twenty men. I never
See men dye so soudainely In my Life for we have beuried all thes men In a months
tyme, Sum tymes three or four In a day.” His words were repeated in a variety of ways
for the duration of the trade. The family of crewmembers understood the risks involved in
slaving. Blake’s despondent request “If our Companyes wyfes Comes to Inquire for
newes” to “put them in as Good Comfort as you may” too, is representative. 9

Crew death was generally caused occasioned by illnesses, and less commonly,
inadequate nutrition and water, accidents, and slave insurrections. Diseases, particularly
malaria, yellow fever and gastrointestinal disorders, especially dysentery, were the main
threat to sailors’ lives.l0 General ill health, bad hygiene, inadequate nutrition and medical

treatment all contributed to the risk diseases posed. Crew mortality often exceeded that of

slaves they carried, expressed in percentages.ll As with slave mortality, rates of crew

 

9 Quoted in Michael Craton, Sinews of Empire: A Short History of British Slavery (London: Temple Smith,
1974), 78.

1° Slaves and crew did not die of the same diseases in equal numbers. Slaves were more likely to be
effected by gastrointestinal diseases, while crew were more likely to suffer fevers. For a discussion of the
diseases which afﬂicted crew most commonly, see Raymond L. Cohn, "Maritime Mortality in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Survey," International Journal of Maritime History 1, 1 (1989),
174. See also P.D. Curtin, "Epiderrriology and the Slave Trade," Political Science Quarterly 83, 2 (1968).

” In the Dutch trade, for example, Postrna has calculated the mortality of crew to be 17.9%, while average
slave mortality in the same sample was 12.3%. J. Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1815
(New York: Cambridge U.P., 1990), 156. See also S. Behrendt, "Crew Mortality.”

108

mortality showed a steady decline throughout the period of the trade.12 Most crew died on
the coast of Africa, far more than on the Atlantic crossing. Because crew were
particularly at risk for diseases incurred in Africa, the actual crossing offered some
protection.13 The wet season was the most dangerous for crew, regardless of where they
slaved in Africa. Conversely, the dry season provided some measure of protection.14

The number of crew deaths on any given voyage was largely a lottery. Most
vessels escaped with 8 below average number of deaths, while other vessels were
virtually incapacitated by illness and death. As with slaves, though to a much lesser
degree, crew mortality rose the longer a voyage lasted. The vast majority of diseases were
contracted on the coast of Africa and from shipboard epidemics, and vessels that spent a
shorter amount of time on the coast of Africa often experienced lower crew mortality.15
Some African locations were considerably more dangerous than others, as the text to a
common seaman’s ditty acknowledged:

Beware and take care
0f the Bight of Benin:

 

'2 Average crew death percentages varied between around 8% to over 20% depending on time period, the
nationality of the slaver, place of slaving and the season in Aﬁica. 1n the French trade, crew deaths declined
from an average of 13.9% in the beginning of the eighteenth century to 8.4% at the end of the century.
English crew sirrrilarly experienced a decline, though less spectacular. S. Behrendt, “Crew Mortality”, 51 -.
’3 Drawing from a sample of 1,730 French slaving voyages that 3% on which deaths occurred on the
outward leg, Behrendt has calculated that 42% of deaths occurred on the African coast, 22% on the rrriddle
passage, 26% in the Americas and 7% on the homeward passage. The high rate of the last 2 can be
explained by residual effects of diseases picked up in Africa and on the middle passage. Stephen. D.
Behrendt, "Crew Mortality”, 67. For representative earlier work, see P.D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade:
A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Johannes Postma, "Mortality in the Dutch Slave
Trade, 1675-1795," in Uncommon Market, Gemery and Hogendorn; H.S. Klein, The Middle Passage:
Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton: Princeton U.P, 1978). The numbers calculated
by Klein have been considerably reﬁned by later work, but his work remains valuable for the comparative
work on the mortality rate of (white) troops in various places in the world, including West Africa, it
rovides.
E See Behrendt, “Crew Mortality”, 53 for a detailed breakdown of death by month of slaving and African
region.
'5 See R.L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 98-100.

109

For one that comes out

There are forty go in
The song was correct; crew mortality in the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra was more
than twice as high on average than in the safest slaving location, South-East Africa.16
Rank provided some protection; the higher the rank, the less chance a slaver had of
dying. This is partly accounted for by the fact that surviving one or several fevers
provided a certain amount of immunity to future attacks, and of course, only survivors
could be promoted to higher positions.17 The vessel’s surgeon, however, was an
exception to this rule due mostly to the nature of his work. Captains had the best survival
chances.

A captain’s power and pay were commensurate with his responsibilities. He was
ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the voyage.18 His duties included the
day to day running of the vessel, management of the crew and slaves, navigating the
vessel, and bookkeeping responsibilities. In the absence of a supercargo the captain was
also in charge of acquiring slaves where and how he deemed in the best interests of his
ﬁnanciers. If present, supercargoes, sometimes provided with assistants, were in charge
of the commercial side of the voyage. The combination of skills required to be a
successful captain — mariner, manager, and businessman — were not easily found.

Consequently, a successful slaving vessel captain could command a high price for his

 

‘6 The high mosquito populations in the wet seasons in the Bights of Benin and Biafra were responsible for
the spread of yellow fever and malaria, resulting in increased crew deaths. S.Behrendt, "Crew Mortality”,
52.

’7 S. Behrendt, "Crew Mortality”,60.

'8 A full-length study on the crew of a slaving vessel is needed to differentiate between crew ranks and
various tasks and responsibilities on board. Due to a lack of space, I provide only a cursory overview
below. For more information on captains in the slave trade, see Stephen. D. Behrendt, "The Captains in the
British Slave Trade from 1785 to 1807," Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire
140 (1990).

110

services. Of the crewmembers, captains were the likely to have the largest ﬁnancial stake
in the voyage, sometimes including a personal investment. They were also the individuals
who most consistently proﬁted by the trade. Aside from their salaries, they frequently
beneﬁted from bonus schemes (nearly always based on the number of slaves delivered
alive) and the opportunity of trading a certain number of goods and / or slaves on their
own account.19 A slaving captain who had made a number of successful voyages could
easily become wealthy from his activities. It was not unusual for a successful captain to
become an investor in the trade after retiring from the sea.

Experience on a slaving vessel was highly valued, and consequently captains
often rose to their rank. In spite of this, captains were often young men. After typically
accruing about a decade’s worth of experience, they tended be in their mid twenties to
early thirties by the time they achieved their rank. For some, it was the result of careful
career planning. The trade could be attractive to individuals who had other options. For
example, in 1726 a number of Bristol merchants commented that “a great many of the
present traders are the sons of gentlemen of the best estate and fortunes who have
survived their apprenticeship to Masters.”20 Elder has argued that, in the case of
Lancaster slavers “The slave trade obviously attracted young and ambitious sons of

moderate, middle-income farrrilies.” And that “quite often it seemed to be the path chosen

 

'9 Often other crewmembers also had these privileges, though to a lesser amount. The amount
crewmembers were allowed to trade on their own account was strictly regulated, and varied by rank. The
system could beneﬁt crewmembers substantially, particularly those of higher rank. The primary
documents, particularly correspondence between ﬁnanciers and captains, are rich sources for descriptions
of this system of carrying “privilege” slaves and private trading. It was a system that was easily abused - it
was a truism that privilege slaves never died — and the sources often pay detailed attention to how the trade
was to be conducted. The instructions to William Barry by his ﬁnanciers are typical. They write “Your
Coast Comm’n is 4 from every £104 of the Net proceeds of the slaves etc., your privelidge slaves 2
provided you purchase ‘em with your Own Goods and mark ‘em in the presense of boath Mates ...” In E.
Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 327.

2° Quoted in C. Palmer, Human Cargoes, 46.

111

by one of the junior members of the family, where older brothers had come into their
father’s trade or land?” Many captains made only one, or a few voyages, but most
slaving expeditions took place under the command of a captain who made more than one
voyage.22 If they survived, and retained their health, this was often a sound ﬁnancial
decision.

Galenson has reprinted several primary comments by ﬁnanciers and observers of the
trade who emphasized the importance of having experienced captains on board in order
to improve the chances of a successful voyage. He places great faith in the observations
of Sir Dalby Thomas who argued in 1706 that “when yor. ships have great Mortality
unless occasioned by ye Small Pox, you may be assured is thro Carelesness of yor.
Captns., Mates, Surgeons & Cooks usage who ought to answer to yor. Honors for it.”23
Galenson is correct in noting that contemporary observers and ﬁnanciers preferred
experienced captains. But the matter has never been properly evaluated.

A comparison of a sub-set of 5800 voyages made by captains of various nationalities
who all commanded at least four slaving vessels to a dataset composed of 6744 voyages

under the command captains who made only a single voyage yielded unexpected

results.24 Seven criteria were selected to measure the competence of captains:

 

2' Melissa Elder, The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth-Century Lancaster
(Halifax, England: Ryburn, 1992), 50.

22 See the Atlantic slavery database set for a determination of the amount of voyages that sailed under the
command of a captain who made more than a single voyage. Precision is not possible, as it can be very
difﬁcult to determine whether one is dealing with a single individual in the case of multiple spellings of the
same name, when dealing with a common name. Nonetheless, a global examination of the database
indicates that well over 50% of voyages were made under the command of a captain who made more than
one voyage.

23 D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behaviour in Early English America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 50—51.

2‘ The results are hardly ever based on the average of the complete datasets, as the relevant information is
not always present for each voyage. However, the sub-sets of data are always large enough to generalize
conﬁdently from.

112

Average number of slaves who survived over the entire voyage (not just the Atlantic
crossing), in percentages. This criterion is self-explanatory. It tests the captain’s
ability to effect the survival of the slaves on his vessel. The greater number of slaves
delivered alive, the more successful the voyage from the perspective of the ﬁnancier
and captain.

Average crew deaths over the entire voyage, in percentages. This tests the captain’s
ability to inﬂuence the survival chances of his crewmembers. While perhaps less
relevant to ﬁnanciers as a test of competence, it was important to the crewmembers
themselves.

Average percentage of crew who deserted at any time during the voyage. This
criterion tests how well the captain was able to manage the crew under his command.
It is somewhat less reliable than the other tests, as it was sometimes in the captain and
his ﬁnanciers’ interests to have crew desert.

Average voyage length, taken over the entire voyage. This tests two important skills
of a captain -— his ability to navigate his vessel to minimize the length of the Atlantic
crossing, and his ability to procure slaves quickly while in Africa.

Average length of the Atlantic crossing. This is a reﬁnement of point 4. It is a better
test of navigation and ship handling, as the ability to procure slaves and to load a
cargo in the Americas for the return journey is excluded.

Percentage of cases in which violent conﬂict between slaves and crew was reported.
The fewer reported conﬂicts, the better the security arrangements, and crew and slave

management ability of the captain.

113

7. Percentage of cases when the vessel or its boats were “cut-off” by Africans. This is a
test of the captain’s skill in dealing with free Africans. If intimidating free Africans

could sometimes be in a vessel’s interest, losing the vessel or its boats never was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Voyage Multiple Voyages
Slave survival“ 84.89% 84.92%
Crew mortalityb 20.19% 18.83%
Crew desertionsc 8.30% 14.52%
Slave insurrectionsd 1 .50% 1.72%
“Cut off" by Africans6 0.21% 0.35%
Ave. total voyagef 301.65 days 277.97 days
Ave. Atlantic crossingg 67.23 days 65.44 days

 

Table 3.1. The Inﬂuence of the Experience Level of Captains on the Outcome of a
Slaving Voyage

a Over the entire voyage, not only the rrriddle passage. Single voyage: 1488943 / 1754153 slaves. Multiple
voyages: 1457823 I 1716800 slaves.

Over the entire voyage, not only the middle passage. Single voyage: 5259 voyages / 26048 crewmembers.
Multiple voyages: 9611 voyages / 51023 crewmembers.

c Only includes voyages were at least one crewmember was reported to have deserted. Single voyage: 1157
voyages/ 13945 crewmembers. Multiple voyages: 3943 voyages / 27157 crewmembers.

These ﬁgures do not indicate of how many insurrections actually occurred; they represent the number of
insurrections reported in the surviving documentation for a given voyage. This can be very scanty. As
neither single nor multiple voyages are likely to have been preserved better, the comparison is meaningful.
Single voyage: 101 insurrections/ 6744 voyages. Multiple voyages: 6linsurrections / 5800 voyages.

° To a lesser degree, the caveat in d is applicable. Single voyage: 14 cut off / 6744 voyages. Multiple
voyages: 20 cut off/ 5800 voyages.
Single voyage: average of 1695 voyages. Multiple voyages: average of 3342 voyages.
g Single voyage: average of 1065 voyages. Multiple voyages: average of 788 voyages.
In terms of slave survival, there was no reason to choose an experienced captain
over an inexperienced one. This was because the causes of most factors contributing to
slave mortality lay outside the captain’s realm of inﬂuence. Epidemics, rough seas

(leading to dehydration), shipwrecks, and the like were not very amenable to intervention

by the captain. Exceptions included death by abuse, extreme neglect, and possibly deaths

114

by l
are
(lit

or;

ill

011

 

by insurrections and suicides. But either these did not occur often enough to affect the
averages, or the experience of captains did not effect them. When average slave mortality
declined in the mid to late eighteenth century, the beneﬁts were shared equally by
experienced and inexperienced captains. Crew mortality too, was roughly similar
between those sailing on vessels with an experienced captain, and those with a captain
who made only one voyage. It is possible that the slightly higher mortality that occurred
on board of vessels with an inexperienced captain reﬂected a harsher regime on those
vessels, but that is speculation.

Crew desertions were substantially higher on vessels with an experienced captain.
This probably indicates that experienced captains better knew how to rid themselves of
excess crew in the Americas. A study of where crew deserted would settle the matter.
Experienced captains were, however, slightly more prone to suffer insurrections on
board, and substantially more prone to engage in (losing) conﬂict with Africans on the
coast. This could again reﬂect a harshness and rigidity towards slaves engendered by
constant exposure to the trade, or its seeming opposite — a laxness in security
arrangements due to overconﬁdence, or it could have another explanation. Only in
voyage length did an experienced captain clearly outperform inexperienced captains. This
might reﬂect better navigational skills and a more intimate knowledge of the slaving
coast. Navigation and sailing of vessels was as much art as science in the seven — and
eighteenth centuries, and experience would have been a valuable asset. The effect was,
however, considerable only when measured over the entire middle passage, and much
less over the Atlantic crossing only - a difference of 2.7% compared to one of 7.9%. This

suggests that while a difference in the skill of handling a vessel might have been present,

115

it was not the main factor in the more rapid completion of voyages. The more efﬁcient
networks an experienced captain was likely to have may have allowed him to load a new
cargo of slaves more rapidly in Africa, and to dispose of them more quickly in the New
World.

Perhaps surprisingly, the level of experience of a captain does not seem to have
had much impact on the ﬁnal outcome of the journey in terms of the criteria tested. The
fact that nearly everybody who rose to the rank of captain had had considerable
experience on sea, and most often on a slaving vessel probably accounted for this.
Extreme neglect could harm a voyage, but does not seem to have occurred any more
often on vessels commanded by either experienced or inexperienced captains. Given a
competent captain, luck was the most important factor inﬂuencing the success of a
slaving voyage.

The power of the captain on board his vessel was enormous. Captain Newton
described his power in a letter to his wife as follows: “I am as absolute in my small
dorrrinions (life and death excepted) as any potentate in Europe. IfI say to one, come, he
comes; if to another, go, he ﬂies. IfI order one person to do something, perhaps three or
four will be ambitious of a share in the service. Not a man in the ship will eat his dinner
till I give him leave - nay, nobody dares to say that it is twelve or eight o’cloCk, in my
hearing, till I think it proper to say so ﬁrst. There is a mighty bustle of attendance when I
leave the ship, and a strict watch kept while I am absent, lest I should return unawares

and not be received in due form. And should I stay out till midnight (which for that

116

reason I never do without necessity) nobody may presume to shut their eyes till they have
had the honour of seeing me again.” 25
The power of the captain over his crew was often formalized in extremely
restrictive contracts. The articles of agreement for the English slaver the Sally, for
example, signed on July 22 1785, was representative of many others. Crewmembers
agreed that “each and every of them shall and will in all Things observe, perform and
obey the Orders, Commands, and Directions of the Master or Commander of the said
Ship, for the Time being, without any Manner of Denial, Mutiny or Resistance,
whatsoever.”26 The agreement was deliberately broadly formulated to enhance the power
of the captain. The contract included no protective clauses for the crew, or any arbitration
possibilities in case of disputes. Sometimes these were included, but the sailors were
frequently restricted to presenting their cases before the ﬁnancier, or someone nominated
by him.27 On occasion sailors, and even ofﬁcers, were not allowed to read their contracts.
Arnold, a surgeon, testiﬁed in 1789 that on the slaver the Ruby, “When the vessel was
getting under weigh, all hands were called up to sign articles, and when my turn camel
asked permission to read them ﬁrst, not wishing to put my name to the unknown.”
Captain Williams, however, “roughly refused, saying if I didn’t sign them I might go
ashore.” Arnold, in need of money, “signed [his] name and walked forward.” He goes on

to relate that “It was the same with the rest. No one was permitted to read the clauses in

 

25 In G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 508.

26 E. Donnan, Documents, vol.2, 559-561.

27 The slave trade surgeon Falconbridge notes that “By their articles, on entering aboard some Guinea ships,
the sailors are restrained, under forfeiture of their wages, from applying, in case of ill-usage, to any one for
redress, except to such persons as shall be nominated by the owners or captain; and by others, to commence
an action against the captain for bad treatment, incurs a penalty for ﬁfty pounds.” A. Falconbridge, An
Account, 50.

117

the articles.”28 If literate officers were treated in the above fashion, the lower-ranked
sailors, frequently desperate and ill-educated, were all the more vulnerable. The power
invested in a slaving captain was necessary, but it also allowed them to enforce a
conspiracy of silence among crew for possible misdeeds, such as improper ﬁnancial
dealings, the abuse of slaves or crew and the like.29

In spite of their privileges and immense power on board, captains were not
immune to the dangerous and brutal nature of the trade. They could only ameliorate
conditions to a degree. The Royal African Company was advised in 1706 that “Your
Captains and Mates should be such as will do the meanness [sic] ofﬁce, must have
neither dainty ﬁngers nor dainty noses, few men are ﬁt for these voyages but them that
are bred up to it. It’s a ﬁlthy voyage as well as labourious.”3O This was true for all on
board, but especially for the ship’s surgeon.

More has been written about surgeons on slaving voyages than about any other
class of crewmembers. This reﬂects the availability of sources; surgeons often kept
detailed written records, and several have survived.31 Surgeons formed an important part

of the crew of the vessel: the ﬁnancial success of a voyage was directly related to their

 

28 In G. Dow, Slave Ships, 168. Arnold’s testimony describes an unusually sadistic and dishonest captain,
and on certain points at least, it is not possible to verify his account. But there is little reason to doubt his
description of the signing of articles.

29 Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 180.

3° Quoted in C. Palmer, Human Cargoes, 47.

3’ See for examples Richard B. Sheridan, "The Guinea Surgeons on the Middle Passage: The Provision of
Medical Services in the British Slave Trade," International Journal of Historical Studies 14, 4 (1981); W.
N. Boog Watson, "The Guinea Trade and Some of Its Surgeons (with Special Reference to the Journal of
the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh)? Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 14,
4 (1969); Sir James Watt, "Sea Surgeons and Slave Ships: A Nineteenth Century Exercise in Life-Saving,"
Transactions of the Medical Society of London 104 (1987-1988). Substantial portions of William
Chancellor’s diary are reproduced with commentary in Darold D. Wax’s "A Philadelphia Surgeon on a
Slaving Voyage to Africa," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92, 4 (1968). Unfortunately
many of the articles published on diaries are little more than an annotated reprint of selected pieces. The
most well known slave ship surgeon is Falconbridge. Portions of his writings are still widely available in

118

skill in selecting and treating slaves. It is not necessary to confuse humanitarianism with
good business sense to recognize the importance of surgeons on a slaving vessel, or to
recognize that their presence was nearly entirely justiﬁed by what good that they rrright
have done for slaves. Most slavers understood this. The Royal African Company paid its
surgeons according to the number of slaves who reached their destination in good
health.32 By 1788 the British had legislated that every slaver have at least one surgeon on
board before departing for Africa. The French similarly mandated the presence of a
surgeon.33

The quality of the surgeons varied considerably. Serving on a slave ship was
unpleasant and dangerous. Surgeons had highest death rate of all crewmembers, about
25% per voyage.34 Only those in dire need of money, and who had difﬁculty ﬁnding
other work, tended to apply. J arnes Arnold, surgeon on the Ruby, for example, testiﬁed to
the House of Lords in 1789 that “As I had less than ﬁve pounds that I could call my own,
it was practically a case of Hobson’s choice and so I signed my name and walked
forward.”35 Many under-qualiﬁed or otherwise second-rate surgeons were appointed both
to slave vessels and to the coast of Africa. The surgeon and slave trader Archibald Dalzel,

for example, admitted to his brother in a letter that “I am conscious, Andrew, I shall

never make a good M.D. Sure I am, I shall never make a proﬁcient in that way.” He

 

his Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone, During the Years 1791-3 (London: Frank Cass and
Co. Ltd., 1967) and An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (New York: AMS Press, 1973).
32 K.G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1957), 292.

33 R.L. Stein, The French Slave, 68.

3" Stephen D. Behrendt, "Crew Mortality,” 60. It is not clear why this was the case, though close contact
with ill slaves, and the time spent onshore evaluating potential purchases may have been among the

reasons.

3’ In or. Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (New York: Kennikat Press, 1927), 168.

119

therefor entered the slave trade, declaring that “the most powerful argument in favour of
my scheme is necessity.”36

Captains and ofﬁcers complained incessantly about the quality of the doctors on
board their vessels. Comments like Robert Plunkett’s observation in his report to the
Royal African Company that “19 slaves dead since their being put on board. Mr. Trashall
the Doctor Negligent” were common. There were some surgeons who cared for their
charges, such as William Chancellor.37 But all surgeons were extremely restricted in what
they could do. The limits of the medical knowledge of their day and the crowded,
unsanitary conditions on board a slaving vessel both constrained their effectiveness.
Many conditions on board rendered them helpless.38 When an epidemic broke out on a
slaver, especially the uniformly feared smallpox, all surgeons’ best efforts were
overwhelmed. 39 Even when no epidemic ravaged a vessel, the tone of the writings of ship
doctors frequently betrayed a sense of helplessness. They were limited in what they could
do, and they knew it.

After the captain in terms of responsibilities was the ﬁrst mate; in the case of the

captain’s death, command of the vessel would passed to him. Below the ﬁrst mate in

terms of responsibilities and remuneration were the other ofﬁcers; the 2“d and 3rd mates,

 

36 I. A. Akinjogbin, "Archibald Dalzel: Slave Trader and Historian of Dahomey," Journal of African
History 7, l (1966), 67-8.

37 See Elizabeth Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 285. He is discussed in Chapter 1, “Women.”

38 They did, however, have some effective medications. Among these was “Peruvian bark” (cinchona tree)
which contained quinine, effective against malaria. Dr. Thomas Trotter, who published Observations on
Scurvy in 1786, was brieﬂy a slave ship surgeon. By 1795 the British admiralty had ordered the navy to be
supplied with lemon juice. James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade, 292.

39 For example, Thomas Phillip’s frustration was evident when he wrote of the Hannibal in 1693-4 “What
the smallpox spared, the flux swept off to our great regret.” In spite of his best efforts — “our pains and care
to give them their messes in due order and season, keeping their lodgings as clean and sweet as possible,
and enduring so much misery and stench so long among a parcel of creatures nastier than swine” he was
not able to proﬁt from his trade in humans. In his words, “all my expectations [were] defeated by their
mortality.” In Nigel Tattersﬁeld, The Forgotten Trade: Comprising the log of the Daniel and Henry of

120

the Boatswain and so on. How many ofﬁcers a vessel carried depended on its size. In
keeping with the spread in slaver sizes, this could vary widely, but four to ten was a
typical range. All in all, ofﬁcers and skilled crewmen compromised about a third to a half
of the crew on a typical slaver. This is a higher proportion than was usual in other
commercial vessels.40 While their pay was typically good by the standards of the day,
ofﬁcer’s earnings fell well below that of the captain.

Every vessel carried its petty ofﬁcers; the number depended on the size of the
ship, but a typical range was four to eight. The bosun was the link between the captain
and the remaining crew. It was his task to see that the captain’s orders were properly
executed, and to maintain discipline among the crew. A slaver also carried several
specialists on board. Carpenters ﬁlled a well-paid and important position. They were
responsible for a wide variety of repair works, and for the rebuilding of the interior of the
vessel in Africa. Coopers also had a vital responsibility on board. They provided the
water supply for both crew and slaves. This was a large undertaking, and the
consequences for inadequate performance were invariably dire. A vessel could also carry
joiners, sailmakers, smiths and even gunners, depending on a vessel’s size. Regardless of
their specialties, all crewmembers were to some degree responsible for guarding against
slave uprisings, and were assigned to other tasks, depending on the situation.

@ vessels carried a cook, and sometimes several cook’s assistants. The cook was
relatively isolated from the rest of the crew, and spent most of his time in the small galley
with his assistant(s)3neir position was unenviable. Even if they were competent, and

cared to do their best, they had to make do with extremely rudimentary means, both in

 

1700 and accounts of the slave trade from the minor ports of England, 1698-1725 (London: I. Cape, 1991),

153.

121

terms of food and equipment. They were often accused of being dishonest, incompetent
and lazy. Understandably, their best efforts rarely satisﬁed crew or slaves. In the absence
of extreme neglect, neither opinion carried very much weight, that of the captain and
ofﬁcers excepted.

The above by no means describes the positions of all ofﬁcers and skilled
crewmembers on a vessel, nor all the specialized positions that a slaver might have had.
Slavers sometimes carried stewards, bakers, barrel makers, longboat operators, a
chaplain, and numerous other specialists, depending most importantly, on the size of the
vessel. A slaving voyage, especially a large one, required the operating and managing of
one of the most technologically advanced pieces equipment of the age. This required a
large number of people, many of them specialists. It also required a ﬁrm authority
structure.

There was a sharp distinction between the ofﬁcers and the common sailors.
Among the sailors there was a clear line between able-bodied sailors, who had experience
and understood the working of a sailing vessel, and inexperienced seamen. Among the
inexperienced seamen, there was a further distinction between the seamen and boys. The
later, regardless of age, were inexperienced in the ways of the sea, while the later had at
least some experience. Able-bodied seamen were a minority among the sailors.41 As
James Penny noted in 1789, “[slavers] are forced to take out a great many good Ofﬁcers,

but near One Half of the rest of the Crew are Landmen and Boys — These are idle People

 

‘0 R.L. Stein, The French, 67.

4' Behrendt offers the observation of a contemporary writer Shefﬁeld, who in his Observation on the
Project for Abolishing the Slave Trade claimed that on a vessel intended for 500 slaves, there were “20 real
seamen, and 30 or 40 landsmen, the very dregs and outcasts of the community.” It is unclear what the
average was, but it varied by nationality. Behrendt argues that “In the British trade, captains frequently
hired ‘landmen’ who were not apprenticed to sea There may have been comparatively few landmen on
French vessels.” S. Behrendt, "Crew Mortality”, 65.

122

picked up from the manufacturing Towns, who would not be received on Board a Ship,
as Sailors, in any other Trade.”42 The number of landsmen increased in times of war, as
regular sailors were the ﬁrst to be pressed into military service. Sailors were usually,
though not necessarily, of the same nationality as the vessel registration or captain.
‘Migrant labour’ was also sometimes employed as slave crew."3
Slavers as a group had a reputation for danger and the harsh treatment of
crewmembers, which could make recruiting of crew difﬁcult. This led to various
unethical stratagems being used from time to time, including “crimping.”44 Sailors were
occasionally shanghaied (kidnapped from shore), but this was highly exceptional. Crew
often knew the reputations of the vessel they were to sail on and, circumstances allowing,
took that into account in their decision whether or not to enlist. Robert Crook, the
ﬁnancier of Nicholas Owen’s voyage, his name to the contrary, was one such. According
to Owen, he “always ordered good usage in all his vessels, perticularly chargeing all his
ofﬁcers to be moderate to his people.” “This kind usage and other things worthey the /
notice of an honest man” led to Owen and his “brother a thurd time in this man’s
employ.” He roundly praised Crook for “never stinting us with any thing upon our

voyage, which a great many people has good reason to complain of upon the coast of

Africa.” At least as important, at the end of the voyage “Every man” received “the reward

 

‘2 M. Craton and J. Walvin et. al., Slavery, Abolition, 37.

‘3 J .M. Postma, The Dutch, 153.

4‘ Falconbridge describes the procedure as follows: “There are certain public-houses, in which, the
sailors are trusted, and encouraged to run into debt. To the landlords of these houses the captains apply.
And a certain number being ﬁxed on, the landlord immediately insists upon their entering on board such a
ship, threatening, in case of refusal, to arrest and throw them in prison. At the same time the captain holds
out the allurements of a month’s pay in advance above the ships in any other trade, and the promise of
satisfying the their inexorable landlords. Thus terriﬁed on the one hand by the apprehension of prison, and
allured on the other by the promised advance, they enter.” A. Falconbridge, An Account, 49. Clarkson
documented similar abuses, noting that if not tempted by money the potential crewmember was “plied with

123

of his toyls with honour from our marchant Robert Crook.” 45 Payment by the month was
common practice, though other methods of paying crew were also used.

Pay was low, but slavers typically paid 20 to 40% better than other commercial
vessels. Sailors were not always able to collect their full pay. Aside from death, desertion
was an important reason for crew collecting only a portion of their wages. Sometimes
sailors were cheated by their ﬁnanciers, who either did not pay the promised wages, or
paid less than the full amount owing.46 Even if this did not occur, an extravagant lifestyle
when not on a vessel, and periods of unemployment led to the average non-officer almost
always being poor.

Living conditions on board for sailors were bad, and sometimes horriﬁc.
Sometimes sailors had the beneﬁt of sharing dirty and cramped quarters beneath deck,
but not always, especially after the slaves were loaded. Falconbridge, commenting on
“The temporary house constructed on the deck” when sailors were regulated to the deck,
notes that it “affords but an indifferent shelter from the weather.” The sailors had no
choice and were “obliged to lie under it, as all the parts between decks are occupied by,
or kept for, the negroe.”47 Tattersﬁeld’s ironic comment on the living conditions for the

crew of the Daniel and Henry sums the matter up well; he writes that “Into these cramped

 

liquor until he became intoxicated when a bargain was made over him between the landlord and the mate.”
Quoted in T. Brady and Evan Jones, The Fight Against Slavery (New York: Norton, 1975), 76.

45 Nicholas Owen, Journal of a Slave Dealer: A View of Some Remarkable Axcedents in the Life of Nics.
Owen on the Coast of Africa and America from the Year I 746 to the Year I 75 7. ed. Eveline Martin
(London: George Routledge and Sons Ltd., 1930), 37.

‘6 The later led to one of the most serious riots in the history of Liverpool in 1775. In a depression in the
trade, the crew of the Derby were offered only about two thirds of the wages due to them, which sparked
off a protest by sailors which led to slaving merchants’ houses being attacked and ransacked and more than
ten deaths. Eventually soldiers who engaged in open battle with the disgruntled sailors quelled the riot. This
unusually interesting aspect of the slave trade has not had the academic attention it deserves. For further
(primary) details on the riot, see Elizabeth Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 548; J. Mackenzie-Grieve, The Last
Years of the English Slave Trade: Liverpool 1750-1807 (London: Putnam & Co. Ltd., 1941), 92 - 94;
Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the
Liverpool Slave Trade (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), 555 — 560.

124

quarters, already alive with vermin, came the ﬂower of England’s merchant marine. They
had but the haziest idea of whence they were bound, little idea of basic hygiene, only the
most meagre bedding for their comfort, and few clothes.”48 Other comforts too, were
meager. Rations were often not good, especially on the middle passage. They were the
cause of many complaints, and of friction between ofﬁcers and the remaining crew.

There was plenty of work to keep crew occupied on a day to day basis. Endless
maintenance tasks characterized all wooden sailing vessels. Sailors had to perpetually
maintain the wood of their vessel by scrubbing, sanding, oiling and painting, and ﬁlling
cracks with oakum. The sails needed constant attention and repair, as did the cables,
ropes, and rigging. When the vessel suffered from heavy seas and storms, the workload
increased even more.

For crew, the busiest and most dangerous time of a slaving voyage was from
landing in Africa, until the last slave was disposed of in the New World. The other leg(s)
of the journey were, by comparison, undemanding. Building slave decks and readying the
vessel to receive its captives was one of the most important tasks while slaving along the
coast of Africa. This time was the busiest for the ship’s carpenter, and his assistants. The
other sailors were kept constantly busy with provisioning the vessel with food and water,
checking and readying the guns, hanging nets, checking and repairing sails, and a
multitude of other tasks. The vessel would typically be purchasing and embarking slaves
as they were acquired while this work was going on.

As slaves were taken on board, the task of guarding and caring for the captives

gained momentum. The unpleasant work of keeping the slave quarters clean also became

 

’7 A. Falconbridge, An Account, 38.
’8 N. Tattersfreld, The Forgotten Trade, 67

125

necessary. Both slave and crew labour was used for this. Slavers varied in the amount of
attention they paid to cleaning the slave quarters, but nothing approaching a thorough
cleaning was possible with a full cargo of slaves.49 Slaving vessels were infamous for the
smell on board, with good reason.50 There are several records extant of older vessels
being abandoned after a slaving voyage due to the amount of work required to clean the
vessel and to make her ready for another voyage. Time spent on the coast of Africa was
also a busy time for the ship’s surgeon. It was his task to select the best slaves, and to
avoid any with physical problems. This required careful attention, as the sellers in Africa
were as adept in cheating the Europeans as vice versa.

The treatment of sailors on slavers was harsh but it was not unique to the slave
trade. The treatment received by sailors in other branches of the mercantile ﬂeet, and
especially those in the navies of slave trading nations, was also severe. Much depended
on the degree of involvement of the ﬁnancier. If they cared to order humane treatment,
the chance of abuse occurring was reduced. Some did so - instructions to an unnamed
captain dated the 3rd of August 1770 by his three ﬁnanciers, for example, read “the
owners [recommend] humane treatment to your Crew.”5 1 Instructions like these
implicitly acknowledged the occurrence of abuses. Slaving and sailing were both brutal

occupations, and the combination was particularly so. As with other branches of

 

’9 On board the vessel Albion, the procedure is described as follows: “some of the ship’s crew to do that
ofﬁce constantly and several of the slaves themselves to be assistants to them and thrice a week we
perfumed betwixt decks with a quantity of good vinegar in pails, and red-hot iron bullets in them, to expel]
the bad air, after the place had been well washed and scrubbed with brooms; after which the deck was
cleaned with cold vinegar.” In G.F. Dow, Slave Ships, 82-83.

5° Thomas Nelson, a physician in charge of captured slavers in Brazil describes what the smell was made
up of in a particularly ill-fated vessel the Crescent in 1843 as follows: “The stench on board was nearly
overwhelming. The odour of the negroes themselves, rendered still stronger by their ﬁlthy and crowded
condition, the sickening smell of the suppurative stage of small-pox, and the far more disgusting efﬂuvium
of dysenteric discharge, combined with bilge water, putrid jerked beef, and numerous other matters. . ..” In

126

seafaring, the lot of the sailors depended very much on the captain, and to a lesser extent,
the ranking ofﬁcers on the vessel. The abuse of sailors also formed one of the pillars of
abolitionist arguments against the trade. Far from being “a nursery for seamen” as
proponents argued, the abolitionists claimed that it was rather “the grave of the British
marine”, in the words of one of the most effective documenters of the abuses, Thomas
Clarkson.52

In spite of instructions not to mistreat crew, cruelty and abuse of crewmembers
did occur on slaving vessels. Largely because of the research and writings of the
abolitionists, it is easy to ﬁnd examples.53 These range from sick crewmembers being
denied full rations to the deliberate killings.54 Falconbridge, in his memoirs, relates
several. In one example, an older sailor was abused by an ofﬁcer who “beat out several of
his teeth” and had “one of the iron pump-bolts ﬁxed into his mouth and kept there by a
piece of rope-yam tied around his head.” This was potentially lethal abuse - “Being
unable to spit out the blood which ﬂowed from the wound, the man almost choked, and
was obliged to swallow it.” The man’s offense was complaining about the water ration. In
another example, a seaman “having been in some degree negligent, had a long chain

ﬁxed around his neck, at the end of which was fastened a log of wood. In this situation he

 

R.E. Conrad, Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), 44.

51 G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 550.

52 Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Impolicy of the Slave Trade: In Two Parts (London: J. Phillips,
1788), 326. Clarkson, careful in his researches, traced the histories of at least twenty thousand sailors.
Modern scholars, including Behrandt, have largely supported his mortality calculations.

53 The power of the ofﬁcers was large, but they could not always act with impunity. In 1758 the death of
the sailor George Crawford, of the Rainbow who fell from the rigging and was beaten while unconscious
led to a murder trial. However, such trials were uncommon. In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 371.

5’ For example, in 1786 on a slaving voyage from Liverpool, “No sooner was a wretched sailor’s name
entered on the sick list, than the pitiful allowance of a quarter pound of beef, and the small glass of brandy,
were denied him, without anything being given in lieu thereof. A little bad bread, with a proportionate
quantity of water, was nearly the whole of what patients had to subsist on.” Quoted in Behrandt, “Crew
Mortality”, 70.

127

performed his duty.” The punishment lasted “for several weeks” and “after his release he
was frequently beaten for trivial faults till [his] back was raw.” In order to increase his
suffering, “Chian pepper was then mixed in a bucket with salt water, and with this the
harrowed parts of the back were washed.”55 These accounts both come from one
source, but they are easily multiplied by accounts from other sources. More graphic
examples can also be easily found. They may not have been typical of the trade, but the
knowledge that captains had the power, and that some abused their power, served to
intimidate all crew.

The authority of the captain did not usually depend on sadism or extremely harsh
treatment of the crew, but rather on tradition and a strictly enforced routine. Command
structures were clear, challenges to authority were not tolerated, and incompetence or
violations of orders were punished at the captain’s discretion. By modern standards, the
rigor of the discipline on board a slaver was extreme, as were typical punishments. But
they were generally accepted as a requirement for a successful slaving voyage. Newton,
for example, wrote “that I do not value [the ceremonies] highly for their own sake; but
they are necessary to be kept up with, for without a strict discipline the common
sailors would be unmanageable” after describing his power on board.56 Newton’s
observation reﬂected reality.

Crewmembers were often unruly, drunk, and sometimes violent. The large
number of inexperienced crewmembers, who understood neither sailing or managing

slaves, added to the necessity of a strict code of conduct, rigorously enforced. Many

 

55 A. Falconbridge, An Account, 40-41. He provides other examples, several of which are more brutal than
those mentioned above.

128

sources blame the weakness of the captain in establishing control over his crew for the
failure of a voyage. Financiers sometimes discouraged excessive harshness, but they also
discouraged excessive leniency. Thomas Leyland for example instructed Captain Lawson
in 1803 to “Keep strict and regular discipline on board the ship; do not suffer
Drunkenness among any of your Ofﬁcers or Crew.”57 A captain simply could not afford
to be intimidated or allow challenges to his authority to pass unanswered. Crew could,
and sometimes did, mutiny, but “mutinous” behaviour was far more common, as was
“insubordination.” Insubordination described a wide spectrum of behaviors. These
included “murmuring”, abusive language to superiors, refusal to work, and outright
attacks on ofﬁcers. Typical punishments also covered a broad range. They included the
imposition of extra or unpleasant work, the cutting of rations, whippings, and the ironing
and charging of the offender on the vessel’s return to port. The later was reserved for
serious offenses, as occurred on the Mary in 1796. The journal of the vessel records that
Capt. Henry “found John Burges one of the Sailors, Noisy and troublesome.” On
confronting Burges, “several of the Crew assembled to Burgess’ assistance and
Knocked the Capt. Down with a Hatch bar and wounded him in Several places ...and
would have murdered him no doubt.” Henry was “Relieved by his Ofﬁcers and some of

the more Sober and Considerate part of the Crew” as well as the crew of another slaver

 

5‘ In G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 508. Captain William Barry was urged to “keep a
good Harmony and decorum without to much familiarity or Austerity seeing the Voyage depends on good
Conduct.” In E Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 327.

57 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 651. Drunkenness was indeed the most common reason for breaches in
discipline. Primary documents list drunkenness time and again as the cause of insubordination, dereliction
of duty and insurrections. The commonness of drunkenness is well illustrated by the following laconic
entry in the log of the American slaver Mary. “Tuesday 2d. [1796] This Day Brisk Trade. Bought Eleven
Slaves. Imployed in Delivering Goods. All Hands Drink and Disobedient.” In E. Donnan, vol. 3, 366.
Whether the alcohol consumption on slaving vessels was similar to the amount used in other branches of
the seafaring trade, or whether it was greater on slaving vessels is not clear. If the later is true, it is
interesting to speculate that it might have to do with the type of work crew were engaged in. But that is a

129

anchored close by. The mate of the second slaver “assisted in putting the Ring Leaders in
Irons.”58 A well-organized and relatively fair routine alone was not always a sufﬁcient
safeguard. Without the threat of violence and the use of physical punishment, the trade
could not have functioned.

Captain Hugh Crow observed that while bonuses were sometimes paid for
delivering slaves alive “not a word was said about the poor sailors; these might die
without regret.”59 Slaves were worth money to the ﬁnanciers of the voyage if delivered
alive, sailors were not.60 Captains knew this, and acted accordingly when forced to
choose between the two. This was reﬂected in, for example, the distribution of food and
water on slaving vessels. Crew rations, never overly generous to begin with, were
sometimes cut in times of shortage in order to provide for the slaves. The journal entry of
May 16, 1678 for the vessel Arthur, for example, indicates that the captain was
“intendinge to give our Negroes white mens provitions if theres should fall short.”6'

There was a sense of brotherhood based on shared hardship and oppression among
sailors, but it was a violent brotherhood. Quarrels, sometimes serious, were part of a

sailor’s world. Occasionally ﬁghts could get out of hand, as was the casein 1756 when,

on the coast of Africa “one Harrold, second mate to captain Dodson, stabbed a

 

matter for further (comparative) research; even if use was higher, there might well be other reasons, such as
the type of sailors the trade was most likely to attract.

58 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 369.

59 In Suzanne Schwartz, Slave Captain - The Career of James Irving in the Liverpool Slave Trade
(Wrexham: Bridge Books, 1995), 32. Stein agrees, noting that slaves “were ultimately less dispensable than
crew members in the search for a proﬁtable trade. Captains were never rewarded for keeping sailors
alive.”

6° The demographics of the trade support this. Financiers, for example, slaved on the coast of Africa in the
dangerous wet season so as to be able to deliver their slaves in the New World in time for the December-
January harvest, when demand for slaves was high. Behrendt argues that “merchants organized slave
voyages to maximize proﬁtability regardless of potential crew loss.” He concludes, “the primary aim of
merchants in the late eighteenth century was to minimize slave deaths Minimizing crew mortality was a
secondry consideration.” Behrandt, “Crew Mortality” 65 - 66.

6‘ E. Donnan, vol. 1, 232.

130

prentice Boy and abused him afterwards in such a manner he died on ye spot.”62 Fights
could be occasioned by many different causes, and were most common while onshore
when sailors could more easily escape the close observation they were under on the
vessel.

But not all was violence and deprivation for a Slaver’s crew. Sailing offered
beneﬁts not easily realized on land. On a slaver, as on other vessels, the life of a sailor
offered a certain freedom, the chance to explore the world, and often, a carefree lifestyle
between voyages. The drink and general debauchery of many sailors too, was an
attraction. If a crewman was prepared to ship on slavers regularly, it was work that
provided a steady income. The long length of slaving voyages compared to that of non-
slaving voyages meant fewer voyages, and less time spent unemployed. The outward
journey from European ports was a relatively comfortable voyage — rations were plentiful
and fresh, and there were plenty of hands on board to do the day to day work of sailing
the vessel. It was also relatively safe. Crew were not subject to the dangers of the African
coast, and there were as yet no slaves on board to guard. Even after embarking slaves,
some crew were fortunate enough to stop off in Sao Tome, a destination so popular with
slavers that the harbor could have considerable waiting lines of vessels. Strategically
situated, Sao Tome was about a week’s sail away from the Guinea coast. The reasons for
stopping over were strictly practical — replenishing water and supplies, and occasionally,
crew — but the equatorial island paradise made for a very welcome break after the
unpleasant and dangerous work of slaving on the coast. Even on the middle passage

proper, there were sometimes moments of fun and camaraderie, such as the traditional

 

‘2 Quoted in Melissa Elder, The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth-Century
Lancaster (Halifax, England: Ryburn, 1992), 61.

131

dunking in the sea of sailors who passed the equator for the ﬁrst time, if they did not
provide the crew with something to drink or a pay small amount of money.63

Crew and slaves interacted closely while on board. The management of slaves —
the feeding and exercising of the slaves, the cleaning of the holds and similar tasks -
ensured this. The conﬁned nature of the vessel, and the need for vigilance added to the
contact between the two. Financiers believed that management could effect slave
mortality rates to a considerable degree. Instructions to crew to take good care of the
slaves were nearly standard in correspondence between ﬁnanciers and captains. Not all
captains were equally adroit at the task, but some were consistently better than others. In
1721 a Royal African Company agent reported approvingly that “I cannot perceive but
that Capt. Mitchell has taken great care of the Negros in the Voyage by keeping his ship
clean, feeding them well, and diverting them with Musick, the Negroes being all in good
order except 8 which are sickly.”64 Unfavorable comments can be found with equal ease.
For example, agents for a ﬁnancier in 1720 predicted that, “considering the little order &
command that is to be observed among the Capt. & his Ofﬁcers will be of ill
consequence to the Voyage” of the Generous Jenny. 65 They were correct: the voyage
suffered a mortality rate of 16.2 percent among the slaves. Good management, though no
guarantee, was a requirement for a successful voyage, and required extensive contact
between crew and slaves.

Ordinary crew interaction with slaves was determined on the one hand by the
procedures laid down by the captain and ofﬁcers and on the other by the dictates of their

roles. The crew on a slaver formed and was formed by the middle passage. They were

 

‘3 In G. Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving, 86-87.
6’ In D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 49.

132

part of a transient and constantly reforming sub-culture. They had an own code of
behaviour and group cohesiveness of sorts, formed by their daily exposure to harsh living
conditions, dangerous and distasteful work, high mortality, shared poverty and the need
to be constantly on guard. Proponents of the trade argued that the trade formed a ‘nursery
for seamen’, training a valuable pool of experienced mariners for navies and other
branches of seafaring. And indeed, many of the lessons learned in the trade were
transferable. Abolitionists agreed that the trade was a school of sorts. They, however,
held that the trade taught the wrong lessons. Captain Newton, commenting on “the
dreadful effects of this trade upon the minds of those engaged in it” claimed that “I know
of no way of getting money, not even that of robbing for it on the highway, which has so
direct a tendency to efface the moral sense, to rob the heart of every gentle and humane
disposition, and to harden it, like steel, against all impressions of sensibility.”66 Like his
ideological opponents, Newton too, was correct.

It took a particular kind of way of viewing the world and one’s fellow human
beings in order to be able to crew on a slaver. In addition to enduring the rigorous
discipline on board, slaving crew had to guard, and when ordered to, to ﬁght, whip or
otherwise do violence to the slaves under their control. They had a job that could only be
done by denying the humanity of their captives, or by denying a part of their-own
humanity. Suffering and anguish, as well as sullen suspicion and anger surrounded them
at every turn. Newton’s claim that this inured them to the suffering of others is plausible.
Although slaving crew were to a degree self-selected, the work probably hardened most

who partook in it. Newton admitted that “There are, doubtless, exceptions” and the

 

65 D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, 49.

133

sources corroborate his claim. But in general slavers were a hard-bitten lot, used to
violence and the threat of it, both directing it, and having it directed at them. Their
profession was based on violence to others, and this shaped their attitudes and actions
towards the slaves in particular ways.

The relationship between crew and slaves was, by and large, generally one of
mutual fear, contempt and distrust. The effects of this could range from indifference to
outright brutality. Wanton cruelties by crew to slaves, however, was not common on
board slavers, and was subject to disciplinary action by the ofﬁcers. Nonetheless, it
occurred regularly enough for ﬁnanciers to have regularly issued explicit orders in an
attempt to curb it. Captain William Barry, for example, was ordered by his ﬁnanciers in
1725 to “see the sailors dont abuse them which has often been done to the prejudice of
the Voyage.”67 The commonness of such instructions suggests how widespread abuses
were. Captain Snelgrave blamed “the Sailors ill usage” of slaves for most slave mutinies.
He was incorrect about this (see chapter 5, “Mutiny”), but his remark betrays the
commonness of “ill usage.”

The general contempt of crew for their captives cannot fully explain the level of
abuse directed at slaves, or the necessity for such strict controls against it. The fear that at
some level plagued all those involved in the trade also played a part. It is easy to imagine
how a seaman’s frustrations could be taken out on the weakest link in the trade.68

Brutality could serve to assuage fear. Explicitly exercising power (violently expressed)

 

66 John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754 (With Newton 's 'Thoughts upon the African
Slave Trade '), Martin Bernard and M. Spurrell (eds), (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 103.

‘7 In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 327.

68 As with the sexual abuse of women, ofﬁcers and particularly the captain were by far the most at liberty to
abuse slaves. While rare, there are records of seamen being charged with the killing of a slave on the
middle passage, but virtually none of ofﬁcers. For an example, see E. Donnan, Documents vol. 3, 46.

134

over that which threatens one can create at least a temporary feeling of security. The
dehumanizing treatment that slaves were subjected to, and their status as property,
threatened the security and self-image of their oppressors. Crew were brutalized by both
the nature of, and the circumstances in which they performed their work. Both combined
to ﬁnd expression in their treatment of the slaves in their charge. However, the value of
the cargo, and the vigilance of ofﬁcers usually curbed extreme abuses.

The suspicious and disdainful attitude that crew had of the slaves under their
power was not necessarily static for the duration of the voyage. Especially in vessels
carrying fewer than average numbers of slaves, the crew occasionally developed some
form of relationship with the slaves, as they became more familiar with them. The longer
they were in each other’s company, the more likely this was to happen. The relationship
between crew and slaves in these circumstances cannot be described as friendship,
though it tended towards that between certain slaves and certain crewmembers.69 Rather
it was the recognition of a common humanity and suffering, as well as the realization that
slaves were individual people, with their own characters, fears, habits and dispositions.
Being constrained over a long period of time in close quarters with slaves made it
impossible for some sailors to view the slaves as merely cargoes or commodities, even
while they knew their relationship with them was transient. This was, of course, not a
universal reaction among crew. It effected some sailors sooner and to a greater degree
than others, and some crewmembers not at all. But it effected enough crew to at least

subtly change the way they viewed the slaves, and sometimes, their treatment of the

 

‘9 As with the “consensual” sex, the word “friendship” must be taken within the context of the trade. The
power and status differences between the slaves and the crew were far too large to allow any form of
relationship to emerge that can be properly termed friendship. True friendship requires some measure of
equality, if not in status, than in respect, and this was clearly not possible on a slaver.

135

slaves. The process did not work to an equal degree on all vessels, but it probably
occurred to some degree on all vessels.

In a case related by Captain Snelgrave with regard to his voyage of 1727, the crew
of another slaver, the Elizabeth, had built up what they regarded as a friendship with the
slaves. The Elizabeth had been under way for some time and been taken by pirates, and
then released. As the vessel belonged to the same owner as Snelgrave’s, and had about
120 slaves on board, he proposed taking the slaves on his own vessel, so that at least one
of the ships could leave Africa immediately. This was not an unusual occurrence. The
crew of the Elizabeth, however, refused to deliver the slaves to Snelgrave because, in the
words of the commander (the second mate), “the Slaves had been on board along time,
and they had a great Friendship with them: therefor they would keep them.” The
“friendship” was ill-fated. Snelgrave warned them “not to rely on the friendship of
slaves”, and indeed, the slaves mutinied the next day.70 They killed the cooper, who had
spoken out against their removal, and the remainder of the crew were forced to barricade
themselves while awaiting rescue by Snelgrave’s crew. For the slaves, the stakes were
too high to allow sentimentality towards their enslavers to interfere with their attempts to
regain their freedom. Dissemblence by slave on the middle passage, as on land, was an
everyday occurrence.

Aside from the obvious dichotomy between slave and free, there was a huge
chasm of understanding between crew and captives on board. The enormous differences
in racial and cultural status blunted empathy between the two sides. But the extremely
close contact forced on all on board constantly challenged both, as occurred on the

Elizabeth.

136

It was more common for individual crewmembers to develop a relationship with
some slaves, than for an entire crew to do so. But both always occurred within the context
of an inherently cruel trade, and one that crew helped sustain. The actions of these
individuals could not, and did not, effect the structure of the business they were involved
in. Nor did these relatively humane ﬁgures often believe the trade to be cruel and wrong.
Those crew members who did not deny the cruelty often pleaded - and believed in - the
necessity of the trade.71 Slavers were products of their society and time, and shared the
prejudices of their time. A slaver’s crew was largely composed of the least powerful
members of their societies. When placed in a position of unquestioned dominance over
the slaves, they tended to live up to their roles. Racism, cultural prejudice, economic
incentive and right of the strongest were the underlying assumptions that sustained the
trade.

Yet occasional references to ex-slavers, both crew and ﬁnanciers, who regret their
part in the trade exist. Newton and Falconbridge are probably the two most well known
examples. A less well known individual is Moses Brown who contacted his friends upon
“Being informed yesterday that you had in Contemplation sending a Vessel to Africa for
the purpose of getting Negroes and selling them as Slaves in the West Indies.” He wrote
“with a view to dissuade and discourage your pursuing the Voyage” so that his friends
might “avoid the unhappy reﬂections which I have had.”72 These pricks of the conscience

were exceptional.

 

7° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 357.

7' So it was with the Dutch slaver William Bosman. He wrote in a letter “I doubt not that this trade seems
very barbarous to you, but since it is followed by mere necessity, it must go on In E. Donnan,
Documents, vol. 1, 441.

72 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 334. His attempt was in vain.

137

More typical is the opinion of Nicholas Owens, who made six voyages. He was
frank about why he entered the slave trade. He knew that “Some people may think a
scruple of congience in the trade,” but he slaved in order “to enlarge my fortune by
honest mains.”73 For the vast majority of slavers the trade was ﬁrst and foremost an
honest method of earning money. For most of the trade participation, particularly in the
higher ranks, carried little social stigma.74

The captain and the crew were not only responsible for the slaves, but also for the
safety of the vessel. Taken over the entire voyage nearly 20% of slaving vessels were lost
to their original owners.75 The greatest danger was attack and possible capture by
privateers or pirate, or in the illegal trade, by British patrols. Such losses accounted for
over two thirds of all slaving vessels lost in the trade. Wreckage was the distant next most
common reason for losing a vessel. Slavers shared equally the general risks of seafaring
with other vessels, but bore several that were unique to them, ﬁrst and foremost slave
mutinies. Less likely, but still a risk, was losing the vessel to a crew mutiny or to an
attack by coastal Africans. The breakdown of the causes of vessels known to have been

lost in the slave trade is presented in Figure 3.1.

 

73 N. Owen, Journal of a Slave Dealer, 5.

7’ For example, all three of Rhode Island’s Governor Wanton’s daughters married slaving captains, and he
himself had several ventures into slaving. Sarah Deutsch, "The Elusive Guineamen: Newport Slavers,
1735-1774," The New England Quarterly (Boston, Mass), 250-253.

75 Of the 27,233 voyages listed in the Atlantic slavery dataset, 22,985 delivered their slaves as intended,
4,248 were lost, and the outcome of 2,939 voyages is not known. Thus of the voyages of which the
outcome is known, 18.48% were lost.

138

 

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Figure 3.1. Causes of Vessels Lost in the Atlantic Slave Trade

Legend: 1. British captor; 41% (1739 cases)
2. Natural hazard; 29% (1217 cases)
3. French captor; l6 % (663 cases)
4. Captor unspeciﬁed; 4 % (185 cases)
5. African captor; 3 % (119 cases)
6. USA captor; 2%, (82 cases)
7. Privateer or pirate 2% (76 cases)
8. Spanish captor 2% (69 cases)
9. Portuguese captor 1% (41 cases)
10. Other causes 1% (6g. Crew action or minor slaving nations as captor)

The size of the vessel, and particularly the number of guns and crew members
carried, were the most important factors in determining both whether a slaver would be
attacked by pirates or privateers, and the outcome of a battle. The number of guns carried

by slavers varied widely, ranging from none (7%) to ﬁfty (3 different vessels).76 Vessels

 

76 The Atlantic Slavery Database contains information on the number of guns carried by 5485 slaving
vessels. It is possible that this will slightly overstate the average number of guns and the number of vessels

139

carrying only one or two guns would usually not have had any carriage guns. They would
have relied on swivel guns that could be used for intimidating, and if necessary, ﬁring on
slaves in case of insurrection. Carriage guns were too heavy for this, and too cumbersome

to maneuver effectively. Some nations armed their vessels much more heavily than others

did.77

 

 

 

 

 

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lLow: 0-3 guns DMedium: 4-8 guns

lHigh: >8 guns

 

 

 

Figure 3.2. Most Common Number of Guns Carried, All Nationalities

 

carrying an above average number, as it may be that vessels which were unusually heavily armed were
more likely to have their armament cemented upon in the primary documents. The statistics are most
reliable for the English trade, as 92% of the sample is composed of English vessels. However. the ﬁgures
on the French trade are also likely to be reasonably reliable. The sample size is much smaller than that of
the English trade, but sufﬁciently large to generalize with conﬁdence.

140

 

Sample Ave. no. Max. Ave. crew Ave. tons Ave. slaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

size carried Median carried per gun per gun per gun
_E_rlglish 5030 7.48 6.00 50 4.55 28.46 44.44
French 157 5.04 2.00 40 9.48 55.67 1 1 1.97

 

 

Table 3.2. Average Armaments of British and French Slavers

Slavers were in general fairly heavily armed. Unsurprisingly, heavily armed
slavers were less likely to be taken by a privateer or pirate than more lightly armed
vessels. The converse was especially true for very lightly armed vessels. Extremely

highly armed vessels, however, were captured nearly as often as moderately armed

 

 

 

 

 

vessels.

Captured Not Captured
Sample size 466 4629
Low (0 - 3 guns) 38% 15%
Medium (3 - 8 guns) 33% 57%
High (> 8 gUﬂS) 280/0 280/0

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3.3. Rate of Capture by Armament Levels

For defensive purposes it made the most sense to invest in a vessel armed in the
medium range. Anything more than that would suggest other uses for the armaments,
including possible doubling as a privateer. The more heavily armed the a slaver, the more
likely the crew were to have been engaged for their ﬁghting skills, while a lightly armed
vessels’ crew were far more likely to concentrate solely on slaving.

The guns carried by slavers varied in size, and were classiﬁed by the weight of the

shot they ﬁred. Three to twelve pounders were the most common, but some vessels

 

77 The French and English data are the most reliable, but variation almost certainly existed between other

141

carried considerably heavier weapons, sometimes upwards of twenty-four ponders. The
guns were fuse-ﬁred muzzleloaders, with smooth bores that could ﬁre a variety of shot
(grape, canister or solid round), either to kill and maim the crew of the enemy vessel, or
to wreck the vessel. Slavers were often at a disadvantage to privateers due to the quality
of the gunners privateers they carried. Large guns required experienced gunners for most
effective use. When vessels engaged each other, it was frequently a question of which
one pounded which other one into submission ﬁrst. Not infrequently the victor came out
looking little better than the loser. In order to avoid the destruction of their vessel,
attacking captains frequently attempted to grapple the enemy vessel in order to board her.
In this manner many hours of mutually destructive ﬁring could be avoided.

Slavers had elaborate constructions of nettings. These served both to prevent
slaves from committing suicide, and to make boarding more difﬁcult for enemy vessels.
Outrunning potential assailants was the preferred strategy, but was often impossible.
However, if a slaver was ﬁtted out to double as a privateer, the large number of crew
typically carried by slavers gave them an advantage. Privateers were a major risk factor
for crewmembers. In times of war, privateers - privately owned vessels of an enemy
nation — routinely preyed on slaving vessels. They posed a substantial danger to
commercial shipping, including slavers. The history of privateering in general, and its

impact on the slave trade in particular, is an important, yet much neglected topic.78 With

 

slaving nations too.

78 A detailed study of the effect of war between the European nations and the effect of this on the slave
trade of the nations involved has yet to be undertaken. The study is beyond the purview of this work.
However, the data are largely available. Ideally such a study would be comparative in nature, combining
information on crew sizes, vessel armaments, and the number of ships taken. The results would give insight
not only into the slave trade, but also the economic and maritime history of the nations considered. Given
the frequent altercations between the slave trading nations, the project would be complex, even if it were
restricted to major wars. In the case of Britain alone, seven major wars would have to be considered: 1689-
1807 - The war in Ireland and against France, 1688-97, War of Spanish Succession, 1702-13, War with

142

the exception of slave mortality, it posed the single largest risk to the success of a slaving
voyage. Crews were not only expected to guard, and in the case of an insurrection, ﬁght
the slaves, but they were also expected to combat privateers. In times of war, slavers
tended to carry larger crews than in times of peace in order to boost their ﬁghting
strength.79 Privateering and piracy was a part of the violent sub-culture that crew were a
part of, and simply an integral risk of the business in which they were engaged.80

Slavers were acutely aware of the risk that privateers posed to their lives and to
the success of their voyages. In correspondence between captains and ﬁnanciers the later
frequently urged caution while the former reported both on engagements and strategies to
avoid them. The instructions of Thomas Leyland to Captain Caesar Lawson, who was
bound for the West Coast of Africa on a slaving voyage, were typical. In July 1803,
Leyland wrote that “we earnestly desire you will keep a particular look out to avoid the
Enemy’s Cruisers, which are numerous and you may hourly be expected to be attacked
by them.”81 Though the frequency differed, privateering threatened vessels of all nations.

The American Captain Peleg Clarke wrote to his ﬁnancier in 1776, that “I am
excessive sorry to hear there is no likelyhood of matters being Accomodated between
Great Britian and her Colonies.” He was “in the greatest Dilemma Irnaginable About the

Acts, and what to do with the Vessel, as I never durst take Any Slaves on board not

 

Spain, 1718-21, War with Spain (Right of Search) and of Austrian succession, 1739-48, Seven Years’ War,
1756-1763, War of American Independence, 1776-83, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-
1815. The most important is the last one; about a third of all British vessels taken were captured after 1793.
’9 See w. Minchinton, "The British Slave Fleet" in De la traite l’esclavage, vol. 1, Daget, 70.

8° In the post 1808 illegal trade they ran the additional risk of capture; in Mathieson’s words, “If a slave
ship was of any considerable size and at all well-armed, she usually resisted capture; for resistance was not
punishable under any of the abolition treaties, and the high wages offered to the crew were contingent
on the success of the voyage.” William Law Mathieson, Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 1839-1865.
(London: Longmans, Green, 1929), 196.

8‘ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 651.

143

thinking the Intrest safe to be brought off in her.”82 Clarke was right to worry. Privateers
were after proﬁt in the broadest sense, and the stealing of slaves could be very proﬁtable.
Usually the taken vessel formed a part of the plunder, but not always. Some slavers were
notorious for the bad quality of their vessels. Slaves, however, were always saleable. The
Boston Newsletter of October 15, 1761 for example, reported that a French privateer had
taken over the slaver Sally under Captain Molton. However, the Frenchmen did not
consider it worth their while to keep the vessel. After “taking out all the slaves [128] and
plundering the sloop, they permitted him to proceed in her (being a dull sailor) to New
York.”83 This was not exceptional.84

The costs of privateering were so high in the slave trade, that the insuring of a
voyage sometimes become impossible or ruinously expensive. In January 1759 for
example, the Browns of Providence, Rhode Island were quoted a 25% premium in order
to insure their vessel, aptly named the Wheel of Fortune. Most of this high charge
reﬂected the risk of capture by French privateers.85 The high stakes involved ensured that
many slavers would put up a ﬁght if attacked by privateers, even when outgunned.

Contemporary documents frequently refer to the “gallant action” of the crew
when they succeeded in ﬁghting off a privateer. However, such “gallantry” had its risks.

Aside from the obvious risk of being injured or dying in battle, the victors did not always

 

82 In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 318.

83 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 453.

8" The Boston Newsletter, June, 9, 1720 for example reported that “the Petersborough Galley of Bristol,
Capt. Owen, and the Victory of London Capt. Rideout, were fallen into the hands of Pyrates, who had
plundered the later and let her go, but had taken the former and ﬁtted her up for a Pyrate.”

5 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 173. LeVeen, in a brief paragraph in a work dealing with the suppression
of the illegal trade, notes that the “major factor which inﬂuenced these [insurance] rates was whether the
Europeans were at peace or at war. However, rates are alleged to have varied with the particular ship
captain and for the time of year, for hurricanes made the Carribean unsafe during late summer and early
fall.” Phillip LeVeen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, 1821-1865: Impact and Implications (Arno

144

appreciate their prey’s resistance. For example, Lloyd’s List for February 1760, reported
that “A store ship from Cape Coast, with about 130 slaves, whose crew consisted of 23
men fell in with two or three French Privateers, whom he fought for two Days, but was at
last taken; and in Return for such a bold Defense, the crew were cut and wounded in a
most barbarous manner.”86 Such brazen ill treatment of the crew of a captured slaver was
rare. Usually the complaints were about hardship, not about being killed or deliberately
wounded after capture. For example, Captain Gill, who lost his vessel Nancy to the
French in January 1752, complained bitterly about having “no better lodgings than the
decks, only short and bad allowance” and being “marooned without provisions.” 87 Non-
ranking crew could expect, and received, even less solicitous attention from their captors.
In a violently competitive world, slavers occasionally combined slaving with
privateering, particularly if their vessel was large and heavily armed.88 Captain Lawson,
to whom Leyland urged caution, was also informed that “We have taken out Letters of
Marque against the French and Batavian Republic.” He was given detailed instructions
on what to do if he were to be “so fortunate as to fall in with and capture any of their
vessels.” He was to “Send the Same direct to this Port, under the care of an active Prize
Master, and a sufficient number of men out of your ship; and also put a Copy of the
Commission on board her.” 89 The vessel Lawson sailed in, the Enterprize, was itself a

prize taken from the French. At 405 British measured tons, the vessel was large enough

 

Press, 1977), 107-108. A study on the insurance rates over the duration of the trade and the factors effecting
them has yet to be undertaken.

8‘ In J. Inkori, "The Unmeasured Hazards”, 7.

87 It was, he concluded, “treatment beneath a European enemy, let alone the polite nation of France.” In G.
Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 481.

88 Though over a century old, the best work on this topic remains G. Williams’s History of the Liverpool
Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (New York: Augustus M.
Kelley, 1966), ﬁrst published in 1897.

8’ In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 651.

145

to face most other commercial vessels, and most slavers. Leyland was careful to order his
captain to “not molest any neutral ship, as it would involve us in expensive Lawsuit and
subject us to heavy Damages.”90 It would have been piracy. There was often a ﬁne line
between privateering and piracy, and occasionally a captain, after capturing an enemy
vessel, interpreted his mandate more broadly than his papers allowed. 9’

From the perspective of slavers, privateers and pirates were different sides of the
same coin. letters between ﬁnanciers and slaving captains often contained references to
piracy though these were not as common as those referring to privateers. This reﬂects the
lesser risk. Far fewer slavers were lost to pirates than privateers. As with privateers,
pirates could attack both in the waters around Africa and the Americas. James Phipps and
John Stevenson of Cabo Corso Castle on the African coast, for example, complained to
the Royal African Company in 1720 of “the decay of Trade on that Coast by reason of
Pyrates.” They believed that “Pyrates design to range on the Coast to Windward till end
of Febry.” They had reason to fear — they conclude their letter with a terse “Pyrates take 2
large French Ships.”92

Newspapers in the Americas published accounts of piracy relating to the slave
trade disproportionaly frequently. The Boston Newsletter of 9 June 1720, for example, in

a typical account, reported that “the Pirates have done a great deal of Mischief on the

Coast of Guiney.” They added that the pirates took “and plundered ships to the value of

 

9° In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 651.

9' The temptation and the rewards to combine piracy and slaving could be great, but the risk was very high.
In 1838, for example, a judge concluded that the slaver Esplorador “forcibly and piratically took from the
other vessels there the cargoes they had collected. Having thus got together about 500 negroes they
arrived here with only about 200 surviving.” The penalty for piracy was death. T.F. Buxton, African Slave
Trade and Its Remedy (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), 170-1.

92 In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 243. More general warnings were commonly issued to captains;
Captain Barry was instructed in 1726 to keep a “Constant Look Out, and trust no sail you see fearing
Pirates.” 328.

146

2000 1. upon one of which ships and Cargoe, it is said six Thousand Pounds were insured
here.”93 To a degree this reﬂected the tastes of their readers, but it also partly reﬂected a
genuine concern with the lawless depredations occasioned by pirates and their effect on
the local economies. Attacks by privateers and pirates were, however, not the only
assaults on their vessels slavers had to fear. Africans sometimes attacked slavers.

At least 119 slaving vessels are known to have been captured by Africans.
Extrapolated to the entire trade (using an estimate of 40,000 voyages) this returns a
minimum of 17S vessels being taken by African agency.94 For every vessel captured by
Africans, many more were attacked. Dishonesty in dealing with Africans was
commonplace, and was the most common reason for attacks on slaving vessels. Captain
Newton noted that “Every art is employed to deceive and wrong them [the Africans]” and
that “a marvellous dexterity is acquired in these practices.” He added that “he who has
most address in this way has the most to boast of?” Usually this led to arguments and
ﬁghts between the parties, but sometimes these escalated to attacks on the slaving vessel.

In Newton’s words, “the natives become jealous, insidious and revengeful.” 96 Another

 

93 The Boston Newsletter, June, 9, 1720. The Boston Newsletter published similar accounts in July 4‘h and
l8til of the same year. The article on the 18“1 of July is explicit about the concern they felt for their local
economies. “Our Merchants have an Account, that the ship Europe, Capt. Bound, has been taken by Pirates
on the Coast of Guiey, loaden with slaves for the River Plata in the Spanish West Indies. The Pirates have
done great damage and infest that Coast, and ruin commerce, to the great Detriment of our Merchants.” E.
Donnan, Documents, v. 2, 243.
9" Source: Atlantic slavery dataset. This is based on the surviving information of 27,233 voyages. The real
numbers are probably certainly higher, as a voyage is only entered as being captured by Africans when
information survives conﬁrming that that was the case. The outcome of nearly 3,000 - well over 10% - of
the voyages contained in the dataset is unknown.
95 There were endless ways to cheat: According to Newton, “Not an article that is capable of diminution or
adulteration, is delivered genuine, or entire. The spirits are lowered by water. False heads are put into the
kegs that contain the gunpowder. The linen and cotton cloths are opened and two or three yards cut
off. . .. The natives are cheated, in the number, weight, measure, or quality of what they purchase in every
possible way.” J. Newton, The Journal, 106.

J. Newton, The Journal, 106.

147

common reason for vessels being “cut off” was the abducting and enslaving of free
Africans and selling them into slavery in the Americas.

Africans were not helpless victims in the trade — if they could not revenge
themselves on the perpetrator, they sometimes did so on the next slaver to arrive. This
resulted in reprisals from the traders, and matters could escalate considerably before a
new suspicious peace was established. Slave trading was a risky business, just as slave
transportation was. Newton’s conclusion that “We trade under arms, they are furnished
with long knives. For, with few exceptions, the English and the Africans, reciprocally,
consider each other as consummate villians, who are always watching opportunities to do
mischief” sums up this risk to slavers well.”

Slaving vessels, like all vessels, faced the risk of storms and of wreckage due to
bad luck or bad navigation. The risk this posed to crew was by no means negligible;
nearly 30% of all voyages lost, were lost due to wrecks.98 A vessel was far more likely to
be lost due to shipwreck than to a slave insurrection. The risks were, as the chart below
shows, not evenly spread across the various slaving nationalities. The Portuguese data
shows a high percentage of voyages with an unknown outcome, which may partially
account for the low number of vessels lost to natural causes, but other nations,
particularly the Dutch, Spanish and Brazilian trades show that this is not necessarily the

case. The region in which slaves were obtained and the region where they were delivered

 

97 J. Newton, The Journal, 106.

98 Nearly 4,5% of all voyages ended with the loss of ship due to shipwreck. Of the 27,233 voyages
contained in the Atlantic Slavery Database, 1,217 (4.46%) were reported as being lost due to natural
hazards. The outcome of 2,939 voyages is not known. If the same pr0portion were lost to natural hazards as
the 24,294 voyages of which the outcome is known, the number of vessels wrecked increases by about 150
vessels. Conservatively estimated, the entire slave trade was compromised of approximately 40,000
voyages, which returns a total of 1,784 vessels lost due to natural hazards.

148

accounted for most of the discrepancy between nations.99 Some routes were simply more

risky to sail than others.

 

 

 

 

Wrecks

 

 

 

_C .C - (1.) .E .C .C C
.12 g E 4. g g .9 .12 g
g e 8 ‘0. g, D g E a
L” LL € 3 3 C] an)- S
D t‘ [I]

C)

0.

Country

 

 

 

Figure 3.3. Shipwrecks per 1000 Voyages'00

 

99 The Portuguese. American and Dutch vessels show a high ratio of unknown outcomes to vessels lost.
This may mean the losses are under-reported, but this is not certain.

'00 Using a sample of 1,053 vessels lost in the British slave trade between 1689 and 1807 Inikori has
calculated that 64.5% were taken by enemy vessels in war, 17.7% were lost as a result of slave
insurrections, attacks by coastal Africans and wrecked on the coast, while 17.9% were wrecked at sea
outside the African coast.loo His ﬁgures are too imprecisely categorized to use here. Inikori‘s main
purposes were, however. to establish African agency in the trade and to include the slaves who died in all
wrecked voyages in the demographics of slave exports. Instead of focusing on natural hazards and human
agency as separate categories, he chose to include all wrecks along the coast of Africa in the same category
as slave insurrections and action by coastal Africans. My calculations show a considerably different
pattern.

149

The chance of losing a vessel due to natural hazards depended on (the interaction
of) a number of different factors, the most important being the sailing route of the
voyage, length of the voyage, the time of year sailed, bad navigation, and bad weather.
Wrecks could and did occur on all three legs of the slaving journey. Most wrecks
occurred on the coast of Africa, followed by the crossing from Africa to the Americas,
and then by the passage from Europe to Africa. By far the safest leg of a slaving voyage
was the return passage from the Americas to Europe.101 Only a minority of shipwrecks

occurred when the vessel was fully loaded with slaves.

 

     

 

     

 

Sample size = 825
60 1
50 .
E 40 -
0
r— . 216
«5 30 183
33 20 a
101 65
0
1 2 3 4
Category

 

 

 

Figure 3.4. Shipwrecks and Slave Presence

Legend: 1. Shipwrecked or destroyed, after disembarkation
2. Shipwrecked or destroyed, before slaves embarked
3. Shipwrecked or destroyed, after embarkation of slaves or during slaving
4. Shipwrecked or destroyed, unspeciﬁed

 

‘°‘ 1. Inikori, "The Unmeasured Hazards” 11.

150

Relatively few wrecks resulted in the total loss of crew or slaves, though the later
were considerably more vulnerable than the former.102 Only point three and some of point
four above applied to slaves, but all did to crew. A slaving voyage also faced threats from
inside the vessel, both from slaves and crew.

Occasionally the crew on slaving vessels mutinied. They were, however, far less
common than slave mutinies. This was largely due to the harsh punishments convicted
mutineers were subject to. Upon conviction, they were almost certain to be executed. The
bodies of executed mutineers were sometimes displayed in harbors as a warning to other
sailors. Two crewmembers of the Joronomy, tried for mutiny in 1752, for example, “were
convicted of the Crimes laid to their charge, and are to be hung on gibbets.” Because
of the risks involved, crew mutinies frequently involved the coercion of crewmembers
who were timid or not in favour of the action. This was the case on board the Joronomy;
the main conspirator “drank D ------ n to the Captain, which was heartily pledged by
Paddy, but with reluctance and fear by the rest.”103 In spite of the harshness of the
punishment crew mutinies remained a constant threat against which officers had to guard.
As with slave mutinies, vessels were most at risk for crew mutinies while close to the
coast, and when a large fraction of the crew of the vessel was either ill or deceased.

As with slave mutinies, contemporary documents the sources are far more
forthcoming about failed attempts than successful ones. This is unsurprising - very few
attempts succeeded. There were uncountable ways in which a mutiny could fail. Many

were betrayed by a crew member, and most barely started before they were suppressed.

 

"’2 See Chapter 6, “Survival Strategies.”
'03 The Pennsylvania Gazette, December 7. 1752-

151

Newton, for example, discovered a plot that “some of our people had been concerned” on
his vessel in 1752. He believed it to be “no less than seizing the ship.” He learned about it
only because a crewmember, “William Coney, the informer, told me he had been
solicited by Richard Swain to sign what he called a round robin, a term to which I was
before stranger to?“ As was often the case, Newton managed to identify the main
conspirators and avert an actual mutiny. If a mutiny did take place, and succeeded
initially, there was also the risk of a counter-mutiny, as happened on the Othello under
Captain Johnson in 1783. The crew successfully took the vessel on the coast of Africa. It
was retaken by the ofﬁcers, but at the price of the captain’s life.105
Because of the near certainty of failure and because of the risks of later
apprehension if the attempt was successful, it was often difﬁcult for crewmembers to
recruit sufﬁcient allies to put their plan into execution. This occasionally led to an
unlikely alliance between crew and slaves in order to muster the ﬁghting strength
necessary to overcome the remaining crew. On the Wolf, for example, the second mate
“has been the only instigation to the Slaves rising, having perswaded them to it, with a
promise of carrying them home again, but they wou’d not consent till part by his
promise and part by thr. fear of being eat ....”'°6 Disaffected crew did not always need to
use the threat of cannibalization. On the King David in 1750, “the Slaves on board the

said Ship arose about ﬁve o’Clock in the Morning.” The slaves, however, did not mutiny

on their own initiative. Rather, “The Insurrection was contrived and begun by 15 that had

 

‘°‘ 1. Newton, The Journal, 69-70.

'05 In G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 566.

"’6 Fear of being cannibalized was common among slaves; some captains went to great pains to explain to
their captives that they had been purchased to work, but this was not always successful. See chapter 6,
Mutiny. Darold D. Wax, "A Philadelphia Surgeon”, 486.

152

for considerable Time been treated with the same Freedom as the white men; and a great
many of the later dying, encouraged them in their Desi gn.”107

When slaves and crewmembers conspired to mutiny, usually there was either a
large diminution in the numbers of the original crew, or there were only a small number
of slaves involved in the first instance. The last condition might be fulﬁlled because the
vessel only carried a small number of slaves (as was the case on the Wolf, which had only
ten slaves on board at the time of the insurrection), or because a small number of the
slaves were singled out to help the crew, as on the King David. This was because the
conspiring slaves and the crew needed to build up some form of relationship, and because
the risk involved in involving a large number of slaves was too large. The plot could be
too easily betrayed.

Ofﬁcers, and the captain in particular, were the most likely to lose their lives in a
successful mutiny by a portion of the crew. In 1729, for example, the Pennsylvania
Gazette reported that “the Men entered into a Conspiracy” on Captain Atkins’ vessel.
They “seized upon the Master, and bid him prepare for Death, and in a short Time they
ty’d his Hands and Feet, and threw him over board.”108 Even though the penalties for
mutinying left little incentive to leave potential witnesses alive, ofﬁcers and non-
conspiring crew were more commonly left stranded than murdered. The Newport

Mercury of July 20, 1767 report that after the crew mutinied on the Juba, “the captain

and ofﬁcers” were “sent on shore on the long boat” was typical in this regard.109

 

107 E. Donnan, Documents, vol.2, 486.

'08 The Pennsylvania Gazette, 27 November 1729. The mutineers then “shared the Gold Dust &c,. and went
away for Antigua, from whence they were discover’d by some Negroes aboard, and were all apprehended ,
aay’d and condmn’d for Piracy.”

‘ In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3,459.

153

Very few slavers were pirates, but piracy was one of the few options open to crew
after a successful mutiny. No port was safe for crewmembers known to have mutinied
against their ofﬁcers. The penalties for mutiny and piracy were the same, which left little
reason not to turn to piracy after a successful mutiny. Consequently, when a crew plotted
a mutiny, it was frequently with the intention to become pirates. The second mate who
organized the mutiny on the Wolf, for example, did so with the “intention was to procure
the Gold dust to himself, and then, by putting to death the white men, turn pirate with the
Vessel.””0

Deserters from slaving vessels too, occasionally enlisted with pirates. Sailors on a
slaver had little prospect of bettering their long-term lots. They faced hardship,
deprivation and risk to their lives as a matter of course, and for a few, the added risk of
piracy seemed well worth the potential rewards. Ten deserters from the slaving vessel the
Three Sisters where among the pirates who took the slaver the Clayton in March, 1752.
After having taken the vessel they “brought with them in their boat a bale of scarlet cloth,
and another of handkerchiefs, and told the Clayton’s crew that if they ‘would go a-roving
they should be clothed in scarlet.” As a result “Four, unable to resist this dazzling
proposal, voluntarily entered as rovers, and the chief mate and two boys were impressed
into the pirate service.”lll Only a small minority of deserters from slaving vessels,
however, turned to piracy.

Crew desertions were common. It is not possible to accurately determine the

 

“° Darold D. Wax, "A Philadelphia Surgeon”. 486.
111 G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 479.

154

percentage of vessels that suffered desertions, but much can be derived from the data on
vessels that are known to have suffered crew desertions.112 The number of crew members
who deserted from any given vessel varied widely; many vessels report that only a single
member deserted (just under 30% of all vessels), but other vessels reported well over half
the crew members abandoning their posts. The Tartar lost 72.5% (29 out of 40) of its
crew to desertion in 1806.113 Extremely high desertion rates were not exceptional; in the
English trade 2% (27 out of 1231) of vessels reported more than half the crew deserting,
and 18% (216 out of 1231) reported a quarter or more crew members deserting. There
was, however, considerable variation between nationalities. The records on the French
trade provide no examples of half or more of the crew deserting, and only 2% of the
vessels report a quarter or more of crew absconding (25 out of 1006). Crew on English
slavers appear not to have deserted as frequently as those on French vessels, but they

tended to so in much larger groups, as the tables below show.“"

 

"2 Of the 11,166 English voyages collected in the Atlantic Slavery dataset, 1,231 contain some information
on desertions (11.02%). Of the 4,034 French voyages in the dataset 998 contain references to desertions
(24.73%). The remaining voyages that contain no information about desertions will contain both voyages
that experienced no desertions, and voyages of which the records of desertions have not survived. It is not
possible to distinguish between the two, which makes conﬁdent generalizations about the percentage of
voyages that experienced no desertions impossible. The number of vessels suffering desertions in the
English trade is likely to be greatly understated; when they reported desertions they were more severe than
those suffered by the French, making it unlikely that a smaller percentage of their vessels would have
suffered desertions. Only about 2% of all voyages explicitly reported no desertions (8 in the French trade
and 215 in the English trade), but this number is too low, as desertions were far more likely to be reported
than an absence of desertions.

“3 This was in spite of the fact that only one crewmember died, giving it an unusually low 2.5% crew
mortality. Voyage No. 83727, Atlantic Slavery dataset.

114 Only the English and French trades contain sufﬁcient information from which to generalize. The charts
are all based on voyages that reported at least one crewmember as having deserted, as it is not possible to
distinguish between no desertions, and no information on desertions. Figures are per vessel.

155

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. of Crew members % in French Trade % in English Trade
Deserted (sample = 998) (sample = 1014)
1 40.5 17.5
2 24.6 15.1
3 13.7 10.9
4 7.6 8.3
5 3.6 8.7
6 2.7 6.3
7 2.4 6.1
8 1.1 5
9 0.9 4.3
10 0.7 4.1
Total 97.80% 86.30%
> 10 Deserted 2.20% (20 cases) 13.70% (138 cases)

 

 

 

Table 3.4. French and English Desertion Patterns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

. . 3 Ave. No. Ave.% Max.% Ave. Crew .
Nationality Deserted Deserted Deserted Size Sample Size
French 2.63 6.86 45.83 41 .41 998
Erlglish 5.7 16.34 72.5 34.88 1014

 

 

Table 3.5. Statistical Overview of French and English Desertion Patterns

a Only the French and the English trades provide enough information to generalize. It is possible that
further work into the crew of other slaving countries will uncover substantial further national differences in

desertion statistics.

Falconbridge suggested that “In the case of desertion, the sailors forfeit their
wages, by which the expences of the voyage are lessened, and consequently the
merchants reap benefits from it” and cruel treatment by ofﬁcers were the main reasons
for high desertion rates.115 The articles that crew signed before boarding the vessel

frequently contained clauses that stipulated the forfeiture of their entire wages for

 

”5 A. Falconbridge, An Account, 45-46.

156

 

desertion. The articles signed for the vessel Sally, for example, speciﬁed that if any of the
crew were to “quit the Service of the said Ship, or otherwise desert the Service of the
said Ship”, then “the whole of the Wages shall be forfeited.” This was to occur
notwithstanding “any Law, Usage, or Custom, to the Contrary notwithstanding.”l ‘6 It was
clearly in the ﬁnancier’s interests to reduce the number of crew after the slaves were
delivered.

A large percentage of crewmembers were required to guard and manage the
slaves, and they became redundant on arrival in the Americas, where most desertions
occurred.117 The British parliament, when investigating the slave trade, was informed that
“It was no uncommon thing for the captains to send ashore, a few hours before they sail,
their lame, emaciated and sick seamen, leaving them to perish.” These sailors were
variously known as “wharﬁngers”, “beach-homers” or “scowbankers” in ports around the
Americas.118 They often wandered around the ports of slave disembarkation trying to ﬁnd
a berth back home, a task that often proved difﬁcult. Behrendt has claimed that “In the
Americas, most crew deserted ship or were discharged within a few days or weeks of
arrival. New crew usually entered pay close to the dates of sail from England, Africa or
the Americas.”1 ’9

There is no clear evidence to establish that captains regularly treated their crew

deliberately harshly in order to encourage desertions on the scale described above.120 Nor

 

“6 E. Donnan, Documents vol. 2, 561.

“7 Desertions in the Americas were especially common during war years. Behrendt “Crew Mortality”, 67.
“3 In J. Pope-Hennessy, Sins ofthe Fathers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 108.

”9 S. Behrendt, "Crew Mortality,” 56. He does, however, not provide statistically signiﬁcant evidence and
offers only one case to illustrate his point.

no Crew also deserted in Africa, though not as often. Newton’s journal entry to the effect that “the watch
upon deck being either asleep or consenting, 2 of the people, viz. James Wilkinson and Richard Grifﬁth run
away with the yaul below”, while on the coast of Africa is typical. He “sent to the King to offer a reward to
the King for apprehending my people.” J. Newton, The Journal, 68.

157

could this explain the difference between English and French desertion rates. If crew on
English vessels lost a much greater percentage of their sailors while in the New World
rather than Africa, this might be evidence for the systematic abandonment of sailors in
the English trade, but it would still not establish whether captains engaged in deliberate
harsh treatment to that end. The Atlantic Slavery dataset does not indicate where sailors
absconded.

Crewmembers deserted for a variety of reasons. These ranged from ﬂeeing
particularly cruel treatment to simply changing their minds. A brief report published in
the Pennsylvania Gazette of November 16, 1774 suggested an intriguing other
possibility. The newspaper reported “That Captain Daniel Darby, got about thirty
leagues out at sea, when his slaves rose.” The confrontation was a violent one; the slaves
“killed his chief mate” and the crew killed “a number” of the slaves before they were
subdued. The captain was forced to return to shore, whereupon “his people all left
him.”121 Did the crew desert because of the unruliness of the slaves? Or, more broadly
put, did crew members tend to desert more if their lives were endangered by resistance
attempts by the slaves? A preliminary assessment suggests this might have been the case,
though the evidence is not conclusive. Vessels that reported at least one desertion

suffered more violence at the hands of slaves than those that did not.122 Whether the

 

121 The Pennsylvania Gazette, November 16, 1774.

122 Of the 1931 voyages that reported at least one desertion, 48 (2.48%) voyages also reported an
insurrection and an additional 2 were attacked on the coast of Africa by Africans (0.1%). The 8721 voyages
that do not contain information on crew desertions report 147 (1.68%) insurrections and 41 instances of
African action (0.47%). This is, however, not conclusive evidence. The average number of crew deserting
from vessels that did not report a mutiny or attempted mutiny (4.23, calculated over 1931 voyages) is
actually higher than those that did (3.08, calculated over 48 voyages). There are several serious limitations
to this preliminary assessment. The records of the voyages not reporting crew desertions are likely to be
less well documented than those that do, and thus also less likely to report mutinies and mutiny attempts. In
addition, as discussed in chapter 5, “Mutiny,” mutinies and mutiny attempts are severely underreported in
the Atlantic slavery dataset. Desertion information too, is far from complete. Nor does the dataset does

158

effect is real or not, serious insurrections did not occur nearly frequently enough to
change the overall desertion patterns described above.

The presence of black crewmembers on slavers has been vastly under-
acknowledged. Some work has been published on black seamen, both slave and free, but
no writer has concentrated on slaving vessels. Packwood and Bolster have demonstrated
a widespread black presence on coastal and deep-sea non-slave vessels.123 However, only
a few passing references exist to black crew on slavers in the secondary literature. Curtin
without offering evidence has, for example, claimed that most free blacks in Europe
during the period of the Atlantic slave trade arrived as free crew on slaving vessels after
being recruited in Africa to replace dead or deserted white sailors.124 The extensive
presence of slaves and free blacks on vessels engaged in virtually every branch of
seafaring, including privateers and recruitment by Royal Navy impressment gangs,
suggests that they also crewed on slaving vesselslzs From the perspective of ofﬁcers and
ﬁnanciers, black crew had a number of distinct advantages over free white sailors. They
were comparatively cheap, and enslaved crew may have deserted less often than white

sailors as they were likely to have had families in bondage in their homeports. If slaves,

 

indicate when or where crew deserted. Finally, it is not possible to distinguish cause from effect reliably:
did crew desert because of a particularly dangerous cargo of slaves, or did the slaves rebel because a large
number of crew deserted?

'23 See W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Harvard University
Press, 1997); W. Jeffrey Bolster, "'To Feel Like a Man': Black Seamen in the Northern States," Journal of
American History, 76 (March 1990); Colin Packwood, Chained on the Rock: Slavery in Bermuda (New
York: Baxter’s Ltd., 1975). Packwood’s work is clearly the weakest, but it does offer some interesting
accounts.

12.4 Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade.
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 14.

'25 While not strictly speaking relevant to a work concentrating on the middle passage, it is instructive to
note that African seamen also played an important role in the slave trade. Africans who lived close to the
sea often had a tradition of sailing in coastal waters, and were regularly employed by white traders,
including slavers, to transport food, water and slaves to their vessels. They were linguists, pilots and
surfmen, who hired themselves out for short periods of time, and mediated between African and European
traders. See W. Bolster, Black Jacks, 50—51.

159

they could be forced to sail by their owners.126 It is unclear how many black sailors
participated voluntarily in the slave trade.127

Primary documents do not often explicitly distinguish between black and white
crew on slaving vessels, making quantiﬁcation difﬁcult. Often only an off-hand reference
indicates a crewman’s race. When sources indicate a black sailor, they do not suggest that
it was unusual. The doctor in charge of treating the captured slaves on the illegal slaver
taken by the H.M.S. Frolic off the Brazilian coast in 1843, Thomas Nelson, for example,
betrayed a sailor’s race by noting that “One of the crew, a slave, . .. preferred being
captured by Englishmen to escaping with his master?”28 To Nelson the remarkable fact
was that the slave had chosen for and managed to be captured by the British, not his race.
Bolster has persuasively argued that about 20% of all sailors in non-slave trade in the
Americas were black. It is possible, but unlikely, that this same ﬁgure will hold for
slaving vessels. Most slaving vessels originated from European ports, and the sources do
not make reference to the race of sailors frequently enough to support such a high
percentage. Some black sailors did ship out from European ports on slavers. In 1726 the
slaver Luxborough Galley departed from Kent, England under Captain William
Kellaway. The unusually interesting crew of somewhat more than forty individuals

included Caesar (an Indian), Hammose, Merry Pintle, Sharper and Coffee (black) and

 

”6 w. Bolster, Black Jacks, 118.

127 Not all black sailors who were involved in the slave trade were slavers; there is evidence that some
English vessels employed manumitted slaves on vessels engaged in suppressing the trade. Leonard noted
that “It has been the custom with the liberated African department, for a long period, to send on board our
ships of war a number of African lads recently emancipated. . ..” Some of these “African lads” undoubtedly
served on vessels patrolling the African coast. Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage to the Western Coast of
Africa in His Majesty 's Ship Dryad, and of the Service on That Station for the Suppression of the Slave
Trade in the Years 1830, 1831, and 1832 (Nendeln: Kraus, 1973), 253-5.

‘23 In R. Conrad, Children of God’s Fire, 47.

160

Jemmy (a mulatto).129 National differences between carriers played a large role in
determining the number of black sailors on board. The Brazilian trade, for example, had a
very large number of black crewmen. By examining the registers of the Brazilian slavers,
Klein has determined that 42% of the 350 ships in his sample used slaves as sailors. He
argues that the average slave vessel had 14 slave crewmen, which would mean that at
least between a third and a half of the total crew were black.130

Sailing offered black men, both slave and free, several advantages. They had a
kind of freedom not available to those onshore; they traveled large distances, and were
generally not subject to continual oversight by their owners. And if they were slaves,
sailing offered a greater possibility of earning, through trade, an income that could be
fairly easily be hidden from their owners. Though far from having been free from racism,
there was often a greater egalitarianism among sailors, black and white, than was the case
in other forms of employment on land.

The relations between white and regular black crewmembers were complex and
contradictory. They shared a common bond forged by shared work, discipline and
hardship. Competence was usually respected, whomever it came from. Pay was often
equal between white and black for the same work. But racism, conditioned by land-based
norms was very much alive on board. Black were subject to regular and overt racist
prejudice - they had the most menial jobs, little to no chance of rising to high ofﬁce, and
were the butt of cruel jokes and outright harassment far more frequently than was their

fair share. Sometimes this took very severe forms. The free black Portuguese sailor who

 

”9 N. Tattersﬁeld, The Forgotten Trade, 210. As an aside - the highlander Evander MackEvoy (or McIvor)
who fought a battle to the death with Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard the Pirate) also sailed on the vessel.

161

was employed on board as the cook on the British slaver the Little Pearl for example,
“was the common butt on which the captain and mates daily exercised their cruelty.” The
surgeon on the vessel testiﬁed to the British parliament that “The former, indeed,
appeared to enjoy a particular pleasure in ﬂogging and tormenting him. Among other
instances of wanton and unnecessary barbarity, he often amused himself with making the
man swallow cockroaches alive, on pain of being severely ﬂogged, and having beef brine
rubbed into his wounds. This last severe and humiliating alternative the man sometimes
preferred.”131 This was extreme, and by no means representative of the treatment black
sailors received. But the racism on board ensured that black crewmembers were more
vulnerable than their white counterparts to being tormented by ofﬁcers and other
crewmembers. The fact that they generally occupied the most menial and lowest status
positions on the vessel added to their vulnerability. Typical employment was as “boys”,
stewards, cook, or regular seamen.

In spite of the severities faced by black crewmembers, there is no evidence that
suggests that black crewmember instigated or supported slave mutinies any more often
than white sailors. If anything, they are underrepresented in the accounts of crew
mutinies. Slaves did not distinguish between, black or white crew, when they revolted.
Both were the oppressors, and both ran the same risks when a slave mutiny occurred. The
following account, published in the Pennsylvania Gazette of June 16, 1763 indicated no
surprise or concern with race in their description of the following mutiny. Captain Frost,

“having Occasion of either for some Wood or Water, sent two of his Men, and a Negroe

 

'30 This is the only quantitative work on black crew on slavers. It is a short paragraph, offered as an aside,
in an early work quantifying the trade. However, the Brazilian trade cannot be taken to be representative of
the Atlantic trade as a whole. H.S. Klein, The Middle Passage, 58-9.

‘3‘ In G.F. Dow, Slave Ships, 165.

162

on Shore for that Purpose, himself, the Mate, and a Negroe, who belonged to the Vessel
remaining on board.” Foolishly, “in the Mens Absence he permitted the Slaves, to the
Number of about 60, to come on Deck, who immediately seized him, with the Negroe
man, and threw them overboard.” Captain Frost was speared by the slaves when he swam
back to the vesel, “The Negroe, who was thrown over with him, had the good Fortune to
get safe ashore.”132 Black crewmembers could expect no more mercy than white
crewmembers on account of their skin colour.

There were two main categories of black sailors: free and slave. For slaving
vessels, the later category can be further reﬁned to distinguish between slaves who were
regular crewmembers, and those who I term temporary, de facto crew. These include
slaves who were purchased in Africa and who aided in sailing because it was short-
handed, or in order to teach them a skill to raise their sale value. Also included are slave
linguists and slaves who were appointed as guards while on the middle passage.

Occasionally a slaver would ﬁnd itself short-handed while on the coast of Africa,
and employ Africans as a crew. For Africans, sailing on a slaver posed an additional risk.
They could be, and sometimes were, sold into slavery at arrival. How many were sold
into slavery and ended their days as slaves is a matter of speculation. Free Africans taken
on board as crew were sometimes baited or threatened by the prospect of being sold when
the vessel arrived in the Americas. On the Rainbow, for example, “Captn. Harrison at
Benein, hired one Dick, a free negro man, as a Linguist? A sailor “told Dick that he was
no better than a Slave, and woud. be sold as such when they arriv’d at the West Indies,

that thereupon Dick grew sulky.”133 Given their vulnerable position, the threat was easy

 

'32 The Pennsylvania Gazette, 16 July 1795.
133 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 371.

163

to believe. It was sometimes used as a cruel joke, but the potential for carrying out the
threat ensured that it more than a joke. It was a form of control.

If a slave could prove that he was kidnapped, and understood that he could seek
legal remedy, he could sue for his freedom and damages. Although the odds were stacked
against kidnapped slaves, some did ﬁnd redress. In March 1779 a kidnapped slave was
awarded the substantial compensation of £500, an amount clearly intended as punitive
damages?” But this was a very exceptional case; the majority of African crewmen who
were sold into slavery remained slaves for the rest of their lives. They are irretrievably
lost to the historical record, making any estimation of their numbers pure guesswork.

Though less vulnerable, free black sailors from the Americas also ran the risk of
being sold into slavery after the completion of their voyage. They were also, like white
crewmembers, subject to impressment by the Royal Navy. George Yorke, for example,
was a free black man who sailed on the slaver the Daniel and Henry in 1700. He was,
along with two of his white shipmates, a victim of the Royal Navy impressment gangs on
arrival in Jamaica.135The Royal Navy was colour-blind in its impressment policies, a
position it took because of its (occasionally dire) need for sailors, not out of any political
principle.

African slaves were often used as de facto crewmembers in order to teach them a
skill and the rudiments of a European language in order to raise their value on arrival.

They were used in a broad range of tasks, depending on the needs of the vessel and on

 

'34 Earl Mansﬁeld, in awarding the damages, determined that “In 1774, the defendant, wanting hands while
on the coast, hired the plaintiff as sailor, advancing part of his wages. When the ship arrived at Jamaica, the
plaintiff was sent, with three other sailors, to row some slaves on shore, and, to his intense astonishment
and grief, instead of being allowed to return to the ship, he was detained by the purchaser of the slaves, to
whom the captain had sold him, and sent up to the mountains to work as a slave.” G. Williams, History of
the Liverpool Privateers, 565.

‘35 N. Tattersﬁeld, The Forgotten Trade, 54.

164

what would most raise their price. Tasks included aiding in unskilled sailing work,
cleaning, repair, and sometimes learning a specialized skill such as cooking or carpentry.
James Barbot noted that these “privilege slaves” routinely received the best food and
accommodations on board, and are “train’d up aboard, to be carpenters, coopers, and
cooks, so as to sell for the double the price of slaves in America, because of their skill
etc.”136 Usually the captain or ofﬁcers on board owned such slaves. The arrangement had
clear advantages to both the slaver and the enslaved; the former had a better chance of his
investment surviving, and could expect a greater return, while the later managed to avoid
the holds with all its hazards and horrors. The losers were the remaining slaves, at whose
expense the privilege slaves received better rations and treatment, and the ﬁnanciers of
the voyage who were also thus duped. It was a truism in the trade that privilege slaves
never died — they were merely exchanged for others below, in spite of the elaborate
precautions that ﬁnanciers took to try to ensure that this did not happen.

Unlike slaves who were recruited to sail because of depleted crew numbers,
privilege slaves do not appear to have revolted disproportionately frequently. This may
have been due to their favoured position, or to the caution of the crew. In some cases
privilege slaves changed their allegiance entirely, and betrayed the plots of slaves
conﬁned below the decks. The crew of the Mary, for example, were in 1796 “informed
by one of our Slaves that was not conﬁned but on deck as a Sailor, that the Slaves had

intentions of taking the Ship, and also advised by him to be on our guard.”137 An

 

'36 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 465. How much the price generally increased is not clear. But their skills
were a recommendation; an advertisement in London’s William ’s Advertiser of June 24, 1757, for example,
offered for sale “One stout NEGRO young fellow, about 20 years of age, that has been employed for 12
months on board a ship, and is a very serviceable hand.” In G. Williams, History of the Liverpool
Privateers, 475.

‘3’ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 374.

165

examination of the slave quarters led to evidence being found for the preparation for a
mutiny, and caused the premature launching of the attempt. Its failure was due to the
betrayal by the slave sailor.

Raising the value of slaves was only one of several reasons slaves were made de
facto crewmembers. Slaves were sometimes employed as guards over other slaves. This
appears to have often worked very well from the perspective of the slavers. Captain
Thomas Phillips of the Hannibal, for example, writes that “we have some 30 or 40 gold
coast negroes, which we buy, and are procur’d us there by our factors, to make guardians
and overseers of the Whidaw negroes.” Their duties included that they “sleep among
them to keep them from quarrelling” and “to give us notice, if they can discover any
caballing or plotting among them.” Phillip’s factors in Africa obtained the slaves
speciﬁcally to act as guards, and ensured that they were from a different people than the
rest of the slaves, suggesting that it was a structural part of the slaving expedition for
some slavers. Phillips was not disappointed by his slave-guards — the crew gave every
guard “a cat of nine tails as a badge of his office, which he [was] not a little proud of, and
exercise[d] with great authority.” According to Phillips, it was a “trust they will discharge
with great diligence.”138 Instructions from owners conﬁrmed Phillip’s experiences. They
sometimes ordered their captains to buy slaves to be guards, as Captain Barret was in
1687 . He was informed that “It is for your safety that Wee order you in Charter party to
take in 20 Gold Coast Negroes for Guardians which you must carefully doe.”139

Using slaves to betray other slaves was not conﬁned to any particular nationality.

Postma has noted that “At times Dutch ships employed spies, presumably free Africans

 

'38 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 407.
139 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 361.

166

who could understand various African languages, to obviate escapes and slave
revolts.”140 He offers no examples or evidence, so it is not clear whether he is referring to
linguists, who were indeed usually free, or to guards who where appointed from among
the slaves. I have not uncovered any primary documentation that indicates that African
guards were free individuals, hired for that purpose in Africa. There may have been
some, but slaves were far more commonly used for the purpose. It is, however, likely that
the practice of appointing slaves to aid in guarding other slaves occurred primarily in the
earlier years of the transatlantic trade. References to the practice were more common in
the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, but became increasing rare in the mid to
late eighteenth century. It is unclear why this is the case.

Nor is it clear why slaves could be recruited for positions that were clearly against
their own long-term interests, and then discharge them faithfully. That they were usually
from a different people than the remaining slaves cannot alone explain why they so often
remained true to their oppressors’ interests. Increased chances of personal survival may
have been one reason. Slave solidarity could not be taken for granted.141 The relative
status of the overseer slaves to the remaining slaves may also have played a role. Their
whips were a symbol that set them apart from the other slaves. As they were relatively
few, they were accorded individual recognition by the ultimate powers on board, the
crew. This may have lessened the feeling of degradation imposed on all slaves.
Participating in the oppression of other slaves may have decreased their own sense of
being oppressed, and given them the illusion of having been somehow more in control of

their own fates. But this is speculation, based on the observation of others in total

 

"° J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 165.
141 See Chapter Six, “Survival Strategies.”

167

systems.142 The actual beneﬁts they received from their betrayal of their fellow slaves

were negligible. They may have received some extra rations, but they shared the same

quarters with the other slaves, were sold at the end of the voyage, and in addition, bore
the animosity of the other slaves.

The linguist on board held a position that was in some respects similar to that of
African slave guards. They both served the interests of the slaver, and both were
Africans. The vital distinction between them was that the guards were slaves, while
linguists were nearly always free.143 The slaver paid linguists, unlike the guards, and
there were far fewer on board, often only one. Linguists were hired primarily to facilitate
communication between slavers and their slaves, and not to betray slave plots. But they
were unambiguously in the pay of the slavers, and their interests coincided with the
slavers’. Thus they frequently betrayed plots by slaves, and if ﬁghting broke out on a
vessel, both slaves and slavers understood on whose side the linguists stood. Linguists
were frequently the victims of slave unrest, partly because of the amount of time they
spent among the slaves. They were also often ﬁrst in the line of attack before a mutiny
was defeated. This was the case on Captain Harris’ vessel. He wrote to his owners on
February 28, 1758 that “The negroes rose on us after we left St. Thomas’s; they killed my

linguister whom I got at Benin, and we then secured them without farther loss.”l""

 

”2 See for example Viktor Frankyl, Man's Search For Meaning (New York: Washington Square Press,
1985).

”3 There were exceptions — a slave who made the middle passage on a Portuguese vessel, Mahommah
Gardo Baquaqua, wrote in his biography that “Some of the slaves on board could talk Portuguese. They had
been living on the coast with Portuguese families, and they used to interpret to us. They were not placed in
the hold with the rest of us, but came down occasionally to tell us something or the other.” In R.E. Conrad,
Children of God's Fire, 28. This was however, an exceptional case. The slaves were not formally employed
as linguists, and had their privileged position to thank to their coincidental usefulness to the crew.

“4 In e. Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 371.

168

Linguists, like all African employees on a slaver, ran the risk of being betrayed by their
employers, and being sold as slaves when the vessel arrived in the Americas.

Among the de facto crewmembers was a group of temporary slave crewmembers
that 1 term “emergency slave crew.” These were ordinary slaves purchased in Africa who
were ordered to do particular tasks, often in times of distress. The tasks covered a broad
spectrum, but unless the slaver was short-handed, they had in common that they were
particularly unpleasant or dangerous. Slaves were used to clean the holds, and sometimes
to remove the dead bodies from the holds. The later was the case during a smallpox
epidemic on Captain Canot’s vessel La Estrella. He relates that “Twelve of the stoutest
survivors were ordered to drag out the dead from among the ill.” So horriﬁc was the work
that “though the twelve were constantly drenched with rum to brutalize them, still we
were forced to aid the gang by reckless volunteers from our crew.” This was not an
isolated incident; in the illegal trade slaves on board the Boo Morte were forced perform
the same task. As “The crew revolted at this work”, “we had to rely on gangs of slaves to
drag the dead heaps from among the living.” ”5

When a vessel was short-handed or otherwise in distress, the crew sometimes
turned to the slaves for aid. Usually the depletion of the regular crew by illness or death,
sometimes combined with desertions forced the captain to use slaves as emergency crew.
Such was the case in 1795 when the notaries in Brazil inventoried the number of slaves

on a recently arrived vessel. They found that there were “494 live slaves and one female

child of one-half rights, and 11 children at the breast, in which ﬁgure are included 12 who

 

”5 Isidor Paiewonsky, Eyewitness accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies, Also Graphic Tales of
Other Slave Happenings on Ships and Plantations (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), 53.

169

come as members of the crew, for lack of sailors.”146 Such references are not rare. ”7
Using slaves as temporary crewmembers in emergency situations was, however, risky.

Illness, mortality, and navy press gangs forced slavers to make difﬁcult choices.
Extra hands were sometimes an absolute necessity. But as the slaves were not
experienced sailors, a relatively large number needed to be released to do the work of the
regular crew. As illness and death had already reduced the number of regular crew,
releasing so many slaves posed a double risk. Most often this passed without mishap, but
not always. A newspaper report of 18 November 1765 was a typical account of a slave
insurrection that was begun by temporary emergency crew. Captain Hopkins, “soon after
he left the Coast, the Number of his men being reduced by Sickness, was obliged to
permit some of the Slaves to come upon Deck to assist the People.” Not being agents of
the slavers, unlike slave guards or linguisters, “These Slaves contrived to release the
others, and the whole rose upon the People, and endevoured to get Possession of the
Vessel.”148 This attempt, like most, was defeated. The crew was on their guard, and
retained control over the tools of violence. In addition, when slaves were released for
emergency work, the vessel was nearly always on the actual Atlantic crossing. The slaves
did not have the skills to handle or navigate the vessel, and this gave substantial
protection from insurrections.

An insufﬁcient number of healthy regular crew to man the vessel was not the only

emergency situation in which a slaver looked to his slave holds in order to save his

 

”6 In H.S. Klein, The Middle Passage, 52.

147 In a typical example, when illness ravaged the crew of James Stanﬁeld’s vessel a number of slaves were
chosen from the holds, and “freed from their irons, and they pulled and hauled as they were directed by the
inefﬁcient sailors.” In G. F. Dow, Slave Ships, 166.

"8 According to the article, this “was happily prevented by the Captain and his Men, who killed, wounded
and forced overboard, Eighty of them, which obliged the rest to submit.” The Pennsylvania Gazette,
November 18, 1765.

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vessel. Slaves were occasionally used to ﬁght privateers who attacked the slaving vessel.
Crew were aware of the danger, and often signed a clause in their contracts that bound
them to ﬁght. Slaves did not. Yet slaves sometimes fought to save the vessel from
capture. In testimony to the British parliament in 1789, Captain James Penny claims in
times of war to have “sometimes disciplined Part of the Negroes as Marines.” He claims
to have “had such Conﬁdence in them, that he has frequently been upon the Quarter Deck
in the Middle of them, when they have been armed, and have been entrusted with Powder
and Balls.”149 Penny’s testimony was not by any means unique. In 1758 Captain William
Boates had “a smart engagement with a French privateer sloop of 12 carriage guns, and
full of men, which attempted to board him several times.” According to Gomer, “Captain
Boates armed several of his negroes, who behaved very gallantly with the small arms,
and eventually the privateer sheered off, much disabled, and it was later reported that she
had sunk.”150
A letter dated 28 April 1781 from Captain Stevenson to his owners relates a very
similar story. He “had the misfortune to fall in with a French privateer of 14 guns, and 85

men.” They battled with “great guns and small arms”, but the French vessel “grappled

our main chains, and we lay together yardarm and yardarm for above one glass.” During

 

"9 In Michael Craton and James Walvin et. al., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation, 36. Penny’s
testimony is strongly biased in favour of the trade, and downplays the horrors inﬂicted on the slavers. This
aspect of his testimony, however, is supported by several unrelated accounts.

1 G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 484. William Boates is one of the more colorful
ﬁgures of the eighteenth century slave trade. Due to his extensive dealing in the slave trade, his name
appears on many documents relating to the trade, and elsewhere. His life is the quintessential eighteenth
century rags to riches story. He was an orphan who had his last name to thank to the vessel he was found
in, and was later apprenticed as a mariner. He rose through the ranks to command several slaving vessels,
after which he became a major Liverpool ship owner and ﬁnancier of the slave trade. When he heard the
news that one of his vessels had captured a Spanish vessel laden with gold, silver and other valuables, he is
reported to have run along Pierhead shouting “Billy Boates — born a beggar, die a lord!” He died aged 78,
and was eulogized in the local Liverpool newspaper of 3 November 1794 as a man whose “extensive
transaction in the commercial world rendered him a most useful ember of society, and whose memory will
be long revered by all who had connections with him.” This presumably excluded slaves.

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that time, Stevenson relates, “I had about ﬁfty men, black and white, on deck at great
guns and small arms, halfpikes, boathooks, boat oars, steering-sail-yards, ﬁrewood, and
slack ballast.” The black men to whom Captain Stevenson refers were certainly slaves, as
the Rose shipped with only thirty crewmembers.ls ‘ He concluded that “My people all
behaved very well, both white and black.” He suffered one fatality among his crew, was
himself “wounded , and ﬁve other white people, as likewise seven blacks, one of which is
since dead, the other six I am in hopes will recover.” The injuries were sustained as “The
Frenchman hove such a large quantity of powder ﬂasks on board us, that the ship abaft
was all in a blaze of ﬁre three different time. This hurt the blacks much, having no
trowsers on them.”152 The fact that the black ﬁghters had “no trowsers” conﬁrms that
they were slaves. Regular black seamen would certainly have had trousers.

When a slaver was under siege, slaves were sometimes also put to other tasks. In a
battle in 1831 between an illegal Spanish slaver, armed with “ﬁve guns, twenty pounders,
(one on a pivot) and seventy-two men” and a Royal Navy vessel, for example, “The
Spaniard did every thing in his power to escape.” The Marinerito ’S, crew “compelled the
slaves to take the oar, and had therefor an additional advantage over his persuers.””’3

Both positive and negative incentives were used to enlist the slaves’ aid when a
vessel was under attack. Slaves were sometimes promised their freedom if they fought.
Godfrey Malbone, a slaver and privateer from Rhode Island , when under attack by

pirates, “offered freedom to all the slaves who would join in defending the vessel. The

enemy was repulsed, and the freed slaves settled on the Malbone estate in Pomfret,

 

151 D. Eltis et al. The Atlantic Slavery Database, voyage 110- 24204-
152 G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 565.
‘53 P. Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 130-131-

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Conn.”154 Very few sources, however, indicate that such a promise was made, and the
making and keeping of a promise to slaves could easily be two different things. The
slaves had neither the right nor the power to enforce the bargain. It is possible that such
promises were made more frequently than they were kept; in such cases it was not be in
the captain’s interest to record the promise.

In an example of a negative incentive, Joseph Wright and his fellow slaves were
terrorized into aiding their oppressors in 1827. Wright’s narrative relates how the sight of
British Navy vessel, “ put [the Portuguese] to disquiteness and confusion. They then told
us that these were the people which will eat us, if we suffered them to prize us.” The
threat worked — the Portuguese gave the slaves “long oars and .. we tried to pull as we
were able.” The fear of being cannabalized existed on many vessels, including Wright’s.
Even before the British vessel was sighted, in Wright’s words, “we had heard that the
Portuguese were going to eat us when we got to their country.” ‘55 Slavers exploited this
fear when it was in their interests to do so. Only very seldom was the slaves’ fear of
being captured justiﬁed. They were nearly always sold in the New World by the victors,
as a prize of the battle, which changed their situation not at all.'56

The range of choices open to slaves when their vessel was under attack was very
narrow. Only a small percentage of the slaves, presumably those judged most trustworthy
by the crew, were selected to ﬁght. Whether or not they were explicitly promised a

reward, they probably expected some preferential treatment after the battle. By not

 

154 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 131.

‘5’ In P. D. Curtin, ed., Afn’ca Remembered, 331.

‘56 There is a highly exceptional account in which this did not happen. The Liverpool slaver Ogden, under
Captain Tristram “bound from Africa to Jamaica, was taken by a Spanish privateer. The gallant resistance
made by the crew so irritated the Spaniards, that, on boarding the Ogden, they killed all, both whites and
blacks, during which the ship sunk, and all on board, except one man, ﬁve boys, and nine negroes,
perished.” In G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, 472.

173

fighting, they risked reprisals by the crew. Revolt was not an attractive option. They were
under constant observation by armed crew, had had no time to plan a revolt, and a failed
attempt would certainly be dealt with swiftly and violently. If they succeeded in taking
the vessel while it was under attack, it would almost certainly fall to the attacker. In the
ﬁnal analysis, revolting while the ship was under attack promised little hope for slave to
better their lot.

Crewing on a slaver was a hard life, and for those in the lower ranks, usually an
unrewarding one. Yet in spite of the circumstances which proscribed their actions and
choices, and the times that provided the context for their slaving activities, to a signiﬁcant
degree, slaving crew were a self-selected group. Most often they did not have to sail on
slavers. Usually they had other choices — often difﬁcult ones, with uncertain outcomes to
be sure, but choices nonetheless. While on board, though constrained by their
circumstances, they still had some choice in their day-to-day actions, their attitudes, and
how they treated the slaves. As such, they were to a large degree responsible for their
actions, and were as much as ﬁnanciers and planters responsible for the Atlantic slave

trade.

174

CHAPTER 4: RESISTANCE AND REBELLION

“We receive them onboard from the first as enemies”1

All slavery depended on violence and the threat of violence for its maintenance.
The ubiquitous nature of resistance was the reason for this. The intensive study of
resistance has changed the modern perception of slavery, the relations between slaver and
enslaved, and has allowed a more nuanced and subtle understanding of the institution of
slavery to unfold.2 Unlike slave resistance on land, slave resistance on the seas has not
been accorded systematic study. In part this is because the sources are not as
forthcoming, and in part because the middle passage has been conceptualized as a time of
transition rather than a stage upon which lives unfolded. This view has been held at the
expense of the social history of slaves and slavers on the middle passage. This chapter
and the following address the lacuna.

A lack of sources that could be used to recover what slaves felt and thought forces

scholars to look to slaves’ actions to speak for them. As with any grouping of individuals

 

1 John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754 (With Newton '3 Thoughts upon the African
Slave Trade '), Martin Bernard & M. Spurrell (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), p. 103. He noted that“...
it is not to be expected that they will tamely resign themselves to their situation. It is always taken for
granted, that they will attempt to gain their liberty if possible. Accordingly, we dare not trust them ...”

For land-based slavery the study of resistance has a rich body of work built up from the early efforts of
scholars such as W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Stampp, and Herbert
Aptheker among others. Several later historians, such as Vincent Harding, John Blassingame, Herbert
Gutrnan and Eugene Genovese have expanded on this. The study of resistance has become an integral part
of the study of slavery. No serious work now considers any aspect of slavery without taking into account
how resistance strategies, overt or implicit shaped the experience. Oppression and resistance to it were two
sides of the same coin. The emphasis placed on resistance in modern slavery studies, however, also can
potentially be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has been vital in allowing a more accurate
representation of slavery to be written. It has also returned an agency to the oppressed that would otherwise
have been lost. But on the other hand, there is a danger of creating unreasonable present-day expectations
from slaves. The stakes were extremely high to slaves, and it is far easier to expect resistance when far
removed in time and condition from the slaves’ plight, than it is to expect it in its historical context. Such
expectations risk trivializing much of the resistance that did take place.

175

where one group holds an inferior position of power with regard to the other, the open,
day-to-day interactions between the groups are not necessarily the best or most reliable
guide to the actual relationship between the groups. The actions of both parties on a day
to day basis involved a form of role-playing. The role-playing of slaves towards their
oppressors was informed by, among others, the dominant groups expectations of them,
their own survival needs, and the amount of ﬂexibility permitted in the relation. Much of
what occurred on board can no longer be recovered; only the recorded public interaction
between the groups survives. That and what can be deduced from it forms the basis of
this chapter. Role-playing broke down when slaves resisted. Resistance and mutiny were
a way in which slaves spoke out for themselves, individually and collectively.

I deﬁne resistance as any action deliberately undertaken by a slave or a group of
slaves that was not in the interests of their owner or his agent. Resistance on the middle
passage was any action deliberately undertaken by a slave or a group of slaves while on
board that was not in the direct or indirect interests of their owner(s) or their agents. This
deﬁnition excludes acts of resistance that took place in the barracoons, or attempts to
escape while on the beaches and the like.3 My deﬁnition is an extension of how slavery
and a slave were deﬁned in the New World legal tradition. The slave was legally
property, and an extension of his or her master’s will. The deﬁnition of slavery implies
the deﬁnition of resistance under slavery. If a slave was deﬁned as a piece of property
rather than an individual in his or her own right, than any deliberate actions by which the
slave asserted his or her own will against that of the owner must necessarily have been an

act of resistance against the owner. By extension the act was also resistance to slavery as

176

an institution, whether or not the slave intended it as such. This was necessarily so, as
that which is resistance against the owner necessarily challenged the system to which the
owner subscribed. The conditions of oppression deﬁned what resistance against it was,
and thus the slaver, not the enslaved, set the standards for determining what resistance
against slavery was.4

It is not always easy to determine whether any given act was or was not an act of
resistance on the middle passage. The sources are usually incomplete, and very rarely
describe incidents from the perspective of the slave. This often makes it difﬁcult to
recover the motivation for any particular action. The question of whether an act was
undertaken deliberately is also not always clear cut. A slave, by his or her circumstances
or perceptions, might have been forced into a particular course of action. From the
enslaver’s perspective the same act might have been a deliberate act of resistance that he
felt undermined his authority or proprietary rights. For example, a slave might have
refused food on the middle passage due to illness or shock, rather than out of a deliberate
attempt to starve him or herself. Here too, it is often well nigh impossible to recover
where the truth lay, if indeed there was one single truth.

I define rebellion as resistance that deliberately directed violence outwards toward
the oppressor. Not all acts of resistance that included a violent component were acts of
rebellion. A suicide, for example, was a violent action, but the violence was not directly

aimed at the oppressor — rather it was turned inward. Thus it was an act of resistance, not

 

3 This too is a time period in the enslavement process that has not been accorded sufﬁcient attention. It is
almost impossible to ﬁnd a scholarly article that examines life in the barracoons, the differences between
holding areas by nation or time period, mortality and the causes thereof, and similar questions.

’ This raises the essential philosophical difﬁculty with slavery: resistance invoked the slave’s articulation of
self, of his or her individuality, that which was not an agent of the owner, but made its own statement on its
own terms. This directly contradicted the owner’s assertion that to be a slave was to have one’s self entirely

177

rebellion, by my deﬁnition. Similarly, slaves ﬁghting among themselves was not
rebellion by my deﬁnition, even though it involves overt violence, and is not in the
Slaver’s best interests. The striking of a crewmember, however, was a clear act of
rebellion.

Slaves on the middle passage could not simply be divided into docile, obedient
slaves and rebellious slaves. All slaves had the potential to rebel and who did or did not,
and when, depended on a myriad of dynamic factors. These included the temperament of
the individual, opportunity or the lack thereof, the actions of other slaves, the sanctions
against a particular act and the risk of being caught, all of which were subject to change
over time and slaving vessel. Slavers could guess which slaves or times were particularly
dangerous, but they could not know with any certainty when resistance would occur or
who it would come from. This affected their actions, and that of slaves. The threat of
resistance was at least as formative of the middle passage as actual acts of resistance or
rebellion.

Resistance and the threat of resistance played a vital part in the shaping of the
middle passage both for crew and slaves. For the slavers, every slave was a potential risk.
They were simultaneously the source of proﬁt, and an important threat to the success of
the voyage and their enslavers’ lives. Every slave had the potential to rebel, and both
slavers and slaves knew it. Because of this, instructions to captains of slaving vessels
were replete with warnings about uprisings and tips on how to avoid them. The
following, issued to Captain William Barry in 1725 was typical. His ﬁnanciers detailed

strict preventative measures, urging Barry “So soon as you begin to slave let your

 

subjected to the will of the owner. In other words, strictly speaking, a slave could have no true self, as it
was always necessarily under the inﬂuence of the slave’s owner.

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knetting be ﬁx’d breast high fore and aft and so keep ‘em shackled and hand Bolted
fearing their rising or leaping Overboard.” They ordered to “let always a Constant and
Careful] watch be appointed to which you must give the strictest Charge.”5 The threat of
resistance and rebellion were of primary importance in determining both slaver routines
and actions. Slavers often could not know which slaves were most likely to rebel, and this
uncertainty necessarily caused them to view all slaves as on board as threats.

Slaves on sea thought about and plotted serious acts of rebellion frequently. These
plans that did not come to fruition are almost all lost, as they were very unlikely to be
recorded if they did not actually occur. But on a certain level they did happen. They
cannot be counted and examined in the same way as realized acts of resistance and
rebellion can be, but they threatened the slavers nonetheless. Nearly all successful
rebellions were preceded by careful planning, and slavers were constantly on guard to
learn of any plotting. Even if the dissent was not expressed toward the enslavers because
of the danger, the small likelihood of success or fear of reprisals, slaves plotting
resistance ensured that if an opportunity ever arose, it would be taken advantage of.
Thoughts of resistance, plots planned but not taken to fruition, suicides contemplated but
not accomplished and escapes attempts not realized also caused slavers to constantly be
on their guard. Although lapses in vigilance did occur, crews were very much aware of
the danger an unguarded moment posed. John Newton, a slaver for nine years, explicitly
noted that “One unguarded hour, or minute, is sufﬁcient to give the slaves the opportunity

they are always waiting for.”6

 

5 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 2
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930—35), p. 327-8.
6 John Newton, The Journal, 103.

179

The threat of slave resistance forced slaving vessels’ crews to rely on an
authoritarian and inﬂexible system of control. All erosion in authority could easily be
expensive in ﬁnancial terms, and more importantly from the perspective of the crew, their
personal safety. Slaves on the middle passage were more desperate, and more
immediately so than their counterparts on land, and any - even minor - compromises
were more likely to be interpreted as weakness. The very fact that slave owners needed to
and often did reach (tacit) agreements with their slaves on land implied the obvious - that
actual enslavement was not a reﬂection of the philosophical ideal implied in the
deﬁnition of a slave. On a slave ship, control was far more absolute. Slavers enforced
their domination more overtly, and employed more guards and more overt violence. More
than on land slavers worried that anything that suggested a division between them would
be exploited by slaves and encourage resistance. Instructions to captains from ﬁnanciers
warn of this, and slavers themselves noted it. Newton, after having rid his vessel of two
insurrectionary crewmembers, was “very glad to have them out of the ship.” While they
were on board, he felt that he “could not be but in constant alarms, as such a mark of
division amongst us was a great encouragement to the slaves to be troublesome.”7 The
power of the slavers to discourage resistance relied not only on the violence that they
imposed on the slaves, but at least as importantly, on the perception of the slaves of that
power and by extension, the Slaver’s invincibility and indivisibility. Thus to strike one
crewmember was in effect an attack on all crewmembers and it was dealt with as such.

Shipboard resistance was both similar to, and in other respects, different from
resistance on land. Resistance on slaving vessels was no less substantial or important than

that on land. Nor did it have less of an effect on deﬁning that particular condition of

 

7 1. Newton, The Journal, 72.

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slavery. The essence of both was the same. As on land, every act of resistance implicitly
challenged the fundamentals of the institution. At its core, all resistance pitted a sense of
individuality that insisted on a level of human dignity, against an institution that
attempted to reduce individuals to the level of property. All acts of resistance, on land
and sea, necessarily relied on the guidance of a deeply held value that had been violated.
No matter where it took place, whether it was embryonic or organized on a large scale,
slaves asserted themselves through resistance, and this constituted a rejection of slavery
at its most fundamental level. By resisting, all slaves joined the battle over who owned
them.8 The basis of resistance and the need for constant vigilance on land and sea was the
same. Most resistance, on land and sea, was directed against being enslaved oneself
rather than the institution per se. This much resistance on the middle passage had in
common with resistance on land. Resistance, however took substantially different forms
depending on the nature of oppression, the circumstances it took place in, and the
opportunities for it to surface.

More so than on land, the resistance on slaving vessels reﬂected African
traditions. Slaves relied solely on African cultural norms to guide their actions and
reactions in dealing with their circumstances. Captain Newton, for example, recorded that
on his vessel, “we were alarmed with a report that some of the men slaves had found
means to poyson the water in the scuttle casks on deck. . ..” But on “enquiry” he found
that they had only “conveyed some of their country fetishes, as they call them, or

talismans into one of them, which they had the credulity to suppose must inevitably kill

 

8 This is a question that has to do with the nature of human dignity, and indeed, with what the deﬁnition of
“human” means. As Albert Camus noted, the slave cannot rebel “without the feeling that somewhere, in
some way, you are justiﬁed. He afﬁrms there are limits and also that he suspects - and wishes to
preserve - the existence of certain things beyond those limits. He stubbomly insists that there are certain

181

all who drank of it.” Newton was relieved, but he understood the sub-text well enough,
and concluded that “if it please God thay make no worse attempts than to charm us to
death, they will not much harm us, but it shews their intentions are not wanting.”9 The
slaves on Newton’s vessel had turned to their own culture and previous experiences to
respond to a new threat. It was out of context, but people who were born and raised with
little, if any, sustained contact with non-African norms, beliefs and cultures responded in
a way dictated by their own worldview and cultural norms. Africa, of course, was not
culturally homogenous, and the above example was only one from a much larger and
often more effective repertoire. In the Americas, African cultural patterns shaped
resistance too, especially among ﬁrst generation slaves, or more strongly yet, recently
arrived slaves.10 However, this was mediated by the different cultural norms that they
were confronted by, both that of their oppressors and existing slave-cultures. Neither was
the case on the middle passage.

On the middle passage the dehumanization and the lack of individualism allowed
slaves was very extreme compared to land, as was the coercion needed to sustain it.
There was little room for, or point to, minor acts of resistance. When resistance on the
middle passage occurred, it tended to be serious, and usually, violent. Usually resistance

on the middle passage had as its goal to end an individual’s enslavement outright, either

 

things in him which are worth while. . .. and which must be taken into consideration.” Albert Camus, The
Rebel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 19.

9 John. Newton, the Journal, 56.

'0 See for example David Gaspar’s study of the 1736 slave uprising on Antigua in Bondsmen and Rebels: A
Study Master-Slave Relations in Antigua with Implications for Colonial British America (Baltimore: Johns
HOpkins University Press, 1985), 236. Not only was recently arrived slave’s resistance more strongly
shaped by their African background, they also tended to rebel more. See for example Peter H. Wood, Black
Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf,
1978), who in his discussion quotes a contemporary source, John Brickell who explained that “The Negroes
that most commonly rebel, are those brought from Guinea . . .. Few born here, or in the other Provinces
have been guilty of these vile Practices,” 301—2. Philip D. Morgan, in "The Cultural Implication of the

182

by escape, mutiny or suicide. There is little evidence to show that there was much
resistance undertaken to ameliorate immediate conditions, gain more freedoms or other
privileges, to insist on a level of individual respect, or to negotiate a more easily
accommodated form of oppression.11 Resistance on a slaving vessel also had a greater
potential to spread, and it did so faster than on land. This was partly due to the contained
nature of the stage, and partly due to the greater willingness of slaves to risk their lives.
The transient nature of the middle passage also meant that slaves and slavers did not have
the time or inclination to learn to know each other, or to adapt to each other. They shared
no future together, and both sides were aware of it. All these factors set the stage for
extreme forms of resistance.

On slaving vessels slaves were crowded in an undifferentiated mass where even
the most basic signiﬁer of individuality, the possession of a name, was not respected. As
on land, the great inequities in the distribution of power between oppressor and oppressed
led to slaves adopting a mask both as a form of survival strategy and to hide the potential
for resistance that lay within. But slaves on board used different masks than those on

land.12 On a slaving vessel masks served primarily for slaves to blend in with the other

 

Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments,"
Slavery and Abolition (June 1997), 199 makes a similar argument.

" Resistance could on land and sea could have had immediate goals or intentions, such as the amelioration
of living or working conditions, the expression of dissatisfaction with a certain event, or the attempt to save
oneself from an immediate fate, such as rape. But such resistance was far more common on land. But
exceptions did occur on the middle passage. Often this had to do with the lack of water. Mahomah
Baquaqua, for example, recounted that on his voyage made in 1840 on a Brazilian slaver “We suffered very
much for want of water, but was denied all we needed. There was one poor fellow so very desperate for
want of water, that he attempted to snatch a knife from the white men who brought the water, when he was
taken up on deck and I never knew what became of him. I supposed he was thrown overboard.” However,
incidents like this form the exception to the rule. As Baquaqua conﬁrmed, the risks of confronting the
slavers themselves were simply too high. R. Conrad, World of Sorrow, 27.

’2 There were some commonalties between masks on sea and those identiﬁed on land. On land such
stereotype images as “Sambo,” “Uncle Tom” and “Mammy” have been uncovered as masks used by slaves
to hide their true selves. On a slaving vessels masks also served to hide the slaves, true selves from their
oppressors. They also served to avoid attracting unwanted attention from the oppressors.

183

slaves on board, rather than for the creating of an elaborate persona for white
consumption, as on land. It was potentially dangerous to stand out from the crowd on a
slaving ship, and the opportunity to hide in the mass of other slaves was greater. On a
slaving vessel successful masking led to invisibility, and projected, if anything, an
apparent docility. On a ship the masks were not as reﬁned or diverse as those built up
after years of practice on land. Masks and self-control broke down more frequently on the
middle passage. Unlike on land, there were no escape valves or opportunities to leave,
even for a few hours, to recompose oneself. Slavers too tended to wear role-dictated
masks. But the mask of power was thinner on the middle passage. There was little room
for myths of paternalism, the “happy slave” and the “benevolent master” and the like.
Slave-ship life was more dangerous, and of a shorter duration than that on land, and the
masks reﬂected that; they were fragile, more susceptible to outbreaks of temper, and less
well practiced. Occasionally slaves on board attacked crewmembers in a seemingly
unpremeditated fashion, with what appears to be no clear motive other than the
experience of enslavement. However, violence of this nature was more often directed
inwards, for example through suicides, or if outwards, towards other slaves. Slaves
fought often, and sometimes seriously, among each other on the middle passage.l3 On a
slaving vessel the human being underlying the mask was closer to the surface, and more
desperate, both of which were reﬂected in the violent nature and frequency of resistance
on the middle passage. The incidences of suicides and full-scale mutinies on slaving
vessels far outstrip the incidence of comparable acts of rebellion on land. Eric Wolfe has
observed that “a rebellion cannot start from a situation of complete impotence; the

powerless are easy victims” and this was as true on the middle passage as anywhere

 

‘3 See chapter 6 “Survival Strategies” for more on this.

184

else.” The slaves on the middle passage were not easy victims. Compared to slaves on
land, the slaves on the middle passage were generally more desperate, more numerous
relative to their enslavers, and felt that they had less to lose. A large part of their power
lay in their greater willingness to take extreme risks.

No oppression short of death is absolute; there is always a “gray area” between
oppressor and oppressed which falls between total submission and total control. In
slavery on land, there was always a sliding scale between ‘allowable,’ minor acts of
resistance, and ‘serious’ forms of resistance that the oppressor would not tolerate. This
was usually a tacitly negotiated space between the oppressor and the oppressed.15 Several
such understandings could be reached concurrently. The space allowed was different
depending on the circumstances. It varied between place of enslavement, type of work,
and the individuals a slave came into contact with. But the space was always
characterized by a boundary that the slave was forbidden to cross, and did so at his or her
peril. When that boundary was crossed, the oppressor felt either personally threatened or
that the institution which he or she represents was being undermined. The middle passage
was no different in this regard. But what was very different on the middle passage was
the amount of space allowed, and the amount of room for negotiation. On a slaving vessel
there was less room for the slaves to maneuver than on land, and minor aCts of resistance
had little point. There was no sophisticated and implicitly understood method of

negotiation between slaves and crew. All that could be negotiated was the relative lack of

 

‘4 B. Gaspar, Bondsmen and Rebels, 256.

'5 Many writers on slavery have realized this, and have approached the study of this space and the
dynamics informing it from different perspectives. See for an early example Eugene D. Genovese, Roll,
Jordan, Roll. The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974). For a more recent example,
see Robert Anthony Olwell, "Authority and Resistance: Social Order in a Colonial Slave Society, the South
Carolina Lowcountry, 1739-1782," (PhD. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1990).

185

overt violence on board and sometimes, sex.16 And the space to negotiate even that much
was very small.

There are several reasons why the negotiating room between slaves and slavers on
board a slaving vessel differed to that between slaves and slave owners on land. One was
the fact that the slaves had very little to negotiate with. There was little or no opportunity
for work delays, the breaking of tools, establishing an acceptable level of insolence, and
the like. ‘Protest resistance’ such as running away for a short period of time, or working
too slowly and breaking tools, as has been identiﬁed on land was impossible on board a
slaving vessel.l7 Nor were there the conditions or need to develop a long-term
relationship between slaver and slaver. The middle passage was too short and too
depersonalized for that.18 The extreme imbalance of power on board, the desperation of
slaves and the potential for escalation of protest on board also limited the space for
negotiation.

Slave owners on land and crew on slaving vessels both appealed to their slaves’
self interest in order to attempt to win their compliance. However, as there was a
signiﬁcantly less room for compromises on sea, the rewards slaves received for

compliance nearly always centered around being subjected to relatively less overt

 

1" See Chapter 1, “Women” for more on sexual relationships on board. Many other things could of course
be offered for negotiation by slaves, for example, whether or not they chose to eat well, the general
atmosphere on board, the number of suicide attempts and the like. But the crew did generally not enter into
such negotiations. Slaves could be and were forced to eat, whipped for insolence and chained or punished
for suicide attempts. Ultimately the amount of overt violence on board was all the slaves could negotiate,
and sometimes not even that.

‘7 For a discussion of running away for a short period of time, see Drew Gilpin Faust, "Culture, Conﬂict,
and Community: The Meaning of Power on an Ante-Bellum Plantation." Journal of Social History 14, 1
(Fall 1980), 91.

'8 However, as with many generalizations about the slave trade, there were exceptions. See chapter 3,
“Crew” for a discussion on this.

186

violence.19 Just as slaves had little to offer slavers other than obedience, slavers had little
to negotiate with other than relatively less violence. On slaving vessels, this was often not
an acceptable bargain for the slaves.

Some slavers hoped that the ‘reasonableness’ or ‘justness’ of their position and
the ‘fairness’ with which they treated their slaves would curb the inclination to resist or
rebel. Snelgrave, for example, asked his slaves why they had mutinied after the attempt
was put down. Reasonably enough, the slaves “answered I was a great Rogue to buy
them, in order to carry them away from their own Country, and that they were resolved to
regain their Liberty if possible.” Snelgrave then claimed to have justiﬁed his actions to
the slaves by arguing that “they had forfeited their Freedom before I bought them, either
by Crimes or by being taken in War, according to the Custom of their Country.” But
violence and threats of violence curbed resistance, not reasoning. Snelgrave, of course
knew this, and concluded his debate with a threat: he told his slaves that “they now being
my property, I was resolved to let them feel my Resentment, if they abused my
Kindness.”20 From the Slaver’s perspective, mutiny and violent attacks against crew
ranked as the most serious forms of slave dissent, followed by suicide and escape
attempts. Actions that threatened white lives elicited the harshest punishments, followed

by those that threatened white authority and the ﬁnancial viability of the journey.

 

'9 Or a variation on the theme — such as not being chained, or not being as heavily chained. Some slavers
even offered “deck privileges” - the allowing of some slaves to make the journey on the deck instead of in
the holds - to a small number of especially trusted slaves. But there were some exceptions. Some slavers
attempted to use positive incentives, such as offering some tobacco to chew or smoke, some watered down
liquor, or possibly beads for the women to entertain themselves with. There is, however, little indication
that these were effective in controlling slave behavior to any degree. The rewards were too small to
structurally change slave motivations.

2° Snelgrave believed that his reasonableness had “served my purpose,” and that “they seemed convinced of
their Fault.” There is little evidence to that this was a widely practiced technique of combating resistance
on the middle passage, or in the least effective. In Snelgrave’s case, his vessel suffered another (betrayed)
mutiny plot. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 354-5.

187

Suicide attempts did not threaten the lives of the crew, but they did threaten the
economic success of the voyage. Suicide was, by my deﬁnition, certainly an act of
resistance. Slaves, by the Western deﬁnition of slavery, did not have the right to end their
own lives. Their lives did not belong to them, but rather to their purchaser. As such, self-
killing amounted to stealing property from the slaves’ owners: in short, resistance.
Suicide differed from other forms of resistance in only one particular — when successful,
it always led to the death of the slave. The observation may seem a trite, but the
implications were not. Suicide was an act of desperation, which more forcefully than any
other act of resistance demonstrated the slave’s depth of rejection of the system that
enslaved him or her, and the conditions of that enslavement. Suicide and suicide attempts
had many catalysts, but ultimately the reason for slaves on the middle passage killed
themselves was because they refused to endure their present slavery or accept the future it
promised them.

It is not clear how common suicide was among slaves during the middle passage.
Many of the accounts of suicides in the primary literature cannot be taken at face value.
Often it is difﬁcult to establish whether the cause of death was correctly attributed, and
whether there were motives for over or under-recording losses on a voyage as suicides.
Stein has argued that “Captains reported few suicides, even though such events would
have made excellent excuses for poor trades.”21 His view is, however, problematic. First,
“few” remains undeﬁned, while suicides were relatively often reported in contemporary
documents. Second, doubtful whether suicide would have formed “an excellent excuse”

for a large mortality on a slaving voyage. If a voyage suffered many suicides, it would

 

2‘ R.L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 94.

188

have reﬂected badly on the captain’s ability to discharge his duties effectively. Slaving
vessel crews took elaborate precautions to prevent loss by suicide, and the captains were
responsible for making sure that they did so. Illness, over which the slavers had much
less control, would have made a much better excuse. Only a few writers have ventured
estimates of the number of successful suicides that took place on the middle passage.
Given the problems with determining how many were (accurately) reported and, above
all, the ambiguous nature of many suicides, these must be seen as very rough guesses.
Postma, extrapolating from a small sample in the Dutch slave trade, has suggested that
suicides accounted for 1% of all deaths on the middle passage.22 This would total
approximately 14,000 deaths by suicide over the entire trade after 1600.23 The only other
attempt to quantify suicides was by Pierson. He did not venture percentages, but was
content to note the obvious — “Only a small minority of African emigrants willfully ended
their lives.” But he extrapolated this well beyond the bounds of possibility. He concluded
that “since these suicides were part of one of the world’s largest intercontinental
migrations, their numbers were probably in the hundreds of thousands over the three
century span of the Atlantic slave trade.”24 If “hundreds of thousands” were taken to
mean two hundred thousand, one out of every seven deaths on the middle passage must
have been due to suicide. There is no evidence to support this. Postma’s ﬁgure is much
more likely to approach the actual rate, though it remains subject to adjustment

depending largely how suicide is deﬁned.

 

22 J.M. Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade I600-1815 (New York: Cambridge U.P., 1990), 241.
23 The calculation is based on a total embarkation ﬁgure of 11.4 million slaves and a disembarkation of 10
million slaves in the post 1600 Atlantic trade. This provides a mortality rate of 12.7%, or 1.4 million

ple.
B“William Pierson, "White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression and Religious Faith as Causes of
Suicide among New Slaves," Journal of Negro History, 62 (1977), 155.

189

The number of suicides contemplated was certainly much higher than those that
were committed or attempted. Even before the actual boarding of the slaving vessel,
some slaves had made up their minds to commit suicide. Samual Ajayi Crowther, for
example, while still on the coast of Africa had determined “that I would not go on but
would make an end of myself, one way or another.” For “several nights” he “attempted
strangling myself with my band; but had not courage enough to close the noose tight.”
After those failures he decided that he “would leap out of the canoe into the river, when
we should cross it.”25 He did not drown himself on the way to the ship, nor kill himself
on the vessel. How many other slaves’ nerve failed them, or how many could not ﬁnd the
means to commit suicide is an unanswerable question, but it will have been a very large
number. Accounts by slaves who made the voyage often indicate that they or a number of
other slaves on board were determined to commit suicide. William Thomas’ account was
typical in this regard. He recounted that “All cried very much at going away from their
home and friends, some of them saying that they would kill themselves.”26 He gave no
indication that any of the slaves actually did commit suicide. There are several records of
slavers who made the middle passage without losing any of their slaves, but as death by
suicide accounted only for a fraction of all save deaths, the number of vessels that did not
suffer suicides was likely to have been much larger. It is, however, doubtful whether a
single ship made the passage without some of the slaves seriously considering suicide.

It was often unclear whether a particular activity by a slave that led to his or her

death was suicide. The Memorandum of the Mortality of Slaves on Board the “Othello,”

 

25 Philip D. Curtin, Africa Remembered; Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 307-8. Recently arrived slaves in the New World also had
a higher suicide rate than slaves who had been born or spent considerable amounts of time in the New
World. See William Pierson, “White Cannibals”.

190

for example, tersely recorded that on February 6, 1769 “A Man Jumpt Over Board Out
the Long Boat and Was Drowned.”27 There is no way to recover whether the act was an
escape attempt, or a deliberate suicide. Recovering the intent of slaves from the surviving
primary documentation is often difﬁcult or impossible. Many actions that could have
been suicide attempts could also have had other motivations. The shortage of water was
one such possible motivation. The slave trader Dr. Joseph Cliffe testiﬁed that sometimes
“the want of water is so great that if they were to see water alongside a great number of
them no doubt would jump overboard, without considering that it was salt water.”28
Kipple and Higgins have argued that “the process of dehydration must have afﬂicted
practically every slave on every voyage” and believe that the major factor of the lowered
mortality in the eighteenth century was the carrying of more water.29 Few slaves would
have been desperate enough for water to risk death for it while the ship was close to land,
but when out the vessel was out at sea for some time it was a different matter.

There were, however, enough unambiguously deliberate suicides to rank suicide
as one of the three major forms of resistance on the middle passage along with escape
attempts and mutiny. Isert, for example, recounted that after a failed mutiny attempt on
his vessel, “when they saw that they could not succeed all sprang overboard into the sea.”
There can be no doubt that the slaves intended to die: “Some were stubborn even in the

face of death, deﬁantly casting away the rope which had been thrown around their bodies

from the ship in order to draw them up, and diving under with force”. Sometimes slaves

 

26 John Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 227.

27 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 235.

28 Quoted in Robert Edgar Conrad, World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 35.

191

were so intent on committing suicide, that they deliberately murdered other slaves in
order to realize their intent. On Isert’s vessel the slaves were chained in pairs by hand and
foot, and “there was a pair who had a difference of opinion, the one demanding that he be
saved, the other, on the contrary” was “so desirous of drowning that he pulled the ﬁrst
one under water with him, with great force.”30
Suicide was a form of resistance commonly used by women as well as men. The
journal for the ship Mary contained the following entry for March 18: “Two Women Lost
Over Board Out the Vessel] in the Nit By Neglect of Sd. Mate Not Locking them up a
bad Wach kept.”3 1 The suicide was deliberate: the women had clearly planned their leap
overboard. They waited for the cover of darkness to take advantage of the fact that they
were not locked up, and presumably had to move quietly in order not to be apprehended
by the slavers. Children, however, committed suicide far less often than adults.
Whenever there was an opportunity to commit suicide, there was a greatly
heightened risk that some slaves would seize it. In the illegal trade, for example, slaves
sometimes jumped into the sea and drowned themselves after the capture of a slaving
vessel, not realizing that the capture of the slaving vessel meant their freedom.32 Some

slavers claimed that they kept their slaves naked on board during the middle passage to

prevent suicides. They claimed that the loincloths would present an opportunity to slaves

 

29 Kenneth Kiple and Brian Higgins, “Mortality Caused by Dehydration during the Middle Passage” in J .E.
Inikori & S.L. Engerman (eds.) The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in
A ' a, the Americas, and Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 330.

Paul Isert, Letters, 179.
3’ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 235.
32 See, for example, T.F. Buxton, African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall,
1968), 154.

192

to hang themselves. Whether this is the real reason for not allowing slaves to cover their
nakedness is debatable.33

Suicide attempts occurred during all stages of the voyage, but were most
commonly reported while the ship was still in sight of Africa. As noted, to a degree this
reﬂects the confusion in the sources between desperate, high-risk escape attempts and
actual premeditated suicide. The pain and acute sense of hopelessness caused by the
closeness of Africa and the knowledge that one was to be taken away from all that one
knew and loved into an uncertain and dangerous future, however, also increased suicides.
The time that slaves spent close to the coast was a critical one and slavers were aware of
the increased risks at this time. Captain Philips, for example, wrote in 1693 that “The
Negroes are so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that they have often leap’t out
of the canoes, boat and ship into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned, to
avoid being taken up and saved by our boats, which pursued them.”34 The slaver Savary
agreed with Phillips, and advised that “the moment one has completed one’s trade and
loaded the negroes on the ship, one must set sail.” Savary believed that “more Negroes
die before leaving port than during the voyage. Some throw themselves into the sea and
others knock their heads against the ship; some hold their breath until they suffocate and
others starve themselves.”35 He also felt that severe depressions caused some slaves to
give up the will to live as they “have such a great love for their land that they despair to
see that they are leaving it forever, and they die from sadness.” While slaves were
unlikely to have died of depression, increased depression would have weakened their will

to live. Some of the deaths resulting — such as some slaves who died as a consequence of

 

33 Paul Isert, Letters, 176. See chapter 1, “Women” for a discussion on this.
3" E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 402.

193

refusing food — may not have been deliberate actions by slaves to end their own lives,
and thus fall outside the purview of this chapter. Others though, will have been
deliberate.

“Melancholy” was frequently cited as a cause of slaves not eating.36 As with
other forms of suicide, it is not possible to determine what percentage of slaves who died
of starvation were deliberately starving themselves, and what percentage were not eating
as a consequence of shock, illness or depression. It is very unlikely that intent did not
play a role in some of these deaths. Death by starvation was, however, such a common
occurrence on slaving vessels that the slavers had developed various means of force-
feeding slaves. Illness and suicide were closely related on the middle passage. Slaves
who were ill attempted suicide more often than those who were not. The entry in the
journal of Captain Newton was typical. He recorded in 1753 that “When we were putting
the slaves down in the evening, one that was sick jumped overboard.” Newton’s crew
rescued the slave, but “he dyed immediately between his weakness and the salt water he
had swallowed.” The slave’s illness probably weakened his will to live. The combination
of the rigors of the middle passage and the lesser resilience caused by illness had a
synergetic effect, and appears to have frequently tipped the balance between the will to

survive and the will to die. Some slaves effectively committed suicide by refusing

 

3’ Quoted in R.L. Stein, The French, 94.

36 Many primary documents contain numerous references of slaves dying due to “melancholy." This was
probably very severe form of depression. If so, it may have contributed to the deaths of slaves indirectly
(for example by loss of appetite, or weakening of the immune system), and also increased the likelihood
that slaves would commit suicide. Depression, from the perspective of the slavers, was a double-edged
sword. 0n the one hand, it could lead to a greater docility and even apathy among their slaves. As long as
this did not threaten the lives or health of the slaves, this was all to the good, and unlikely to be remarked
upon. But when it led to illness and suicides, it was very much against their interests. Kenneth Kiple and
Brian Higgins have convincing argued that the “melancholy” which led to death on the middle passage may
in many cases have been confused with dehydration symptoms. This argument cannot account for all the
cases reported in the primary literature, particularly those occurring while the vessel was close to land, or

194

medicine while ill. The medicines of the day were often ineffective, but those were not
the grounds on which they were refused.37

As with other forms of resistance, suicide attempts reﬂected African cultural
patterns and expectations. This was true for suicide attempts on land as well as on sea.38
Orlando Patterson, in his discussion on death and burial rites of slaves in Jamaica has
noted that some slaves believed that they would return to Africa after their deaths.
Plantation owners were aware of this, and some went as far as to display the bodies of
those who committed suicide to demonstrate that they did in fact not return to Africa in
an attempt to discourage further suicides.39 Some contemporary writers believed that this
belief encouraged slave suicides. Sir Hans Sloane, for example, believed that slaves,
“imagining they shall change their condition by that means, from servile to free often
cut their own throats.”40 Similar observations were made by slavers in the African trade.
When “about 12 negroes did wilfully drown themselves, and others starv’d themselves to
death,” Captain Phillips attributed the deaths to “their belief that when they die they
return home to their own country and friends again.” He also noted, as some of his
contemporaries did, that many slaves believed that the integrity of their body after death

was a requirement for their return to Africa. Phillips had been “been informed that some

 

had just left Africa, but it is one which needs to be taken seriously. Kenneth Kiple and Brian Higgins,
“Mortality”, 328.

37 For an example of such a case, see William Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade Ancient
and Modern (Columbus (Ohio): H. Miller, 1861), 135.

38 In fact, being on sea may have been an added motivation to commit suicide. Bolster has argued for a
special signiﬁcance for large bodies of water in some African religions, and suggested that several African
religions espouse a transmigration of souls over or through water. W. Bolster, Black Jacks: African
American Seamen in the Age of Soil (Harvard University Press, 1997), 62-67.

39 See also William Pierson, "White Cannibals” 152-4. Pierson’s article deals with slaves newly arrived in
the Americas. He gives several examples of slaves claiming that the dead would return to Africa as well as
of an example of an owner in Barbados displaying a suicide’s head on a pole in order to convince other
slaves of the futility of this method of escape.

4° Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of
Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969), 195.

195

commanders cutoff the legs and arms of the most wilful for they believe if they lose a
member, they cannot return home again?“
The most common method of committing suicide on the middle passage was
deliberate drowning. This forced the slavers to take elaborate precautions. Chaining and a
close guard over the slaves were often not sufﬁcient to prevent slave from jumping
overboard.42 Slavers frequently invested in netting strung around the sides of the vessel in
order to prevent those slaves who did ﬁnd the opportunity to jump overboard from
reaching the water. The obstacle reduced, but did not prevent suicides. Olaudah Equiano
related in his narrative that “two of my wearied countrymen, who were chained together
(I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made
through the nettings. and jumped into the sea.”43
Suicides, especially mass suicide attempts, were often catalyzed by rumours of
cannibalism or failed mutinies. In an example of the former, Captain Japhet Bird wrote in
the Boston Weekly Newsletter of Sept. 15, 1737 that on his vessel “we found a great deal
of Discontent among the slaves, particularly the Men.” This lasted for two days, “when to

our great Amazement above an hundred Men Slaves jump’d over board.” The slaves

were adamant in their intent to die, and “out of the whole we lost 33 of as good Men

 

4' Snelgrave cut the head off the slave he executed on his vessel in order to demonstrate to the remaining
slaves that they could not expect to return to Africa if executed. In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 403 and
vol. 2, 359.

‘2 Falconbridge described the chaining as follows: “The men negroes, on being brought aboard the ship, are
immediately fastened together, two by two, by handcuffs on their wrists, and by irons rivetted on their legs
...” and when brought on deck, “Their irons being examined, a long chain, which is locked to a ring-bolt, is
run through the rings of the shackles of the men, and then locked to another ring-bolt, ﬁxed also in the
deck. By this means ﬁfty or sixty or sometimes more, are fastened to one chain, in order to prevent them
rising, or trying to escape.” A. Falconbridge, An Account, 19 and 21.

‘3 In H.L. Gates, The Classic Slave Narratives (New York: Penguin, 1987), 69. The authenticity Equiano’s
narrative has, however, recently been questioned. Vincent Carretta, "Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa?
New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity," Slavery and Abolition 20, 3 (December 1999).
However, perhaps the question of authenticity is not that pertinent in this case: even in a work of the

196

Slaves as we had on board, who would not endevour to save themselves, but resolv’d to
die, and sunk directly down.” The incident was “owing to one of their Countrymen, who
came on board and in a joking manner told the Slaves they were ﬁrst to have their Eyes
put out, and then be eaten.”‘14 Fear of being cannibalized also caused some slaves to
starve themselves, though whether this was a side effect of depression, an attempt to
make themselves less palatable, or an attempt at suicide is often not clear. John Barbot
wrote in 1723 that “many” slaves were “prepossessed with the opinion that they are
carried like sheep to the slaughter, and that the Europeans are fond of their flesh.” He
implied that it was depression that caused them not to eat, and argued that the “notion so
far prevails with some, as to make them fall into a deep melancholy and despair, and to
refuse all sustenance, tho’ never so much compelled and even beaten to oblige them to
take some nourishment.” Yet in spite of all attempts to force them to eat, Barbot admitted
that “they will starve to death.” He asserted that “I have had several instances in my own
slaves both on board and at Guadalupe.”45 Whatever any given slaves motivation might
have been to starve him or herself when rumors of cannibalism spread through the vessel,
they often led to desperate and self-destructive actions by slaves. The large numbers of
references in the primary literature leave no doubt that it was a recurring problem for
slavers.

Suicide and suicide attempts frequently occurred in the aftermath of failed
mutinies. On the Albion, for example, after a mutiny was suppressed, “Many of the most

mutinous leaped overboard and drowned themselves with much resolution, shewing no

 

imagination, the netting on ships were a force which slaves who contemplated suicide by drowning had to
contend with.

‘4 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 460.

‘5 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 289-90.

197

manner of concern for life.”46 Partly this was because of a fear of repercussions, but it
was also in part because the chaos and confusion that surrounded these events offered an
opportunity to commit suicide. Like suicides, escape attempts were a common form of
resistance.

Unlike suicides, escapes could only be attempted while the slaver was close to
land. Slavers, however, sometimes spent several months along the coast of Africa
attempting to load a full complement of slaves.47 Slavers took extra precautions when
they were close to land. Slaves were nearly always “put in irons, two and two shackled
together, to prevent their mutiny or swimming ashore.”48 Women slaves were more likely
to be chained while the vessel was on the coast than while it was out at sea. Nonetheless,
slaves occasionally found or made the opportunity to effect their escape from the vessel.
But escaping the slave ship was no guarantee of escaping slavery.

There was a very real risk of recapture by Africans on shore, and subsequent
resale. This was such a large risk that Captain Atkins noted in 1721 that it was a major
disincentive for slaves to attempt to escape. He believed that as the slaves had “no other
Prospect but falling into the hands of the same Rogues that sold them” this “very
much lessens the Danger.”49 If, and to what degree, this did in fact reduce escape
attempts is not possible to recover, but the danger of recapture was real. 9

There are many accounts that relate the recapture of slaves after a mutiny or

escape attempt. The slaver Nicholas Owen, while on the coast of Africa entered the

 

‘6 Reprinted in George F. Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (Wesport, Connecticut: Negro University Press,
1970), 83-4.

‘7 David Eltis, "Mortality and Voyage Length in the Middle Passage: New Evidence from the Nineteenth
Century," Journal of Economic History 44, 2 (1984).

48 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 402.

198

following in his diary: “Febery 3 1758 Lately we have the malloncoly news of Capt.
Potter’s being cut of by the slaves at Mano and the ship drove ashoar; the captain, second
mate & docter are all killed in a barbarous manner by the slaves.” In spite of the success
of the mutiny — a rare occurrence — “The slaves are all taken by the natives again and
sould to other vessells.” His conclusion that “they have nothing mended their condition
by thier enterpize” held true for many escape attempts.50

As with suicide, slaves were most likely to attempt an escape when the vessel was
about to sail. Slavers knew that this was a risky time, and anticipated desperate last
minute attempts from slaves. They generally tried to hide their departure time from
slaves, but this was not always possible. On Falconbridge’s voyage, “The night before
our departure, the tent was struck.” The slaves understood what this meant: it “was no
sooner percieved by some of the negroe women on board, than it was considered as a
prelude to our sailing.” Consequently “about eighteen of them, when they were sent
between decks, threw themselves into the sea through one of the gun ports.” Success rates
were low for escapees, and lower yet when the vessel was about to sail. Falconbridge’s
ship proved to be no exception. The slavers quickly recovered all the women, except one
who made land. But she was “was not long after, taken about a mile from the shore.”5 1

As with other forms of resistance, escape attempts could lead both to violent

attacks on crew and suicides. On Snelgrave’s vessel, a slave who attempted to escape

confessed that “he had kill’d the Cooper, with no other view than that he and his

 

‘9 He had a point. Even if slaves managed to escape immediate recapture, they still faced an uncertain and
dangerous future. They were usually a very long distance from their original homes, from their families and
communities. They would have faced a future fraught with dangers. In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 281.
50 Nicholas Owen, Journal of a Slave Dealer: A View of Some Remarkable Axcedents in the Life of Nics.
Owen on the Coast of Africa and America from the Year 1746 to the Year I 75 7. Eveline Martin (ed.)
(London: George Routledge and Sons Ltd., 1930), 106.

5’ A. Falconbridge, An Account, 31.

199

Countrymen might escape undiscovered by swimming on shore.” He did not intend to kill
the crewmember. As with most slave resistance, freedom was a far more important
concern than revenge. After escaping the holds, the group the slave was with “observed,
that all the white Men set to watch were asleep but passing by the Cooper, who was
centry, and he beginning to awake, the Negro rashly struck him on the head.”52 The slave
was executed for his deed. Attempted ﬂight was linked with overt violence in another
manner too.

Escape attempts, like suicides, frequently took place after a failed mutiny attempt.
A failed mutiny on Snelgrave’s vessel was one such case. He reported that after
successfully putting down the mutiny, “the two Ringleaders were missing, having, it
seems, jumped overboard as soon as they found their Project defeated.” The slaves “were
drowned,” but whether they deliberately committed suicide or were desperately trying to
escape cannot be established.53 It is often difﬁcult to distinguish between the two. Most
mutinies occurred close to land, making this a common problem.

Sometimes, however, suicide, not escape, was clearly the intent. In 1785 the
slaves on a Dutch ship mutinied “on the very day that the ship was to sail to West India.”
Initially, the mutiny was successful. “The Europeans were overpowered and beaten to
death, except for a young cabin-boy who had climbed to the top of the main mast.”
However, “Before the Whites had been completely overpowered, they had shot off
several alarm signals which had been heard on land, and a number of canoes manned
with armed, free Blacks had been sent out to help. As soon as these approached the ship

and the rebellious slaves saw that they had become the losers, they decided to do away

 

52 In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 358.
53 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 354.

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with themselves. With this in mind, one of them ran with a ﬁrebrand to the powder
magazine and blew it up.” The devastation was enormous. After the explosion, “The
canoes did not ﬁsh up more than some thirty Blacks, and the cabin-boy as well. The rest,
more than 500 in number, fell victim to the waves.”54 This may have been the action of
one individual who decided the fate of the rest of the slaves. Certainly unanimity was
unlikely in such situations. Cuagano Ottabah, however, suggested that there was near
unanimity in a similar incident on the vessel in which he made the middle passage. The
slaves on his ship had conspired to blow up the ship, but were prevented from doing so
by a betrayal by one of the women slaves.55 But both cases were exceptions. Far more
mutinies failed even after the slaves managed to take control of the powder room than
there were vessels blown up by slaves. Ship-wide suicide pacts were very rare on the
middle passage. Often if a mutiny failed and escape was not possible, a number of slaves
attempted to commit suicide, while the rest sought to survive the aftermath as best they
could. In addition, crew were on their guard for escape and suicide attempts after a failed
mutiny.

Slavers were generally vigilant, and their precautions were critical in reducing
opportunities for resistance and rebellion. For slaves there was an extremely ﬁne line
between a glimmer of opportunity that might just possibly lead to success, and a situation
that offered no hope. Distinguishing one from the other was not easy, and the wrong
choice was easily and frequently made. The actions that slavers took to prevent resistance
were in direct relation to their assessment of the risks of the slaves resisting. The

elaborate precautions that were standard on slaving vessels — which included carrying

 

5" Recounted in P. Isert, Letters, 176.

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large crews, public and violent punishment, chains, whips and guns, and shackling and
chaining slaves, to name but the most obvious — testiﬁed to the willingness of slaves to
rebel. Meier and Rudwick have found that on land “slave revolts tended to cluster in less
oppressive slave areas.”56 This held true on slaving vessels too. But the stakes on slaving
vessels were so high, that “relatively less oppressive” was still by land standards, very
oppressive indeed.

There were many reasons for slaves on the middle passage not to resist. The low
success rate of resistance attempts made the risk / beneﬁt ratio very unattractive. It is not
possible to precisely quantify the success rates, but the anecdotal evidence in the primary
documents clearly indicates far more failures than successes. If one considers that
successful attempts were far more likely to be recorded than unsuccessful ones, the
evidence becomes overwhelming. Slaves rightly feared the consequences of failed
attempts at resistance and rebellion. Life was cheap on board a slaving vessel — the exact
value of a slave’s life had very recently been determined, in purely pecuniary terms. It
was easily risked, and easily lost. The slaves knew this, and not all by any means, were
willing to risk their lives on a long shot at a successful mutiny or escape attempt. In spite
of the relative commonness of suicide as a form of resistance, only a relatively small
number of slaves had determined that their lives were simply not worth having.

Fear not only inhibited slaves from attempting or participating in acts of
resistance, but also caused some slaves to betray the plots of their fellow captives. This

was a common occurrence, though certainly not inevitable, as the multitude of resistance

 

55 Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments of the Evil of Slavery (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1787),
10.

56 August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, The Making of Black America: Essays in Negro Life and History,
Rudwick, Elliot (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 178.

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and resistance attempts that did take place demonstrate. Captain Newton, reﬂecting on his
luck on a completed voyage remarked that “The slaves on board were likewise frequently
plotting insurrections and were sometimes on the very brink of mischief, but it was
always disclosed on the brink of time.”57 His experience was mirrored by many in the
trade. Just as identifying the acts of resistance was not the same as identifying the spirit
of resistance or the will to resist among slaves, so the identifying acts of betrayal does not
amount to identifying acquiescence among the slaves. Motivations for betrayals could
range from currying favour with the crew to an attempt to save fellow slaves from what
the betrayer might have considered an attempt that was doomed to failure, and that could
only have negative consequences for all on board. It did mean that among slaves, as
among any other group of human beings, not everybody could be trusted. This inhibited
some and doomed other resistance attempts. But serious forms of resistance and rebellion
were still far more common than comparable acts on land were.

Schuler has noted that on land, African born slaves were more likely to rebel than
those slaves born in the New World were.58 Possible reasons for this included that ﬁrst
generation African slaves might have been more acutely aware of their loss of freedom, a
lack of socialization in the New World tradition of slavery, and the effect of missing a
homeland and community that they clearly remembered. It is also possible that the
experience of the middle passage may also have contributed to their greater willingness
to rebel. Slaves who had made the middle passage had been in circumstances in which

the notion of a full scale mutiny against white domination was not only thinkable, but

 

57 Quoted in Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account
08’ the Liverpool Slave Trade (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), 511.

5 Monica Schuler, "Ethnic Slave Rebellions in the Caribbean and the Guianas," Journal of Social History 3
( 1970).

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was probably planned, and possibly even attempted. The experience of the middle
passage may thus have contributed towards a tradition of violent resistance by slaves who
made the crossing. Slaves who were known to have rebelled or mutinied negatively
effected their price on arrival in the Americas, which suggests that buyers equated
resistance on sea with an increased chance of resistance on land, and sought to avoid it.5’9
In spite of the willingness of slaves to resist and rebel on slaving vessels, the
middle passage was not a propitious location for resistance. Most slaves decided that their
survival interests were not best served by engaging in overt resistance. Yet in spite of all
the excellent reasons for not resisting on the middle passage, many slaves did do so.
Their desperation led them to accept very bad odds, and they seized whatever
opportunities arose or that they could create. Nowhere can this been seen more clearly
than in the occurrences of mutinies on the middle passage, the subject of the following

chapter.

 

59 Snelgrave commenting on a mutinous group of slaves delivered to Jamaica that “. .. their former
Misbehaviour coming to be publickly known, none of the Planters cared to buy them, tho’ offered at a low
Price.”. Elizabeth Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 361.

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CHAPTER 5: MUTINY

“I say, when thus circumstanced, it is not to be expected that they will tamely resign
themselves to their situation. It is always expected that they will attempt to regain their
liberty if possible?”

Slave mutinies on the middle passage, more than any other form of slave resistance,
speak to the imagination and moral sensibilities of writers and readers alike. Slave
insurrections on land have been extensively studied, but mutinies on sea have thusfar
received more sporadic, and generally superﬁcial attention.2 Mutiny was, from the
perspective of the slaver, without doubt the most serious form of resistance in which a slave
could participate. It both posed a direct threat to white lives, property and ascendancy, and
set a precedent of undermining the authority of the slaver. Mutiny was the only slave
initiative that threatened the viability of the entire journey.

I deﬁne a slave mutiny on the middle passage as a violent attempt by more than one

slave to overthrow the existing structure of command on a slaving vessel, with an end goal

 

' John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754 (With Newton 's Thoughts upon the African
Slave Trade '), Bernard Martin and M. Spurrell, eds. (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 103.

2 The mutiny on the Amistad has received by far the most attention. See for example Howard Jones, Mutiny
on the "Amistad": The Saga of a Slave Revolt and its impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Sidney Kaplan, “Black Mutiny on the Amistad,”
Massachusetts Review 10 (1969) and William A. Owens, Black Mutiny: The Revolt on the Schooner
Amistad. (New York: John Day, 1953). However, as the Amistad mutiny did not occur on the passage
between Africa and the New World, it falls outside of the purview of this chapter. There have been very
few academic articles that consider mutinies on slaving vessels, and no full-length works, in spite of
Greene’s call for more attention to be paid to the subject as early as 1944. L. Greene, “Mutiny on the Slave
Ships,” Phylon 5 (Jan. 1944). What work there is, is generally not of high quality: see for example Okon
Edet Uya, “Slave Revolts of the Middle Passage: A Neglected Theme,” Calabar Historical Journal 1
(1976). The best writing on mutinies is dispersed in larger works dealing with the trade as a whole — these
often contain a few pages on slave mutinies. Sometimes they seldom amount to much more than an
acknowledgment that they did occur, and a number of examples. Although quantiﬁcation of the trade is his
main concern, Joseph Inkori’s “The Unmeasured Hazards of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Sources, Causes, and
Historiographical Implications,” Unpublished paper, UNESCO conference on 'La route de l'esclave'
(Ouidah, Benin) (1-5 Sept. 1994) is among the best work on slave mutinies. An easily accessible primary
source that contains many examples of mutinies is Elizabeth Donnan’s Documents Illustrative of the
History of the Slave Trade to America, vols. l — 4. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington,
1930—35). Primary documents on mutinies are easy to locate, although they are often fragmentary

205

of controlling the vessel. The success of the attempt does not matter by my deﬁnition. For a
mutiny to have taken place, however, a physical attempt must have been made to overthrow
the current commanders of the vessel. Thus mutiny plots that were not carried out, or that
were betrayed or discovered before actual action against the commanders of the vessel was
undertaken, are not by my terminology mutinies. Nor was any violent attack against the
commanders of a vessel a mutiny, though often the primary documents describe the defying
of the authority of the existing power structure on a vessel as a mutiny. By my terminology,
if there was no effort to take over the vessel, it was a rebellion.

Mutinies, mutiny attempts, and the constant threat of both were an integral part of
the slaving experience for both crew and ﬁnanciers of slaving voyages. The primary
literature is replete with warnings by owners to their captains and ofﬁcers to be on their
guard against them, often accompanied by admonishments not to mistreat the slaves, as it
was generally believed that such treatment heightened the chances of a mutiny occurring.
The instructions to James Westrnore by Thomas Starke, sent in 1702 were typical. Starke
instructed Westrnore to be sure that “no other of your Men abuse the Negroes and also be
sure to you keep a continual] Centry to prevent your Negroes getting to your Arrnes or
any riseing per them.”3 But few slavers needed such warnings. They were well aware of
the danger of mutiny, and took elaborate precautions to prevent them.

Slaves were implicitly and explicitly intimidated. They were implicitly

intimidated by their dehumanization and daily treatment on board. Both left them with

 

descriptions.

3 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 76. These kinds of instructions did differ in emphasis. Samuel Waldo for
example, instructed Captain Rhodes in 1734 that, “For your own Safety as well as mine You’ll have the
needful Guard over your Slaves, and putt not too much conﬁdence in the Women nor Children least they
happen to be Instrumental to your being surprised which may be fatall.” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 45.
Henry Laurens, writing in 1767, emphasized neither arms nor women and children, but placed his faith in
stealth, counseling that his captains “be on their guard constantly without discovering to the Negroes they

206

few illusions about the value of their lives, or were they stood vis a vie their captors.
They were also implicitly intimidated by the security precautions they were constantly
subjected to. Overt intimidation came in the form of warnings on how to behave, and at
its most overt level, harsh physical punishments and executions. Some measures
intimidated on both levels - the carrying of a whip on the one hand, and the use of it on
the other, for example.

The ﬁrst priority of slavers was to create a situation that made a mutiny, if not
impossible for slaves, at least exceedingly difﬁcult. Leg and hand shackles were standard
for male slaves, as was chaining to the sides of the vessel when they were permitted to
come on deck. 4 There is disagreement in the primary sources as to whether women and
younger slaves were chained, and whether slaves were consistently chained when out at
sea, as excessive chaining could negatively effect the health and sometimes the survival
chances of slaves. Powerful slaves, or those that the crew suspected posed a high risk of
rebelling, were often chained and shackled more heavily than the average slave, in spite
of the health risks for the slave. The same held true for slaves who had previously
attempted a mutiny. This could lead to dissatisfaction from owners, as was the in 1680
when the agents for the Royal African company wrote from Barbados about Captain
Butcher’s voyage. They complained that “wee conceive many of the men are much the

worse for being soe loaded with Irons as they have bin all the Voyage the Captaine sayng

 

are so.” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 418.

4 Newton described the procedure as follows: “before their number exceeds, perhaps, ten or ﬁfteen, they are
all put in irons; in most ships, two and two together. And frequently, they are not thus conﬁned, as they
may most conveniently stand or move, the right hand and foot of one to the left of the other, but across; that
is, the hand and foot of each on the same side, whether right or left, are fettered together: so that they
cannot move either hand or foot, but with great caution, and with perfect consent. In the night they are
conﬁned below; in the daytime (if the weather be ﬁne) they are on deck; and as they are brought up by
pairs, a chain is put through a ring upon their irons, this is likewise locked down to the ringbolts, which are
fastened, at certain intervals. to the deck.” John Newton, The Journal, 103.

207

they are very unruly and once designed to rise and cut him and his People off.”5 But any
time the slaves spent out of chains was dangerous for crew.6 Chains, shackles, and leg-
bolts formed a major and effective protection against mutiny attempts. The checking of
the shackles and chains was a safety precaution that paid high dividends if
conscientiously done.

Barricados were standard on slaving vessels of any size. A barricado, also called a
bulwark, was a strong wooden wall built across the width of the vessel to prevent the
male slaves crossing to the stern of the slaver where, among other things, the arms room
was. It had a door built into it to allow crew to cross, and was, ideally, high and smooth
enough to prevent mutinying slaves from climbing it. The barricado segregated the sexes,
prevented the slaves from getting to the arms room, and offered the crew a secure
location from which to ﬁre into the‘slaves in case of mutiny. It was standard policy to
allow a crewmember to be killed if caught on the wrong side of a barricado when an
uprising occurred, rather than to allow them past the bulwark if there was a chance the
mutinying slaves might cross too.7 Falconbridge described a barricado as “a partition
of inch deal boards, which reaches athwart the ship. It is about eight feet in height, and
is made to project two feet over the sides of the ship. In this barricado there is a door, at
which a centinel is placed during the time the slaves are permitted to come upon deck.

there are holes in it, wherein blunderbusses are ﬁxed, and sometimes a cannon, it is found

 

5 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1,259.

6 Slaves seized whatever opportunities they had. John Bell, reporting a slave mutiny to John Fletcher in
1776 wrote “We had 160 Slaves on board and were that Day lett out of the Deck Chains in order to wash,
about 2 Oclock They began by siesing upon the Boatswain.” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 323.

7 Paul Isert found himself in just such a situation. He wrote that after the attack had begun (and after he had
received a blow to the head) “since they were also chained at the feet I was able to crawl away from them,
and I reached the bulwark door. Here I now battered in vain, because, when the crew tried to let me in, such
a number of Blacks seized the door that the crew had great difﬁculty in closing it. Furthermore, it is
established policy that it is better to let a European be killed than allow the Blacks to gain control of that

208

very convenient for quelling the insurrections that now and then happen.8 The building of
a barricado was an effective precaution and one seldom neglected in the trade.9

Ship guns were often carried for defense against privateers and pirates. They also
played a central role in the intimidation of slaves, and occasionally in the putting down of
a mutiny. Financiers sometimes ordered that the guns be kept ready at all times. Captain
Overstall, for example, was instructed to “Let your Great Guns and small Arrnes be
Loaded and in readiness for use and Service upon any occasion that may happen.” His
ﬁnancier worried about both eventualities, arguing that “by this means you may prevent
being surprised by any Enemies whatsoever and it may likewise be useful] to you
should hereafter an Insurrection happen or be attempted amongst your Negroes.”10

Sometimes the ship’s guns were ﬁred regularly in order to intimidate the slaves,
as was the case on Isert’s vessel. He reported that “On top of [the barricado] there are as
many small cannons and guns as there is room for, and these are kept loaded at all times
and are shot off every evening in order to keep the slaves in a state of fear.”11 But
whether or not the guns were regularly ﬁred, there were nearly always some on the

barricado, in order to intimidate the slaves, and, failing that, to quell mutinies.12 The use

of the “great guns” guns was, however, a last resort. They could easily create carnage

 

door.” P. Isert, Letters on West Africa, 178.

8 Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (New York: AMS Press,
1973), 6.

9 For example, the mutiny on Captain Clarke’s vessel came to nothing after the crew insulated themselves
behind the barricado. The ship’s doctor wrote that after the uprising began, the slaves “Continued to threw
Staves, billets of wood etc., and in endeavoring to get down the Barricado, or over it for upwards of 40
Minutes, when ﬁnding they could not effect it all the Fantee and Most of the Accra Men Slaves jumped
overboard, in my opinion with an intend to get up abaft, but the Currant running to strong to leeward very
few of them could fetch the Ship again .” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 323.

1° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 366.

n P. Isert, Letters on West Africa, 177.

'2 This was standard policy. Captain Newton, for example, reports the same. He wrote in his diary “This
day ﬁxed 4 swivel blunderbusses in the barricado, which with the 2 carriage guns make a formidable
appearance on the main deck.” He trusted that they would “be sufﬁcient to intimidate the slaves from any

209

among the slaves, something that slavers were anxious to avoid if at all possible.

It made good sense for slavers to carry at least one swivel gun on deck in order to
intimidate the slaves. Vessels for which no gun data is preserved, or who carried no guns
consistently reported a greater number of insurrections than vessels that did.13 This held
true for both the English and French trade, the only ones for which sufﬁcient data are

available to generalize from, as the tables below show.

 

No. of cases No. of Insurrections Insurrection per Voyage

 

 

No Guns Data 22112 278 1 per 79.5
Guns Data Available 5121 60 1 per 85.4

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.1. Insurrections and Guns on Board Data (All Nationalities)

 

No. of cases No. of Insurrections Insurrection per Voyage

 

No Guns Data 3877 142 1 per 27.3

 

 

Guns Data Avail 157 2 1 per 78.5

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.2. Insurrections and Guns on Board Data (French Trade)

 

No. ofcases No. of Insurrections Insurrection per Voyage

 

No Guns Data 4747 56 1 per 84.8

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guns Data Avail. 6419 62 1 per 103.5

 

Table 5.3. Insurrections and Guns on Board Data (English Trade)

This ﬁnding is all the more remarkable as the vessels for which data on the guns

are available tend to be the voyages about which more is known in general; that is, they

 

thoughts of insurrection.” J. Newton, The Journal, 2829.

210

form a set of better documented voyages. Thus surviving reports of insurrections should
be more common. However, the evidence shows the opposite, further strengthening the
conclusion that carrying guns on board did serve to reduce the number of slave mutinies.
Slaves were not generally given to suicidal revolts, and slavers who exercised due
precaution could reduce the incidence of mutiny considerably.

Active promotion of the sanctity of a white skin and of the aura of white invincibility
were both important in preventing slave mutinies, as was the appearance of unshakeable
solidarity between slavers. Though not often addressed explicitly in the primary documents,
the actions of slavers clearly show this.14 There was an implicit code between slavers to help
each other quell mutinies when they occurred, regardless of nationality. The primary
literature records several such incidents.15

In spite of all attempts to intimidate slaves, and all steps to prevent a mutiny
occurring, they did take place, and regularly. But the inclination to mutiny was by no
means universal. Not all slaves chose to risk their lives on a very small chance of success,
with certain harsh physical punishment — often death - as the consequence of failure. The

failed mutiny that took place on the Robert, under Captain Harding in 1721 was a case

 

’3 The effect is probably much larger than shown below, as many of the vessels for which no data on guns
is available will have carried them.

” Sometimes they were explicated. Snelgrave explicitly warned his slaves about the inviolability of a white
skin in the primary documents. See for example E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 342 for Captain
Snelgrave’s warning to slaves who dared strike a white person, or John Newton’s comments on the
importance of an appearance of solidarity between crewmembers in The Journal, 72. See also Chapter 6,
“Survival Strategies.”

’5 Not all such interventions were entirely successful, though most were. For example, when the Dutch
vessel the Neptunis was taken over by its slaves, an English vessel came to their aid. They ﬁred into
Neptunis, accidentally hitting the powder room, causing the vessel to explode. No crewmembers on board
survived the explosion, though eight slaves out of an indeterminate number did. Reported in J .M. Postma,
The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade I600-1815 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990), 167. Bosman was
more lucky; his slaves “would certainly have mastered the ship, if a French and English ship had not very
fortunately happened to lye by us; who perceiving our ﬁring our distress gun.... immediately came to our
assistance with chalops and men.” The mutiny was put down. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 438.

211

point. While the vessel was at anchor off the coast of Africa, a male slave “Tomba” “had
combined with three or four of the stoutest of his Country-men to kill the Ship’s
Company, and attempt their Escapes, while they had a shore to ﬂy to.” Slaves weighed
their choices carefully, and did not always agree on what constituted an acceptable risk.
Tomba “encouraged the Accomplices what he could, with the Prospect of liberty, but
could now at the Push, engage only one more and the Woman to follow him upon
Deck.”16

It is not clear who among the slaves was most likely to mutiny, or to organize a
mutiny. The fact of enslavement, the conditions on the vessel, and the treatment of the
slaves cannot alone account for any given mutiny. Mutinies on sea, as on land, required a
catalyst in the form of one or more slaves who dared to plan a mutiny, who had the force
of personality to convince other slaves to join, and who had the courage to put their plans
into action. The ethnic group to which these leaders belonged, a previous position of
authority, their charisma and oratorical skills, and even their physical stature may all have
been relevant elements.17 The primary sources, however, too seldom provide information
detailed enough to determine any of the above with any degree of conﬁdence, and
certainly not often enough to allow generalizations. There is evidence that on land slaves
were sometimes coerced to join plots. The evidence for this on sea, too, is much less due
to more sporadic documentation, but it is safe to assume that coercion will have played a

central role in combating the central threat that any mutiny plot faced: that of betrayal.

 

’6 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 266.

'7 See David Barry Gaspar, Bondsmen and Rebels: A Study Master—Slave Relations in Antigua with
Implications for Colonial British America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), August
Meier & Elliot Rudwick, The Making of Black America: Essays in Negro Life and History, (New York:
Atheneum, 1973) and Monica Schuler, “Ethnic Slave Rebellions in the Caribbean and the Guianas,”
Journal of Social History 3 (1970). All have identiﬁed various characteristics that they believe leaders of
rebellions to have had on land. Their work all concern rebellions on land, but several might be extrapolated

212

Betrayal was a major hazard to slaves plotting a mutiny. A large number of plots
were betrayed; possibly more mutinies were betrayed than were attempted. In spite of the
fact that betrayed mutiny plots were less likely to be recorded than actual mutinies,
references to betrayals are extremely common in contemporary documents. Betrayal of
plots on sea as on land could come from a variety of individuals, and for a host of
reasons. Crews sometimes appointed slaves to betray their fellow slaves, linguists are
frequently reported as having betrayed plots, and sometimes slaves who were accorded
special privileges while on board betrayed their fellow captives. Sometimes children
betrayed plots, and sometimes women did. Sometimes the betrayals were inadvertent or
coerced, and sometimes they were deliberate. The reasons for betrays by slaves varied;
ethnic rivalry, fear of the consequences of a failed mutiny, the hope of a reward, or the
honestly held conviction that they were saving their fellows from an attempt doomed to
failure could all led to the betrayal of a mutiny plot. In spite of the risks of betrayal and
the consequences of failure, the number of mutinies that occurred has been considerably
under-reported, and under-estimated by scholars.

Neither modern scholars nor contemporary observers have satisfactorily addressed
the frequency of mutinies and mutiny attempts. Mutinies were under—reported for several
reasons. It was not in the Slaver’s interests to disclose information about mutinies. Slaves
who were known to have engaged in uprisings at sea could fetch lower prices at their
destinations, thus motivating captains and owners to suppress such information. Snelgrave,
commenting on slaves (not his own!) who were landed in the Americas after several failed

mutiny attempts, noted that “with their former Misbehavior becoming publickly known,

 

to include mutinies on sea, though not enough is known about the instigators of mutinies to be certain.

213

none of the Planters cared to buy them, tho’ offered at a low Price.”18 That this was a
structural rather than an incidental problem is conﬁrmed by a Bristol slaver who, in 1788,
sued his insurance company to claim compensation for the lower price he received for his
slaves in the West Indies after they had mutinied twice during the middle passage. He
reasoned that, by being insured against a mutiny, he deserved compensation for the lower
sale price too, as it had been as a direct consequence of the mutinies.19 Additionally, as ship
captains were only very infrequently the owners of either ship or cargo, their reputations
were important to them. A reputation for suffering too many mutinies was not advantageous
when seeking later employment.20

Mutinies that were nipped in the bud or quelled without serious damage were often
not reported. When they were, the off-hand manner in which they were often referred to
suggests that they may even have been considered too common to merit reporting.
Sometimes they were mentioned en passant an entirely different matter and sometimes they
merited only a few words in the captain’s report. Mutinies that were publicly reported,
perhaps catering to the sensationalist taste of readers, tended to be bloodier, and result in the
loss of the vessel far more frequently than the average mutiny. Though this type of mutiny,
particularly those that resulted in the loss of white lives or of the vessel were uncommon,
most newspaper accounts of mutinies report crew casualties. Far more mutinies were put
down quickly with no loss of life, or the loss of a small number of slaves. And these are not
nearly as well preserved in the historical record.

Records of mutinies and mutiny attempts written by those in the trade tend to treat

 

’8 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1. 361.

19 He lost his case. Helen Catterall, vol. 1, Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro
(Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926), 19 - 22.

2° That reputations counted in the slave trade, was conﬁrmed by Barbot, who started a discussion on the

214

the subject as an everyday business, unremarkable, and as an expected part of the trade.

Snelgrave, for example wrote that “I have been on several Voyages were no attempts by
Slaves was made to mutiny”, implying that this was exceptional, and that such attempts
occurred on the majority of vessels.21 And of course, for every mutiny that occurred, far
more were plotted, only to be betrayed or not put into action for other reasons.

Insurance records offer further evidence that mutinies were a major risk in the trade.
Vessels only insured themselves against serious loss. Even though mutinies that resulted in
the loss of a large number of slaves, or less frequently yet, the loss of the vessel were
relatively rare, mutinies were considered enough of a risk factor to be taken seriously when
calculating the ﬁnancial prospects of a slaving voyage.22 The rate of insurance against
insurrection was generally about 5% of the value of the cargo.23 This would have been a
very excessive rate if mutinies were not extremely common, as it assumed (minus the proﬁt
margin) that one out of twenty voyages would be entirely lost due to mutiny. This was not
nearly the case: of the mutinies of which records have survived, most were put down
without loss of life, and those that did cause loss of life usually cost only a small fraction of

the slaves on board their lives. Very few resulted in the loss of the entire cargo and / or the

 

care of slaves on board, with “if they [the ships’ ofﬁcers] value their own reputation and their owners
advantage” in a discussion on slave management on board a slaver. In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 464.
2’ He also suffered several mutiny attempts on a number of his voyages. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1,
354. Stein, writing on the frequency of mutinies in French trade, accurately summed up the matter when he
wrote “it seems likely they were common, so common in fact that they scarcely merited mentioning in the
captains’ reports.” R.L. Stein, The French, 103.

22 The Boston NewsLetter of September 9, 1731, for example, while commenting on the decline of
proﬁtability in the trade explicitly mentioned slave revolts as one of the primary culprits. After relating a
detailed account of a mutiny, and complaining about mutinies in general, the piece concludes with the
remark that “What with Negroes rising, and other Disappointment, in the Voyages thither, have occasioned
a great Reducement in our Merchants Gains.” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 431.

23 See E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 216-7 and 222 for two typical insurance policies. The ﬁrst insured
against loss only by insurrection at 5%, the second provided a more comprehensive coverage for 8%, but
speciﬁed that 5% was the rate for insurance against insurrection. See also H. Wish, “American Slave
Insurrections Before 1861,” Journal of Negro History XXII (July 1937), 302-303 for further conﬁrmation
in the primary literature of the 5% ﬁgure.

215

vessel. But even assuming a healthy proﬁt margin, the cost of insurance clearly suggests that
the risk of mutiny was high, and that they occurred much more frequently than has been
assumed.

Few writers on the trade have ventured to give ﬁrm estimates of how many mutinies
occurred on slaving vessels. Of those that have ventured estimates, most report very low
ﬁgures, in keeping with the records of the vessels they have at hand. This documentation is,
as noted above, likely to be very incomplete, and to contain a disproportionate number of
mutinies that had serious consequences, which though better reported constituted only a
very small ﬁaction of all mutinies.24 Postma is an exception to this trend. Using a small but
unusually well-documented set of 55 voyages of Dutch slavers he found that one in ﬁve
reported mutinies on board.25 And in even this dataset, his ﬁndings must be assumed to be a
minimum ﬁgure, as not all mutinies were reported, especially minor and attempted ones. It
is impossible to ascertain with any degree certainty how many mutinies and mutiny attempts
took place on slaving vessels, but it seems unlikely that fewer than one in three or four
vessels made the crossing without some attempt by the slaves to mutiny. It is possible that
fully half experienced mutiny attempts. If the deﬁnition of mutiny attempts includes
betrayed plots, or plots that were otherwise discovered before they could be carried out, the
ﬁgure was probably higher yet.

The Atlantic slavery dataset is not a reliable source for quantifying the incidence
of revolts that took place on the middle passage, or the number of slave deaths caused by

revolts, as the table below shows. Rather, it illustrates the lack of reliability of the

 

2‘ See for example Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981),
151 and James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981),
299-300. See also Joseph E. Inikori, “Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade: An Assessment of Curtin and
Anstey,” Journal of African History 17, 2 (1976), 2 for an example of concentrating on only those mutinies

216

reporting of mutinies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Size of No. He rted Per1000 Ave. no. slaves .
Dataset Revggs Voyages died in revolts Total "0' dled
All Nationalities 27233 338 12.4 1 .87 632
English 11166 118 10.5 (No Data) (No Data)
French 4034 144 35.7 4.39 632
United States 1791 35 19.5 (No Data) (No Data)
Portuguese 5149 0 0 (No Data) (No Data)
Dutch 1236 27 21.8 (No Data) (No Data)
Others 3857 14 3.6 (No Data) (No Data)

 

 

Table 5.4. Overview of Revolts as Reported in the Atlantic Slavery Dataset

The enormous disparity between the number of reported insurrections per nation
indicates that the dataset is far from complete. All the nationalities, including the French,
are certain to be understated. But even if the French data is used as an absolute minimum,
there will have been at least 1,285 to 1,400 mutinies on the middle passage, a ﬁgure that
demands attention from historians.

Several identiﬁable factors contributed to the likelihood of a mutiny taking place,
and some factors, though it would seem logical that they increase the possibility of a
mutiny occurring, did not. There were also several factors that had the potential to lead to
a mutiny, but were sufﬁciently guarded against to make them minor risks when taken
over the trade. Sometimes a mutiny occurred through such an unusual lack of care by the
slavers, something that happened so seldom, that it is difﬁcult to consider it a structural
risk to the trade. The American slaver, the Albion, for example, suffered a bloody mutiny

that can only be ascribed to the incredible shortsightedness of the crew. Many of the

 

that resulted in a great loss of life.

217

slaves “were provided with knives which we had indiscreetly given them two or three
days before, not suspecting the least attempt of this nature from them.”26 Complacency
by crew was always dangerous. There are examples of slaves mutinying because of
guards slept on their watch or did not check the slaves’ shackles regularly.27 But
negligence of such basic safety precautions was rare.

The relative freedom slaves had on board played an important role in determining
whether a slaver would suffer a mutiny. Slavers knew this, and nearly always restricted
them accordingly, which made this a minor overall contributing factor to the incidence of
mutinies. Slaves could sometimes engineer relatively more freedom for themselves and
take advantage of that freedom, as occurred on Newton’s vessel. There, a “young man
who has been the whole voyage out of irons, ﬁrst on account of a large ulcer, and since
for his seeming good behaviour gave them [the slaves] a large marlin spike.” The slaves
in the hold then used this to free themselves; Newton reported that in an hour’s time he
“found nearly 20 of them had broke their irons.”28 But it was far more common for slaves
to be without irons due to other reasons than “good behaviour.”

There is conﬂict in the primary accounts about the relative freedom slaves had on
board when out of sight of land. At least to a degree, this reﬂects the differing policies of
captains. Women generally had greater liberty of movement on board than men did. Men
were virtually always chained while the ship was close to the coast, and were usually —

though not always — conﬁned for the duration of the middle passage. It is difﬁcult to

 

25 J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 166-167.

26 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 456.

27 Financiers and crew alike knew this was a risk; Captain Barry was warned in his instructions from his
ﬁnanciers in 1726 to keep his slaves shackled and bolted, and to see that the crew took their guarding duties
seriously, because “sleeping in their watch has often been fatal] and many a good voyage (which otherwise
might be made) entirely mind.” In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 328. See for further examples Jay
Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle, 156-7 and Okon Edet Uya, “Slave Revolts,” 80, 91.

218

establish with any certainty what percentage of slavers unchained their male slaves
during the Atlantic crossing proper, but it appears to have been a minority. Sick slaves
were relatively safe to leave unironed, but occasionally healthy slaves were let out of
their irons to aid the crew, which posed considerably more risk.29

Just as freedom from irons posed a risk to crew, so did the times when the male
slaves were above deck. This was usually at mealtimes though it could also be when
slaves were permitted to wash themselves, or simply to escape the stiﬂing hold of the
vessel. Again, slavers were well aware of this danger, and the primary sources contain
several examples of both warnings to be cautious at these times, as well as examples of
mutinies occurring in these circumstances. Slavers took extra precautions when it was
necessary to have large numbers of slaves on deck simultaneously, even if the slaves
were ironed. The guard was sharpened and the guns on the barricado were manned.
Captain Phillips, for example, wrote that at meal times “therefor all that time, what of our
men are not employ’d in distributing their victuals to them, and settling them, stand to
their arms; and some with lighted matches at the great guns that yaun upon them, laden
with partridge, till they have done.”30 Some captains allowed only a limited number of

slaves to come above decks at a time, preferring to feed, wash or exercise the slaves in

 

2‘ John Newton, The Journal, 55.

29 This could, and did, lead to mutinies, though they were far from inevitable. The Newport Mercury of
September 16, 1765, provided just such a case. The newspaper related that “soon after he [Capt Hopkins]
left the Coast, the Number of his Men being reduced by sickness, he was obliged to permit some of the
Slaves to come upon the Deck to assist the People: These Slaves contrived to release the others, and the
whole rose upon the People.” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 213. The Boston NewLetter of Sept. 6, 1750,
in a similar example, reported that “The Insurrection was contrived and begun by 15 that had for a
considerable Time been treated with the same Freedom as the white men; and a great many of the latter
dying, encouraged them in the Design knowing the small Strength of the white men, they at once ﬂew
into the Cabin, and secured Arms in a few Minutes, kill'd the Captain and ﬁve of the People.” E. Donnan
Documents, vol. 2, 486. See also J. Pope-Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, 234.

3° He noted that “they are fed twice a day, which is the time they are aptest to mutiny, being on deck.” In
E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 406. For an example of a mutiny that took place at this time, and when the
guns were used, see Donnan, Documents, v. 2, 360.

219

shifts rather than to run the risk of a mutiny.31 There are several examples of mutinies that
occurred at such times, but they were not unusually common.32 Additional precautions and
the added watchfulness of the crew generally sufﬁced to offset the increased risk.

While there can be no doubt that the middle passage was a nightmare, the treatment
on board varied from ship to ship, and, more particularly, from captain to captain. Klein has
argued that a given captain's 'humanity' was not germane to the incidence of mortality on the
middle passage.33 This held true for the chances of a mutiny occurring too. Yet slavers and
contemporary commentators frequently ascribed slave mutinies to excessively harsh
treatment of slaves. Captain Snelgrave, for example, believed that most mutinies were
caused by “the Sailors ill usage” of the slaves.34 It is possible that those who suffered a
mutiny did not record unusually cruel treatment very often, not wishing to implicate
themselves. But the sources that do specify an unusually harsh regime on the vessel,
suggests that if anything, such actions offered a protection against mutinies. There was,
however, an exception to this observation. When a vessel had an extremely harsh regime,
and violence and punishments were administered in an obviously unfair and inconsistent
manner, the chance of a mutiny occurring was heightened.35 The harshness of the

treatment per se was not related to the incidence of mutinies, the unifonnity and perceived

 

3’ For testimony on the subject, see R. E. Conrad, Children of God 's Fire: A Documentary History of Black
Slavery in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 34.

32 Captain Viale's ship, the Nancy, experienced a mutiny "four or ﬁve Days after the voyage commenced,
“as the Slaves were all together messing one Day, the Males and Females apart.” In E. Donnan,
Documents, vol. 3, 400. Captain Snelgrave experienced an insurrection “at four a clock in the Afternoon,
just as they [the slaves] went to supper.” He also related the account of the mutiny aboard another slaver,
the Ferrers, whose slaves killed the captain of the ship”when they were eating their Victuals” in a
particularly gruesome manner; they “beat out his brains with the little Tubs, out of which they eat their
boiled Rice.” In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 353, 361.

33 HS. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton: Princeton
U.P, 1978), 125.

3" E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 352. Issert, for example, was of the opinion that “the too strict treatment
these unfortunates not infrequently are forced to suffer at the hands of barbaric captains often results in a
conspiracy among them.” Paul Isert, Letters, 176. Examples of this kind can easily be multiplied.

220

'justness' of the treatment was. In situations where slaves were subject to disciplinary
measures or cruelty which they perceived to be inequitable or otherwise unfair there was a
heightened risk of a mutiny occurring. A mutiny in these cases was seldom pre-meditated,
and it was highly personal in nature. It was not so much the condition of slavery that the
slave was ﬁghting, as the immediate oppressor. At least initially there was little thought of
escape involved.36 Due to the lack of planning and co—ordination of forces, this type of
mutiny was nearly always unsuccessful; it often took place disproportionately often on the
high seas, where there was little possibility of the slaves escaping with their lives, even if
they were to master the vessel.

In spite of the probable worse conditions and greater discontent that an extremely
crowded vessel would bring with it, as well as the potentially greater ﬁghting strength, there
is no evidence to suggest that greater crowding inﬂuenced the incidence of mutinies in any
way. The reason for this was probably related to the reason that brutal treatment per se did
not have had a large impact either. The added hardship suffered in a crowded vessel was
experienced equally by all slaves; while harsh, it was not perceived as being prejudiced or
inconsistent. The reason the slaves did not take advantage of their greater numbers is
explained, at least partly, by the fact that mutinies tended to be planned in relatively small
groups. The total ﬁghting strength of all slaves was not an issue in the planning of a mutiny

when only a relatively small number were likely to have been privy to the plot in the ﬁrst

 

35 See for example P. Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 108.

36 This was the case on the Ruby, where a number of the slaves, after unsuccessfully attempting to kill a
particularly brutal sailor, instigated a serious insurrection. See J. Arnold's testimony in Report to the House
of lords on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Reprinted in GE. Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (New York:
Kennikat Press, 1927), 175. A similar process took place on board the Corallinne in 1808, when an
unusually cruel guard, on being struck by a slave who subsequently jumped over board, “became furious
and rushed down the hold cutting right and left with his whip. By some means a gang got loose and broke
off the iron rod that fastened their ring bolts. They at once attacked Shakoe and beat his brains out and
succeeded in liberating half a dozen other gangs and got on deck all together” Memoirs of the late Captain

221

instance. If a mutiny was unplanned (i.e. spontaneous), the very nature of the mutiny assured
that the slaves would not desist if their ship was not extremely crowded. Statistical evidence
supports this contention. The Atlantic Slavery dataset contains 322 vessels that are known to
have suffered an insurrection on board, and for which it has been possible to inpute the
number of slaves on board. The minimum number of slaves on board when a mutiny took
place was 19 (the Epaminodos in 1787 under Captain Isaaic Din Bass), and the maximum
was 1,350 (an unnamed slaver in 1852 under Captain Antonio Capo).37 The average number
of slaves on a vessel suffering an insurrection was reasonably close to the average carried by
all vessels over the trade.38 The number of slaves on board was irrelevant to the chances of a
slaver experiencing a mutiny.39

There are a tremendous number of accounts in the primary literature that argue that a
particular people, when held on board as slaves, were more likely than average to mutiny.
Atkins and Snelgrave both identiﬁed slaves from the Gold Coast as particularly dangerous;
Conneau, disagreeing, found slaves from north of the Gold coast and east of the Cape of

Good Hope particularly likely to mutiny.40 In Barbot's opinion, Fidra and Ardra slaves from

 

H. Crow of Liverpool, in G. Dow Slave Ships, 207.

37 D. Eltis et al The Trans-Atlantic, record nos. 33,708 and 4,162. The standard deviation for the number of
slaves aboard taken over the 322 voyages was a very high 162.2.

38 The average number of slaves on a vessel suffering an insurrection was 268.86, somewhat less than the
average slaver.

39 It seems logical to suppose that insurrections on ships carrying a large number of slaves might have been
successful more often than those that took place on a vessel carrying a smaller number of slaves. The
Atlantic Slavery dataset does not contain enough records to determine whether this is the case, especially as
it does not deﬁne “success,” a problematic task. If one looks at the number of vessels that have the inputed
number of slaves on board and suffered an insurrection, and were captured by Africans (nearly always
slaves), it becomes possible to speculate very loosely. The average number of slaves on board these vessels
was to 157, the maximum to 420, and the minimum, 19. Thus if anything, the opposite appears to be true. It
is possible that the large numbers on a crowded ship might have inhibited efﬁcient mobilization and that in
a full-scale confrontation the advantage of larger numbers may have been offset by a lack of coordination.
4° E. Donnan, Documents, v. 2, 264, G. F. Dow, Slave Ships, 121 and T. A. Conneau, Slaver's Logbook, or
20 Year's Residence in Africa, (Englewood Cliffs N.J.: Prentice-Hall), 85.

222

the Angola region were “the most apt to revolt aboard ships?"l None of these opinions can
be conﬁdently supported by an examination of the primary documentation. The evidence is
too thin, and slavers did not agree amongst themselves which slaves were the most
dangerous. It was, however, likely that the plotters of a particular mutiny would be of the
same origin."2 Slaves of a common ethnic background tended to plot insurrections together
primarily due to safety considerations. This explanation accounts for both the lack of
agreement among slavers as to which particular groups of slaves were more likely to mutiny
as well as for the prevalence of ethnic stereotyping. A consideration related to the ethnicity
of the slaves was that of language.

The speaking of the same language or a mutually intelligible one would seem to
have conferred a decided advantage on the slaves. The advantages of mutual comprehension
in planning, co-ordinating and staging an insurrection are obvious. Little, however, indicates
that a common linguistic composition on board a slaver in any way increased the incidence
of slave insurrections. Nor do the primary sources very often make claims in this regard.43
Given the demographic nature of the trade, it was unlikely that the captives on board a given
ship would all be of one language. Both the 'cruising' along the coast while a ship sought a
full complement of slaves and the great distances slaves were sometimes procured from

made this unlikely.44 The reason that the lack of a single language on board did not

 

4' E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 295.

‘2 The ethnicity of mutineers is seldom readily identiﬁable; however, where it can be ascertained it supports
the notion that mutinies frequently tended to be plotted among slaves of the same ethnicity. Only
occasionally was ethnicity referred to explicitly, as in the account of the particularly bloody insurrection on
the Don Carlos. Barbot wrote that ”The next day we had them all again on deck, where they unanimously
declar'd, the Menbombe slaves had been the contrivers of the mutiny.” In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1,
457. Generally ethnicity must be inputed from the port of embarkation, an uncertain method.

’3 There are exceptions; see E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 264 and vol. 3, 360.

‘4 Philip Morgan has, however, recently argued that the ethnic composition on slavers was far more
homogenous than previously supposed. See his “The Cultural Implication of the Atlantic Slave Trade:
African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments,” Slavery and Abolition
(June 1997, Spec. ed.).

223

signiﬁcantly inhibit slaves from mutinying lay in the dynamics of slave-ship insurrections.
Insurrections were of two kinds; spontaneous and planned. Spontaneous, unplanned
mutinies were the result of any number of circumstances: an unusual provocation, a unique
opportunity or the escalation of a rebellion all led to spontaneous mutinies. In none of the
circumstances that led to an unplanned insurrection, was a common mode of communication
required for it to have been instigated. An unplanned mutiny might have had a better chance
of success if instructions and warnings could have been called out with the conﬁdence that
they would be understood, but the lack of a common language did not prevent them ﬁ'om
taking place.

Planned mutinies, plotted among a number of people, required the conspirators to
speak either the same language, use a lingua franca, or to make use of translations. This type
of mutiny tended to be plotted among a small number of conspirators who trusted each
other, as the risk of betrayal was always present, even though often more slaves participated
when it actually took place.“ In even the most ethnically mixed ship, it was exceedingly
unlikely that there would not be any group of slaves who could not speak the same or a
mutually intelligible language. Slave multi-linguism and the fact that the plotting of a
mutiny required only a rudimentary linguistic commonality further made it unlikely that
language problems prevented many planned mutinies from occurring. Thus in neither of the
two categories of mutinies — planned and unplanned — did language play a central role in
determining whether or not a slaver would suffer an insurrection.

Three elements were, however, especially signiﬁcant on board slaving vessels that

 

‘5 Evidence that small groups of slaves planned and instigated insurrections is provided below. It is likely

that the initial group of slaves plotting an insurrection would be of the same ethnic background, and hence
language. The mutiny that took place on Isert’s vessel, for example, was started by a group of slaves from
the same background. Isert spoke a number of African languages, and was able to establish this

224

suffered insurrections. The number of active crew on board, the proximity of land, and fear
of cannibalism among slaves were all substantial risk factors. It is unusual to ﬁnd a mutiny
or mutiny attempt that did not have at least one of them present. Frequently more than one
of these three factors was present. There was an especially strong synergetic effect between
the proximity of land and the number of active crew on board.

The most important of the major factors increasing the risk of a mutiny taking
place was the proximity of land. The actual trans-Atlantic crossing was frequently the
shortest leg of the journey for a recently purchased slave. Slave ships sometimes spent
many months waiting or 'coasting' along the slave routes of the African shore while the
captain struggled to acquire a full complement of slaves. This part of the journey showed
a very strong correlation with mutinies and attempted mutinies. It was, however, not the
length of time spent on board the ship that increased the likelihood of a mutiny occurring.
Rather, it was the proximity to land that provided a strong incentive to mutiny. There are
an abundance of accounts of mutinies taking place within sight, and most often, within
easy reach of land. Slavers were aware of the increased risk of mutinies that lying close
to land brought with it. Francis Moore, for example, suggested that "a great Mart of
exchange at James Fort" would be beneﬁcial to slave traders, among other reasons,
because of, “the Uncertainty of getting the Cargo, and when [the slaver] has sometimes got
half a Cargo, he may lie some Months before he can be able to Compleat it.” Moore sought
to protect captains from “the Hazards of Sickness and Rebellion of those Slaves he already
has” as they were “apter to rise in a Harbour than when out at Sea.”46

Insurrections close to land occurred as easily while the slaver was lying in a river

 

unambiguously. However, it was not common for slavers to speak an African language, and the evidence is
seldom as solid as that provided by Isert. P. Isert, Letters on West Africa, 177.

225

attempting to ﬁll its quota of human cargo, as they did on the coast. The Massachusetts
Gazette and Newsletter of August 28, 1766 reported, for example, an uprising in the
Gambia river that resulted in the death of all the ship's crew. The newspaper advised its
readers that “Capt. Harris, in 6 weeks, from the river Gambia on the coast of Africa...
informs us, that the slaves on board a brig, then lying in the river, rose on the crew, and
killed the master and all hands?“

The reports of insurrections on board vessels lying just off the coast are even more
common than reports of mutinies in a river. The Boston Post Boy of June 25, 1750, for
example, reported that Benjamin Clarke's ship, after suffering a mutiny by the slaves on
board was “run ashore a little to the southward of Cape Lopez, and [the slaves] made their
escape.”48 Many surviving accounts of mutinies are fragmentary. Often, however, it is
possible to ascertain whether the ships were at sea or close to land, even if little else is
discernible. The insurrection that occurred on board the Thames in 1777 is one such
account. In a protest — a formal declaration of damage — in this case written to document
extensive destruction caused by a storm and insurrection, Charles Barnard testiﬁed that
while “at Ancor in Cape Coast Roade, at half past two Aclock in the After Noon An
Insurrection on Board begun on Board By the Men Slaves.”49 Sometimes it was not
explicitly recorded that an insurrection occurred close to land, but still eaSy to deduce. In a
brief comment on a mutiny, for example, Moore concluded by noting that it was “with great
Difﬁculty he [the captain] escaped being killed, which he did in swimming ashore.”50

Just as many mutinies occurred when a slaving vessel was either anchored on the

 

‘6 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 402.

’7 Massachusetts Gazette and NewsLetter of August 28, 1766.Reprinted in E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 4,
232.

‘8 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 485.

226

coast or in a river, so examples of insurrections which occurred just after the ship left
Africa's shores are also common. These kinds of mutinies were desperate last-minute
attempts by slaves ﬁghting against being carried away from Africa's shore. Slavers
recognised this as a particularly dangerous time and sometimes tried to conceal their
departure time from the slaves, even leaving at night to do so. Being close to land, and the
knowledge that they were soon to leave it, combined to cause slaves to take risks they might
otherwise not have. Because these mutinies were often not well planned, and were watched
for by the crew, they were seldom, though not always, unsuccessful. The desperation of
slaves could make these last-minute mutinies unusually bloody. On James Barbot's voyage
in 1701, the slaves on board staged an unsuccessful insurrection when they were about ﬁve
leagues away from the coast that resulted in great loss of life.51 The mutiny on the Clare was
one of the few successful ones. The vessel “was not got 10 Leagues on her Way, before the
Negroes rose and making themselves Masters of the Gunpowder and Fire Arms.” The slaves
managed to “run the Ship on Shore....and made their Escape.”52
But most mutinies that occurred close to land were not desperate last moment
attempts. The proximity to land itself, not the closeness of the departure time was the most
important incentive to mutiny. The land did not need to have been the shores of Africa for
the chances of a mutiny occurring to increase. Even when a ship was cloSe to land after
having left Africa, the incidence of mutinies increased. The Diamant, for example, suffered
an insurrection in September 1774 when forced to anchor off Corsico, a small island on the

Gabon coast, due to adverse sailing conditions. After a bloody battle and “Finding it

 

‘9 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 331.
5° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 410.
5‘ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 451.
52 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 274.

227

impossible to resist further.... the captain embarked in the dinghy with fourteen of his
crew.”53 There was even an increased risk of an insurrection when a slaver was in sight of
its destination, though this was not nearly as common as when the vessel was in sight of
Africa. The Boston Post Boy, for example, reported that “a Ship belonging to Liverpool
coming from the Coast of Africa, with about 350 slaves aboard when in sight of the
Island Guardoloupe, the slaves kill'd the Master and Mate of the Ship and threw ﬁfteen
of the men overboard?“ The examples could easily be multiplied many more times, as
the vast majority of known mutinies occurred close to land.

Slaves may have suffered less from apathy and a sense of hopelessness than they
would while out at sea, but most importantly, the prospects of a successful escape were
much higher when mutinying close to land. Moore speciﬁcally noted this when he wrote “if
they once get Masters of a ship, in the River, their Escape to Shore is almost certain, by
running the Ship aground” This was not true — the slaves’ escape was by no means almost
certain -— but the point is nonetheless valid. Even if slaves did reach the shore, there was a
large chance that they would be recaptured by the surviving crew, or by Africans. The
available data conﬁrm that the success rate (i.e. the incidence of slaves taking over the ship,
and subsequently making good their escape) of mutinies that took place close to land, while
extremely low, was much higher than that of mutinies which took place On sea. As there was
a distinct advantage to mutinying while on the coast, so there was a deﬁnite disadvantage to
doing so while at sea. As Moore noted, “at Sea it is otherwise, for if they should surprize a

Ship there, as they cannot navigate her, they must have the Assistance of the White Men, or

 

53 They landed near the St. Benito river where they were, ironically, enslaved by Africans. R.L. Stein, The
French, 104.
5‘ Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 485.

228

perish.”55 The slaves were unlikely to have known how to sail a large slaving vessel, and
less likely yet to know how to navigate. After having been at sea for some time, very few
slaves had would have had any idea of where they were. Slaves did mutiny at sea, but not
nearly as often as when they where close to land. When they did so, the mutinies were
frequently unplanned.56

There were a few exceptional cases when slaves managed to overcome their lack
of navigational ability after a mutiny at sea, but they were extremely rare.57 The New
York Packet reported in 1750 that “a schooner, which sailed about 12 months since from
New-Port, for the coast of Africa was lately met with at sea, by a vessel bound to
Bristol, in England.” The vessel was found “without Sails, had only 15 negroes on board
and those in very emaciated and wretched condition, having doubtless been long at sea.”
For lack of any other plausible explanation, the newspaper concluded that “The negroes it
is supposed had rose and murdered the Captain and crew.”58 It is impossible to ascertain
how many ships that were reported lost at sea, and never heard of again, were lost on
account of a mutiny. Most mutinies at sea in which the slaves overcame the slaves

resulted in the deaths of both slaves and crew.

 

55 Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 402. .

56 There is some evidence from slaves that only the lack of sailing and navigation skills prevented them
from mutinying. William Thomas, a slave who made the middle passage, wrote in his narrative that “after
being three weeks at sea, some of the men proposed to rise and kill the captain, and take the ship back to
Africa. I told them that they did not understand ‘sailor palaver,’ and if they took the vessel, ‘big wind
would come, and she would capsize, and then all of us would die.”’ The slaves did not mutiny, and the
vessel docked at Havana. In John Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches,
Interviews and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 227.

57 The insurrection aboard the King David was one such. After killing a number of the crew, the slaves
managed to seize control of the vessel while it was out at sea, and “About 8 o'Clock the same Evening, they
threw over-board nine of the white men alive with their irons on: The chief Mate was also bro't on the
Gunnel to be served in the same Manner: but one of the Head Negroes interpos'd, and said, Who must take
Care of the Ship? and withal declar'd that if they destroy'd him, he would kill the ﬁrst that attempted it:
whereupon they saved his Life.” The slaves did make land, but what happened after that is not known.
Reported in the Boston NewsLetter, September 6, 1750. In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 486-487.

58 In the New York Packet, February 14, 1785. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 341.

229

One of the strongest mutual myths prevalent in the slave trade was that of
cannibalism. Both Africans and Europeans seem to have held that the other commonly
attained slaves to supplement their diet. The idea that some Africans were cannibals
whenever there was an opportunity became an integral part of the slave-traders’ mythology,
and this may have augmented the Africans' own misgivings about European slavers. The
question of the veracity of any accounts of cannibalism is not relevant here. Aaron points
out that, as human nature will have it, “A New Guinean or Aﬁican group is as prone to
debase another with the cannibal label as quickly as any European.”59 My investigation into
the phenomenon in connection with slave-ship mutinies has not contradicted him. The issue
was the belief in cannibalism, not whether it occurred or not. There can be little doubt that
some Africans, both slave and free, believed that the European traders bought slaves for
later consumption. A literate African, Job Ben Solomon, was kidnapped from Africa and
held as a slave in Maryland for a year before being bought and freed by an Englishman, Mr.
Oglethorpe. After spending over a year in England, Solomon returned to Africa in 1727 and
“took away a great deal of the Horror of the Pholeys for the State of Slavery among the
English; for they before generally imagined, that all who were sold for slaves, were
generally either eaten or murdered, since none ever returned.”60

The testimony to the British Select Committee of the House of Lords by Augustino,
an African who was twelve years old when enslaved, indicated that fear of cannibalism
existed in the minds of some enslaved Africans. He testiﬁes that “The young ones had the
right of coming on deck, but several of those jumped overboard, for fear they were being

fattened to be eaten.” On being asked what caused them to believe such a thing, Augustino

 

59 W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1979), 142.

230

Simply replied that “They do not know for what object they are taken, and the idea comes
into their head that it is from being made food of?“ In accounts that deal with the middle
passage and are penned by Africans themselves, many references to the supposed
cannibalism of whites can be found. Ottobah Cugoano, for example, wrote that on his
travels to sold into the Atlantic trade “Next day we travelled on, and in the evening came to
a town where I saw several white people, which made me afraid they would eat me,
according to our notion.”62 The narrative penned by Samual Ajayi Crowther who was
enslaved in 1822, in a more oblique manner, also indicated that Europeans were supposed to
be cannibals; he wrote that “we six were conveyed into the Mynnidon, in which we
discovered not a trace of those who were transhipped before us. We soon came to the
conclusion of what had become them, when we saw parts of a hog hanging a number of
cannonshots were arranged along the deck. The former we supposed to be the ﬂesh, and the
later the heads of the individuals who had been killed for meat.”63

Joseph Wright feared of being eaten when he was carried away in a canoe by
Portuguese slavers because “we had heard that the Portuguese were going to eat us when we

got to their country?"4 The accounts that have survived which were written by Africans

 

60 In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 417.

6' 1n R.E. Conrad, Children ofGod's Fire, 39.

62 In J. Pope-Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 32. Perhaps the best-
known slave narrative that includes an account of the middle passage is Olaudah Equiano’s. The
authenticity of the early part has recently been questioned. See Vincent Carretta, “Olaudah Equiano or
Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity,” Slavery and Abolition 20, 3
(December 1999). But even if this part is ﬁctional, it is remarkable that Equiano still referred to the
supposed cannibalism of whites. Equiano wrote that “When I looked round the ship too, and saw a large
furnace or 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.” Later, Equiano
claimed, after having landed at the port of destination, “at last the white people got some old slaves from
the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten.” In H.L. Gates (ed.), The Classic Slave
Narratives (New York: Penguin, 1987), 33, 37.

63 Philip D. Curtin, Africa Remembered; Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 313.

6" P. D. Curtin, Africa Remembered, 331.

231

tended be written by formally educated or unusually talented slaves. If they initially lent
credence to the supposition that whites were cannibals, less—educated slaves probably did so
even more readily.

There is some evidence that there may have been some practical explanations for the
belief by some Africans that whites were cannibals. Bucher has argued that the Mpongwe of
the Gabon estuary and other coastal peoples engaged in the slave trade actively encouraged
the belief in order to safeguard their monopoly on the slave trade from societies living in the
interior. Similarly, they successfully encouraged the belief among the traders that the
societies of the interior were cannibals. Both rumours were intended to discourage the
slavers to trade directly with the interior societies and vice-versa in order to protect their
positions as middlemen.65 The explorer Mungo Park provided evidence that there was a fear
of being cannibalised among slaves from the interior. Commenting on a coffle that he
encountered on the way to the coast, he wrote that there existed “A deeply rooted idea, that
the whites purchase Negroes for the purpose of devouring them, or selling them to others,
that they may be devoured hereafter, naturally makes the slaves contemplate a journey
towards the coast with great terror.” Because of this, “the Slatees are forced to keep them
constantly in irons, and watch them very closely, to prevent their escape.”66

The mutual belief in cannibalism would logically have contributed greatly to the
risk of a mutiny having taken place on board the slaving vessels in which it occurred. If
true, slavers should have learned to recognise it. Numerous references indicate that

slavers did. The selection below, all originally penned by slavers, illustrates the point:

 

”5 H. Bucher, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Gabon Estuary: The Mpongwe to 1860” in PE. Lovejoy,
Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade (University of Wisconsin Press Ltd.:
Wisconsin, 1986), 150.

66 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 557. The process sometimes used in assessing slaves before purchase did

232

I ohn Barbot believed that “Fida and Ardra slaves... are the most apt to revolt aboard ships,
for being used to see mens ﬂesh eaten in their own country, they are very full of the
notion that we buy and transport them to the same purpose; and will therefor watch all
opportunities to deliver themselves, by assaulting a ship's crew, and murdering them all if
possible: whereof we have almost every year some instances.”67 John Atkins, in his
consideration of mutinies, implied that once a ship had departed from the coast, the only
reason it would be likely to suffer an insurrection was the fear of cannibalism. He wrote that
“When we are slaved and out at Sea, it is commonly imagined, the Negroes Ignorance of
Navigation, will always be a Safeguard; yet, as many of them think themselves bought to eat
there has not been wanting Examples of rising and killing a Ship's Company, distant
from Land.”68 Many insurrections that took place distant ﬁom land probably occurred
because of such a fear. The desperation required to mutiny in such unpropitious
circumstances needed an exceptionally powerful catalyst.

Captain William Bosman noted that the fear of cannibalism was most common
among slaves from the interior. He believes that two of the mutinies that he suffered —
both of which he attributed to the slaves' fear of being eaten -— were caused by slaves from
the interior. He wrote that “We are sometimes sufﬁciently plagued by a parcel of slaves,
which come from a far in-land country, who very innocently persuade one another, that we
buy them only to fatten and afterwards eat them as a delicacy.” Unsurprisingly, the slaves

then “resolve and agree together to run away from the ship, kill the Europeans, and set the

 

not help either; slavers would sometimes taste the sweat of the slave in order to determine if they were
healthy. M. Burnside, Spirit of the Passage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 115.

67 James Barbot, also a slaver, agrees with his uncle's assessment, stating that “It has been observ'd before,
that some slaves fancy they are carry'd to be eaten, which makes them desperate... so that if care be not
taken they will mutiny.” E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 295 and 451.

68 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 264.

233

vessel ashore; by which means they design to free themselves from being our food.”69
Some slavers attempted to reassure their slaves that they were not to be eaten in
the hope that this would reduce the risk of insurrection. Captain Snelgrave, for example,
informed his slaves via an interpreter that “That, now they are become my Property, I
think ﬁt to let them know what they are bought for, that they may be easy in their Minds.”
He did this because “these poor People are generally under terrible Apprehensions upon
their being bought by white Men, many being afraid that we design to eat them.”70 It is
doubtful that slaves who believed that they were to be eaten would have been much
reassured by a promise made by a slaver, or one under his inﬂuence — the perceived
cannibals or his agent.71 It might even have worsened their apprehensions, if they reasoned
that if a slaver were to go to pains to deny the matter, then perhaps it might well have had
some foundation in truth. The slaves from the interior that met with Mungo Park while they
were in the hands of an African trader suggest that this did happen. Upon meeting Park,
“They were all very inquisitive.” However, “they viewed me at ﬁrst with looks of horror,
and repeatedly asked if my countrymen were cannibals.”72 The word “repeatedly” indicates
either that the slaves wished to make very sure that their question had been correctly
understood, or, more likely, a strong initial disbelief of what they were being told.

Exactly how many mutinies occurred because of this belief cannOt be accurately

 

69 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 438.

7° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 352. He was not the only one. An eighteenth century Dutch handbook for
slavers that urged them to “assure the slaves, after they have been purchased, that they should not be afraid;
that white people were not cannibals.” J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 165. Captain Penny, giving (a very
favorable) testimony on the slave trade before the British parliament notes that many slaves fear being
cannibalized, and that it is “the business of the Traders” to remove that fear. In Michael Craton, Testing the
Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 35.

7' Further evidence was provided by Isert. When he told slaves that they were being bought to work the
land he was not believed, because in the slaves’ experience so many people were not used in agriculture.
He was also asked if his shoes were made from the skin of slaves. In spite of his reassurances, his voyage
suffered a mutiny. P. Isert, Letters on West Africa, 175-176.

72 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 634.

234

reconstructed. Too few of the surviving accounts of mutinies record the slaves’ initial
impetus to revolt. The stresses of their enslavement and the manner in which they were
examined, bought and treated while in the hands of their oppressors probably all contributed
to their ascribing the universal ultimate level of debasement to enslavers: that of man-eaters.
And in these circumstances, they were willing to take desperate risks to avoid that fate.
Being enslaved was one thing and dying another, but to be eaten was a horror that to many
slaves transcended both.

The third major risk factor in determining whether or not a mutiny would take place
was the ratio between slaves plotting a mutiny and the number of active crew on board. As
was the case with fears of cannibalism, slavers were aware of the danger. Snelgrave,
commenting on what he felt were a particularly hostile group of slaves, wrote that “Our
Ship's company consisted of ﬁfty white People, all in Health: And I had very good Ofﬁcers;
so that I was easy in all respects.”73 It did not matter why the number of active crew of a
particular vessel was diminished; in all such circumstances mutinies were more likely to
occur. Problems with crewmembers themselves could reduce the strength of the crew
through, for example, desertion while in Africa. While a ship was attempting to ﬁll its quota
of slaves the number of active crew on board was also frequently severely reduced when a
part of the crew was ashore, leaving a depleted guard to watch over the slaves. This was a
particularly risky period; the vessel was close to land, and the number of active crew
onboard was depleted.

Reports of mutinies in these circumstances surface very often in the literature. The
slaver John Bell, for example, wrote from on board the Hope in 1776 to acquaint his

ﬁnancier John Fletcher, that “we had the misfortune to lose 36 of the best slaves we had by

235

an Insurrection of a mutiny.” He explained that “this unlucky affair happened when there
was only the Boatswain, Carpenter, 3 White people and myself on board?“ The remaining
crew were busy onshore - acquiring slaves, securing water for the voyage, and other
necessary tasks.

Aside from crew being on shore, the most common reason for an inadequate number
of crew available to offset an increased risk of mutiny was sickness. Illness was at least as
important in reducing the effective guard as death was. By far the majority of crew who died
or sickened on the voyage did so while the vessel was on the coast of Africa.75 The
consequence was that “whilst the ships lie in the River, the Crews are apt to be sick, and
consequently not able to guard their Slaves; of which several Instances have been, and Ships
lost thereby.”76 Moore's remark holds equally true for ships anchored in a river and those
anchored at the coast. James Barbot agreed. After relating the deaths of a number of crew,
and the illness of several others, he laid the blame for the depletion of his crew on “the air of
Cabinde being very unwholesome.” This, he believed was what “gave an opportunity to the
slaves aboard to revolt.”77

Not all the insurrections that took place when the crew was decimated by illness took
place on or relatively near the coast. The Boston Post Boy of August 13, 1750 for example,
reported a successful insurrection that took place “when having 60 NegrOes aboard, and the
most of their white men being sick, the Negroes got to the Powder and Arms” while the

vessel was at sea.” The residual effects of the unhealthy effects of the conditions in Africa

often lasted through the middle passage. However, the vast majority of mutinies that

 

’3 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 354.
7‘ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 323.
75 See Chapter 3, “Crew” for details.

76 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 402.

236

occurred in these circumstances did so while the vessel was close to land.

A common reason of having too few crewmembers on board was due to the fact that
not all slavers took on the same amount of crew in an attempt to keep expenses low. This is
not often mentioned in the primary sources, as few responsible for ships that suffered
mutinies so directly put the blame on themselves. It is, however, possible to access the
information indirectly. Mungo Park noted that “the mode of conﬁning and securing Negroes
in the American slave ships, owing chieﬂy to the weakness of their crews” was much more
restrictive and severe than average in an attempt to prevent mutinies.79

Donnan has noted the increased risk associated with a smaller crew, and in a
footnote stated that “There is little question but that they [mutinies] became more common
as the trade fell in the hands of independent traders, who carried smaller crews in
comparison with the size of their cargoes than the company vessels.”80 She identiﬁed the
ratio of crew initially taken on board to the total number of slaves on board as the salient
element. However, the matter was not quite as clear-cut as she suggests. Taken over all
slaving nations and over the entire period of the trade, the initial ratio of slaves to

crewmembers is 11.66 slaves per crewmember. For vessels that did suffer a mutiny, the ratio

is only 9.68 slaves per crewmember.81 Thus there were actually more crew relative to slaves

 

77 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 457.

78 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 486.

79 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 641. The Atlantic dataset suggests that Park was correct. On average, an
English vessel carried 29.76 crewmembers taken over the entire trade (calculated over 6798 voyages),
while the Americans averaged only 13.3 crewmembers (calculated over 180 voyages). American slavers
thus carried about 45% of the crew of English slavers. But this does not take into account vessel size or the
number of slaves on board (though neither was as important as the absolute number of crew, as argued
below). A somewhat better way to approach the question with regard is to mutinies is to check the initial
slave / crew ratio for both. I used the number of crew at the outset of the voyage and the number of slaves
disembarked, as this provided the greatest number of voyages to generalize from. The English had a ratio of
10.95 slaves per crewmember (6557 voyages), while the American vessels had a ratio of 15.52 slaves per
crewmember (156 voyages) - a difference of nearly 30%. Clearly the Americans took a greater risk.

8° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 361.

8' No insurrection reported: 297,226 crewmembers divided by an inputed 2,588,118 slaves disembarked =

237

on vessels that did suffer a mutiny. However, she is nonetheless correct in noting that there
is an increased risk of mutiny when a vessel carried a smaller crew. Her error was implicitly
assuming that all the slaves on board a vessel cause an insurrection on the one hand, and on
the other, that all the crewmembers were always available to counter such the attempt. Both
assumptions are incorrect. Another reason to suspect such a reductionist approach is that
there is no evidence showing that ships carrying larger numbers of slaves experienced more
mutinies than average, as might be expected to have been the case, if Donnan's statement
were to hold true. Again, the data contradicts her. Vessels that reported no mutiny embarked
an average of 309.86 slaves, while those that did suffer a mutiny embarked an average of
only 271.21 slaves.82

Slave ship insurrections were usually plotted by a fairly small number of slaves. A
group of more than twenty slaves conspiring simultaneously to take over a ship, though not
unheard of, was rare. Given the relatively small number of slaves who instigated an
insurrection at any given time, any reduction in the number of crew who would actively
attempt to thwart them was vitally important to the chances of the mutinying slaves realising
their objective. It was the instigators of the insurrection who were in the ﬁrst instance
confronted by resistance from crewmembers, not all the slaves. And the instigators decided

whether or not to mutiny according to their calculation of the chance of success. Thus it was

 

11.66. Dataset size = 9,728 voyages. Insurrection reported: 6,369 crewmembers divided by an inputed
45,293 slaves disembarked = 9.68. Dataset size = 185. Both ﬁgures are calculated using initial crew
employed and the inputed number of slaves disembarking (the later to maximize the size of the dataset and
so to arrive at more reliable averages). Mutinies are not reliably reported in the Atlantic slavery dataset.
However, what is reported can be used to calculate ratios, some averages and the like, as there is no reason
that the under-reporting favoured any particular circumstance (other than the nationality of the slaver)
above any other. Thus while the ﬁgures offered above would no doubt need to be adjusted if more complete
data were available, it is very likely that the conclusions would be substantiated.

82 The 24,524 voyages for which no record of a mutiny attempt survives that allow the number of slaves
embarked to be inputed, embarked 7,598,935 slaves, or 309.86 per voyage. The 305 voyages that suffered a
mutiny that allow the number of slaves embarked to be inputed shows that 82,720 slaves embarked, or
271,21 per voyage.

238

the ratio of active crew to the number of slaves who were involved in plotting a mutiny that
was important, not merely the ratio of crew to slaves. This solves the apparent inconsistency
as to why the number of slaves on board had no impact on the incidence of mutiny, while
the number of active crew did. This does not entirely deny Donnan's point that slavers who
canied a smaller crew to begin with were more likely to experience an insurrection. The
reasons that Donnan has identiﬁed them as at heightened risk for suffering a mutiny, though
she does not analyse it were, presumably, twofold. In the ﬁrst place, from the point of view
of the slaves plotting an insurrection, there existed an already more favourable ratio between
themselves and their enslavers. However, this ratio was generally favourable enough to the
slavers to inhibit a mutiny. Second, and more importantly, when a crewmember of an
undermanned vessel was incapacitated for whatever reason, the ratio between the number of
slaves plotting an insurrection and the number of crew capable of resisting changed to
favour the plotters to a much greater degree than it would have on a fully manned ship. This
was because any one reduction in the numbers of the crew of an undermanned vessel
constituted a greater percentage of reduction of the total crew than it did on a fully manned
ship. This discrepancy was compounded as more crew members were incapacitated, while
there is no reason to suppose that the number of plotters would have been similarly reduced,
as they had a much larger pool of people from which to draw. In sum, a Slaver with a larger
crew spread its risks more effectively; they were able to absorb a greater amount of
adversity and still retain a more intimidating force than an undermanned slaver.

In a related point, expressed in percentages, crew mortality on the middle passage
was roughly equal to that of slaves. This worked in favour of the slaves, as a given

percentage reduction in crew, even when matched by an equal reduction in slaves created,

239

from the point of view of the slaves plotting a mutiny, a more favourable ratio between
themselves and the remaining crew. This was compounded as a greater percentage of crew
fell ill, or was otherwise incapacitated. The data support this interpretation. On voyages that
suffered no insurrection, but reported at least one crew death, an average of 7.12
crewmembers died, while on a voyage that did suffer an insurrection, an average of 9.42
crewmembers died per voyage.83 This is a difference of about 25%.

Another way of looking at the data is, using the same data as above, to compare
the distribution of crew deaths on vessels that did suffer an insurrection with those that
did not. The table below clearly shows that vessels that did suffer an insurrection suffered

losses in a distribution that favored slaves far more than those that did not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insurrection No insurrection
Order reported reported
Most common 7 deaths reported 2 deaths reported

2nd 6 3

3rd 5 1

4th 3 4
5th 4 5
6th 11 6
7th 1 7
8th 10 8
9th 8 9
10th 14 10
11th 2 11
12th 15 13

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.5. Distribution of Crew Death on Voyages Reporting and Those Not Reporting
An Insurrection

 

83 With no insurrection reported, there were 28,525 deaths taken over an average of 4,005 voyages where at
least one crewmember died. The same calculation for voyages that did suffer an insurrection shows 1,243
deaths over 132 voyages. The actual difference is probably much higher, as the deaths are probably
overstated for voyages that suffered no insurrection. They are likely to have suffered fewer deaths on
average, as the calculation made above excludes voyages on which no crewmembers died, as it is nearly
always impossible to distinguish between voyages that suffered no crew mortality, and those for which no
information is preserved.

240

Deaths are only a part of the story as far as the reduction of crew is concerned. Vessels
reporting a high number of deaths were also likely to have a higher number of crew
incapacitated because of illness. This made the ratio of active crew to plotting slaves even
more favourable to the slaves than the table and the argument above would suggest.

The greater chances of a successful mutiny afforded by a small number of active
crew on board combined with the greater chances of making a successful escape due to the
proximity to land created a strong synergetic effect between the two. Thomas Phillips,
though overstating the case somewhat, nevertheless summed the matter up succinctly. He
wrote that he had “never heard that they mutiny'd in any ships of consequence, that had a
good number of men, and the least care; but in small tools where they had but few men, and
those negligent or drunk, then they surpriz'd and butcher'd them, cut the cables and let the
vessel drive ashore.”84 Crewmembers tended to be incapacitated due to illness, or otherwise
reduce their presence on board, for example by spending time ashore, when just off the
coast. In a typical example of this, Captain Luc Jolly left his vessel, the Bienfaisant, with
116 slaves on board and only six people to guard them while he and the rest of the crew
went ashore. The slaves mutinied, killed the six guards, and most made good their escape.85
The mutiny on Snelgrave’s vessel, the Eagle, in 1704 followed the same pattern. When the
slaves mutinied, the vessel was in a river. There were “four hundred [slaves] on board, and
not above ten white Men who were able to do Service: For several of our Ship's Company
were dead, and many more sick; besides, two of our Boats were just then gone with twelve

People on Shore to fetch Wood.” Snelgrave was correct in supposing that “All these

 

8‘ E. Donnan, Documents, vol 1, 407.
85 Stein, The French Slave Trade, 88.

241

Circumstances put the Negroes on consulting how to mutiny.”86 It was a circumstance that
was unusually propitious for the slaves. Only while on the coast could they realistically hope
to escape to their native shore, and it was just at this time that a ship was likely to be at its
weakest in terms of the number of active crew on board.

My ﬁndings only hold true for averages, not for all individual instances. The factors
discussed above do not cover all insurrections; but they were the major elements
determining the risks of a mutiny occurring. Mutinies also occurred when there was no other
discernible cause than, of course, the slaves’ enslavement. There were also examples of
mutinies not occurring when, on the face of it, there was every reason for them to occur. In a
bizarre incident, Captain Conneau "picked ten strong men from the slaves, whom I armed
with a cutlass each" in order to put down an imminent mutiny among his crew. He
succeeded. 87 There are even a few primary documents that indicate that the slaves mutinied
only after being encouraged to do by crewmembers.88 But these were atypical; they nuance,
but do not negate the general trend identiﬁed above.

There are many possible ways to deﬁne success: killing or injuring a number of
the crew, taking control of the vessel, or, most difﬁcult of all, regaining one’s freedom.
By any deﬁnition, the chances of a mutiny attempt succeeding were remote. The slavers
were armed, they controlled the strategic positions on the vessel, and were prepared for
an uprising. The slaves were restrained, had no weapons, and were carefully watched

over. Slavers held every advantage. Mutinying was nearly always the taking of a

 

8"E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 353.

‘7 Conneau, A Slaver's Logbook, 183.

88 For example, on the Wolf, a crewmember who bore the captain a grudge instigated a mutiny by the
slaves. In order to convince them to rebel he had not only promised to return them to Africa, but also
encouraged “a notion of their being to be eat in Europe.” Darold D. Wax, “A Philadelphia Surgeon on a
Slaving Voyage to Africa,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92, 4 (1968), 485. See
chapter 3, “Crew” for other examples.

242

calculated risk on the part of the slaves who engaged in it. As such, several of the factors
determining whether a vessel would suffer a mutiny, were also those that determined the
likelihood of it succeeding. But once the decision to mutiny had been made, and the
battle had been joined, there were two additional important factors in determining the
success of the attempt.

The ﬁrst of these was capturing the powder room. This was where the small arms
as well as the ammunition for the larger ship’s weapons were kept. In order to gain
control of the powder room, the slaves ﬁrst needed to cross the barricado.89 From the
slaves’ perspective, capturing the powder room was essential on two counts. In the ﬁrst
place, and most importantly, they needed to deny the crew access to the guns. Secondly,
but less vitally, they needed the small arms to ﬁght successfully. Sometimes the guns
were not directly conquered, as was the case on the Virginie where the “women who,
from the incommodious size of the vessel had been placed in the apartment containing
the arms, which they managed to convey unperceived to the men.”90 But this was highly
unusual. There are very few reports of successful mutinies without the slaves having
managed to obtain some form of weapons with which to ﬁght. Often slaves mutinied
using only small improvised weapons, such as chains they had managed to break off, or

pieces of wood lying about the vessel.91 But to succeed, they nearly alWays needed to

 

89 Depending on when the insurrection occurred, they might also ﬁrst need to kill the sentry guarding the
hatches to the ship’s holds. Crossing the barricado to get to the arms was not always a battle; Stein
recounted a mutiny in which “the black men who were below, having broken through the partitions
separating the men and women’s quarters” managed to cross under the barricado. Stein, The French, 104.
Another, albeit very dangerous, method sometimes attempted, was to jump overboard, and try to catch the
back part of the vessel, and climb back on board behind the barricado.

9° P. Leonard, Records of a Voyage, 108.

9' If slaves managed to obtain improvised weapons before a mutiny began, it was often due to the
carelessness of the slavers. Cautious captains, such as Barbot, searched their vessel conscientiously while
slaves were on board to prevent them from ﬁnding anything that might be used as a weapon, but this was
not an easy task. His crew “used to visit them daily, narrowly searching every comer between decks, to see
whether they have not found the means, to gather pieces of iron, or wood, or knives, about the ship.” But as

243

control the powder room. Slavers knew the importance of the powder room, and few
were as shortsighted and greedy as the captain of the Virginie. Barbot claimed that on his
vessel “We cause as many of our men as is convenient to lie in the quarter-deck and gun
room being thus ready to disappoint any attempt our slaves might make on a
sudden.”92 If true, this represented an unusual amount of caution. But it was standard to
immediately go below and secure the powder room when a mutiny broke out.

If the crew reached the powder room before the slaves, the mutiny was usually put
down fairly quickly. But if the slaves reached it ﬁrst, or if they had crossed the barricado
in large numbers, a ferocious battle often raged for control of the room, as was the case
on the Africain on November 27, 1738. According to Lieutenant Dom Jeulin, after the
mutiny started, “the Negroes headed in a fury to take the room in where the arms were
held.” The crew managed to gain control of the room, and “We barricaded the door well
with trunks and boxes piled up to secure it.” Juelin adrniited that “we certainly would
have had trouble containing them if we had not taken the arms room.” In a ﬂourish of
bravado though, he added “We succeeded in taking it at the beginning of the revolt when
we were half asleep.”93 If the slaves managed to hold the arms room, their chances of

success increased dramatically, but it was no guarantee of victory.” However, it was a

 

he acknowledges, “notwithstanding the great care we take not to leave any tool or nails, or other things in
the way: which however, cannot always be so exactly observ’d, where so many people are in the narrow
compass of a ship.” Yet if taken, the precaution did help; it might uncover something the slaves might use
in a mutiny, but more importantly, it emphasized the vigilance of the crew. E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1,
462.

92 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1,462.

93 R.L. Stein, The F rench, 105. See also the Pennsylvania Gazette of May 16, 1754. It provided an example
in which the crew managed to gain control of the arms, and repulse the slaves who had attacked the room in
force. After being repulsed, they found the slavers’ aim to be sufﬁciently bad to stage another attack, and
they consequently managed to take the vessel.

9" The mutiny on the vessel Ann in 1750, and that on the Clare in 1729 are examples of successful mutinies
after the slaves captured the arms room. In both cases the slaves secured the vessel, and made good their
escapes. See Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 486 and vol. 4, 274. But even if the slaves captured the powder
room, there were still numerous ways in which the mutiny could fail. The mutiny on Captain Hope’s

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virtual guarantee of a bloody battle, often resulting in many deaths on both sides.

Both at the start of a mutiny and while the mutiny was being fought out, slaves
tended to deliberately focus their attacks on persons in authority, particularly the captain.
In a disproportionate number of successful mutinies the captain was killed in the
beginning of, or during the course of the mutiny. Perhaps the death of the captain tended
to lead to a breakdown of discipline among the crew, or to a loss of morale. That slaves
targeted inﬂuential people deliberately cannot be doubted. The slaves mutinied on Isert’s
vessel while he “was exchanging pleasantries with some of them” in their own language.
He was the ﬁrst person they attacked (and injured seriously), because they incorrectly
“concluded that I was the owner of all the slaves, and that it would be best to send me
into the other world ﬁrst, after which the Europeans, like mercenaries, would surrender
all the sooner.”95

Experienced captains were aware of this and took due precautions when going
among the male slaves. Captain Snelgrave, giving advice to an inexperienced fellow
captain on the African coast who was in the habit of walking among the slaves while they
were eating, warned him “How imprudent it was in him to do so.” Snelgrave

recommended that he “have a good many of his white People in Arms when he went; or

else having him so much in their Power, might incourage the Slaves to mutiny.” He

 

vessel, for example, failed because even though 6 or seven slaves had taken the powder room, they were
not supported by the other slaves. After holding the vessel for several hours, they were defeated. See
Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the
Liverpool Slave Trade (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), 480. There are also several accounts that
indicate that the slaves’ unfamiliarity with the weapons in the powder room caused them to blow it up,
nearly always at a great cost in human lives, both slaves and crew. For an example of such a mutiny, see
the Pennsylvania Gazette of June 16, 1763. Sometimes these may have been deliberate suicide attempts by
the slaves, but this is unlikely to have been the case in all circumstances. See P. Isert, Letters on West
Africa, 177 and Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments of the Evil of Slavery (London: Dawsons of
Pall Mall, 1787), 10.

95 P. Isert, Letters on West Africa, 179-181.

245

concluded by informing the captain that “he might depend on it, they always aim at the
chief Person in the Ship, who they soon distinguish by the respect shown him by the rest
of the People.”96 The slaves did indeed mutiny, and attacked the captain.

As disproportionate number of mutinies began with an attack on the authority
ﬁgures, they had higher chance of dying or being wounded in an insurrection than the
average crewmember.97 If a mutiny succeeded, and the captain was not killed during the
engagement, his chances of survival improved considerably, though they were far from
certain. Slaves tended to either kill him in an act of revenge, or to preserve his life either
as a bargaining chip, or in order to navigate the vessel if the mutiny took place out of
sight of land.98 No matter which the case was, he was assured of special attention.

There were other factors that played a part in the chances of a mutiny attempt
succeeding. The initial surprise with which an attack was launched, the number of slaves
who joined in once the mutiny was under way, the determination of the slaves not to
concede and just plain luck could all played an important role. Luck was a necessity, in
nearly all the stages of a mutiny, and if the deﬁnition of success is to include the
successful escape of the slaves, as well as the seizing of the vessel, more luck yet was
required. The slaves needed to reach land, and once on land, they needed to avoid capture

by other slavers and Africans.99 This was by no means a certainty; most slaves were

 

96 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 360.

97 Examples of mutinies starting after the captain had been attacked are legion. The governor at Sierra
Leone reported to the Sierra Leone Company in 1795 that in a vessel from Boston “the slaves rose and put
the Captain 1" and 2d Mates and one man to death.” This neat order of the ranks killed was exceptional, but
the tendency was typical. In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 101. See also vol. 3, 400.

98 The South Carolina Gazette of December 9, 1732 reported a clear case of revenge killing. It reported to
its readers that “the Slaves on board a Guineamen belonging to Bristol, rose and destroyed the whole Crew,
cutting off the Captains Head, Legs and Arms.” In Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial
South Carolina From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1978), 222.

99 For an example of a mutiny in which the slaves were unable to reach land, see E. Donnan, Documents
vol. 3, 341. The slaves were found adrift and starving. There are many examples of slaves being recaptured
after successful mutinies. See vol. 4, 232 for an example of slaves being picked up by other slaving vessels.

246

recaptured and either brought or sold back to their original vessel, or else to another
slaver.

Mutinies and just as importantly, the threat of mutinies, shaped the passage in
many ways. Not only did they dictate the restraints and the general security arrangements
on board, as well as the coercive strategies slavers employed, but they also determined
the daily interaction between slavers and slaves to a large degree. But caution easily
changed to nervousness and even outright fear if the slaves had given evidence of being a
greater threat than they expected. A court case contesting the taking of an American
slaving vessel Nancy in 1807 by the British navy provided an unusually detailed account
of a mutiny in which this was the case. The crew feared a slave mutiny, and indeed, four
or ﬁve days after the vessel had departed Africa, the slaves attacked the captain while
they were eating on deck. The mutiny was put down with the loss of one slave who
committed suicide by jumping over board, and the injury of a number of the remaining
slaves. The captain decided to make for the nearest safe port, and “a few Nights before
they discovered Land, he heard the Report of a Pistol, and found that it was one of the
Crew on Watch, who had ﬁred the Pistol.” The crewmember ﬁred because be imagined
“that the Slaves were about to rise.” They did not. Nonetheless, “the next Morning one of
the Male Slaves was taken from below dead, and thrown overboard, who had been shot
by the Pistol.” The incident repeated itself: “the same Man stabbed another of the Slaves
the following Night, supposing that they were again going to break out.”100 Again, the

slaves did not mutiny. But the atmosphere on board was far tenser and more threatening

 

and vol. 3, 321, 324. For examples of slaves being recaptured (and resold) by Africans, see P. Isert, Letters
from West Africa, 177, Nicholas Owen, Journal of a Slave Dealer: A View of Some Remarkable Axcedents
in the Life of Nics. Owen on the Coast of Africa and America from the Year 1746 to the Year 1 75 7. Eveline
Martin, ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons Ltd., 1930), 106 and A. Falconbridge, Narrative of Two

247

from both sides than it was before, and than it typically on vessels that had not suffered
mutiny attempts.

A slaving vessel that suffered a mutiny attempt was more likely to suffer another
mutiny attempt than a vessel on which the slaves had not mutinied previously,
particularly if either crew or slaves had been killed in the ﬁrst attemptml Partly this is
because of because of the bitterness and resentment that a ﬁrst, foiled, attempt inevitably
left the slaves with. It may also have had to do with how crew interacted with slaves who
had proven themselves willing to risk their lives in violent confrontation. In addition, to
slaves had mutinied once, violent opposition to their enslavement became not only
thinkable, but a very real option. A single mutiny attempt eroded the image of white
hegemony that slavers were at pains to maintain, and once lost, the aura of invincibility
was not easily regained. Extremely harsh punitive actions and an increased vigilance
were both attempts at regaining their lost status, but both were, and were interpreted by
slaves, as actions born of weakness. Both were often effective — overt terror often did
work; without it slavers would have been lost — but not often enough to overcome the
damage done by the ﬁrst mutiny attempt, or to reduce the chances of a second attempt to
the initial level. Salvers could and did make sure that they protected themselves better —
the chances of success for mutiny attempts subsequent to the ﬁrst one were even lower

than the ﬁrst one — but they could not regain the previous status quo.

 

Voyages, 54.

‘00 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 400.

‘0' See the Pennsylvania Gazette of August 16, 1764 for an example of such an uprising. On the ﬁrst
attempt, the slaves killed the captain and two crewmembers, and on the second they killed the carpenter.
Both were unsuccessful. The ﬁrst was foiled without the loss of slave lives as the crew secured the arms,
and the slaves ﬂed below. On the second the crew were better prepared, and shot eight slaves dead. There is
also a possibility that slaves on vessels where a mutiny attempt was betrayed tended to mutiny more often
than on vessels were neither a mutiny occurred, nor mutiny plot was betrayed. However, there are too few
detailed studies establish this categorically. See for an example E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 374.

248

Aside from an epidemic on board, insurrections are the best predictor of a high
mortality on a voyage. Vessels that reported a mutiny or mutiny attempt suffered a much

higher mortality on average than vessels that did not, as the table below shows.

 

 

 

 

 

No. Voyages Deaths Total Slaves % Mortality Ave. deaths
Insurrection 123 37,348 20.97% 64.21
No insurrection 4731 208,845 1 ,710,030 12.21% 44.14

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.6. Comparison of Slave Mortality between Vessels Reporting and Those Not
Reporting an Insurrectiona

a All samples are based on vessels that contain data on the inputed number of slaves on board, and the
inputed number of deaths. It is important to note that the vessels in the dataset “No insurrection” contain no
report of insurrections in the Atlantic slavery dataset; there are certain to be vessels included that did have
insurrections. Thus the effect is probably stronger than shown here. In relation to the vessels reporting no
insurrections, the sample size of those reporting insurrections is small. However, it is still a substantial
number, and all the voyages are certain to have suffered insurrections.

The ﬁgures are unambiguous - slaves died in much larger numbers when a vessel had an
insurrection on board. But slaves who were killed in the mutiny only account for a small
fraction of the difference. Slaves executed by slavers in the aftermath of a mutiny also
added only a small number to the total. One of the risks of a mutiny was that in the
suppression of the mutiny was that slaves, sometimes in large numbers, committed
suicide when it became clear that the attempt would fail. These suicides often accounted
for more deaths than the number of slaves killed by crew. But it is probable that these are
still insufﬁcient to account for enormous discrepancy shown above. It is possible that the
extra chaining of slaves, fewer deck privileges, more refusals to eat and a generally

grimmer situation on board all contributed to the higher mortality.

The ﬁrst conclusion that can be drawn from mutinies on the middle passage is that

a slaving vessel was not a place well suited to insurrectionary activity by slaves. Slavers

249

knew slaves constantly looked for opportunities to free themselves, and the threat
dictated much of crew behaviour. For slaves, the risks were extremely high, and the
chances of success extremely low. Yet in spite of the odds, slaves did mutiny, and far
more commonly than history has given them credit for. But for slaves mutinying was a
rational process. They knew the odds, they knew they would most likely fail, but if an
opportunity shifted the odds even slightly, they seized the moment. This led to
identiﬁable patterns emerging from mutinies, mutiny attempts, and the factors
contributing to the success or failure of them. Resistance, rebellion and mutiny did as
much to shape the middle passage as the oppression brought forth by the enslavers. But

both were mitigated by the desire of slaves and crew to survive the middle passage.

250

CHAPTER 6: SURVIVAL STRATEGIES

“In a slave society the mere possession of personal freedom is a valuable privilege.”l

On a slaving vessel life itself was a valuable privilege. Notwithstanding the
suicides and the extreme risks that some slaves were willing to take to regain their
freedom, or the risky nature of the business slavers were engaged in, most slaves and
crew wanted above all to survive the middle passage. High average mortality rates
ensured that the knowledge that death could come easily and without warning was
universal among slavers. Nor were the slaves generally under any illusions about the
value of their individual lives to the crew. The conﬁnement conditions on board and the
harsh regime left the slaves with little room to doubt this. The imperative to survive was
as formative of the shape the middle passage took as oppression and resistance to
oppression were. It was the interplay of these three forces in the context of the physical
constraints inherent on a slaving vessel at sea that ultimately determined the form that
slaving voyages took.2 Each inﬂuenced the other in both subtle and overt ways. It was a
sub-text that took place on every slaving vessel.

The dynamic created by these forces can be difﬁcult to discern from primary
sources, as they were nearly always the public transcripts of the interaction between those

on board. This transcript was incomplete, and intentionally and unintentionally censored

 

' Cyril James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York:
Vintage Books, 1963), 38.

2 The “physical constraints” referred to included the limited surface area of the vessel, the number of people
in that area, the health circumstances on board, and the limited amount of food and water available, but also
the cultural gap between slaver and enslaved, and the transient nature of the voyage that prevented it being
bridged.

251

to make it suitable for the intended audience.3 The public record fails to contain much of
what was considered obvious or otherwise unworthy of remark but is essential to
historians attempting to reconstruct a social history of the middle passage. It is, on the
other hand, very detailed with regard to quantitative matters — prices paid, numbers of
slaves bought food purchased and the like. Nonetheless, contemporary descriptions of the
interaction between slaves and slavers, though limited, do allow at least a partial
reconstruction of the survival strategies chosen by both sides.

Slave survival was important to the crew, and this inﬂuenced their behaviour in
certain ways, and thus the structure of the voyage. But slave survival was important to the
crew only in the aggregate. Individual slaves’ lives were only important insofar as they
represented a percentage of the total cargo carried. Slaving was a business, and it made
no sense to enter such a business, and then to try to conduct it on sentimental grounds.
Financiers structured their plans purely in accordance with business principles, and
expected their employees to do likewise. Captains were expected to understand this, and
to ensure that the voyage operated under that philosophy. It was the captain’s
responsibility to see that those under him functioned accordingly.

As with most businesses, the risks of a slaving voyage could, for a price, be
reduced. Insurance could be purchased to cover many risks, but not all. Instructions to an
unnamed captain in 17 85 were explicit about this. His ﬁnancier made the point of

reiterating that “on the health of your slaves, almost your entire voyage depends.” The

 

3 Galenson has noted that the power that captains wielded on board placed them in a position to enforce a
conspiracy of silence among crew. This is but one example of the censorship that took place, and not all
censorship was so obvious or overt. For example, depending on the audience, crew may not have wanted to
speak of some unpleasant happenings, while other things may seemed too obvious to merit comment, or
they may not have had or been able to reach an audience for their experiences. Slaves were silenced by
language barriers and a lack of interest among their enslavers, or the lack of ability to write, among others.

252

financier had taken out insurance “for all other risques, but mortality, seizures and bad
debts.” Thus the captain was instructed to “particularly attend to smoking your vessel,
washing her with vinegar, to the clarifying of your water with lime or brimstone, and to
cleanliness among your own people, as well as among the slaves.”4 In short, the only
reason the ﬁnancier gave to the captain to carefully attend the slaves was a ﬁnancial one.

Financial considerations formed the only structural incentive to preserve slaves’
lives. Individual sentiment did occasionally occur, but not structurally. When it occurred,
it tended to do so only when it did not pose a risk the ﬁnancial viability of the voyage.
Slavers did what they could to deliver as large a percentage of their cargo alive as
possible, and this (other-directed) group survival impetus determined their interactions
with slaves to a large degree. Slave’s lives were commodities, and not to be destroyed
lightly, or to be neglected.

If preserving slaves’ lives required dehumanizing means, or violence, that was
totally irrelevant. If a slave determined to commit suicide, for example, slavers would do
everything in their power to preserve the slave’s life. Falconbridge, an ex-slaving vessel
doctor wrote that “Upon the negroes refusing to take sustenance, I have seen coals of ﬁre,
glowing hot, put on a shovel, and placed near their lips, as to scorch and burn them.” So
strong was the impetus of the crew to ensure slave survival — when it did not directly
threaten their own - that some would, out of frustration and impotence, resort to torture.

Falconbridge continued “I have also been credibly informed, that a certain captain in the

 

D.W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behaviour in Early English America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 180.

4 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington,
DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930-35), vol. 3, 79.

253

slave trade, poured melted lead on such negroes as obstinately refused their food.”5
Whippings were a much more common method of course, and many slavers carried a
speculum oris, an instrument with which to force open slaves’ mouths. These could, and
on occasion did, break the teeth of slaves determined not to open their mouths. Postma
reproduced a Dutch slaver’s account in which “a man slave died who refused to eat, no
matter what I tried. He bit so hard on the ‘mouth screw’ that the teeth fell out.”6 In this
case the slave managed to prevail, but it was more common that the slaves were kept
alive against their will. To the point of physically damaging slaves, their physical
survival mattered, and did so far more than the methods used to gain the end.

The commodiﬁcation of slaves’ lives was the driving force behind slavers’
actions; preservation of the “stock” remained was the whole point of the voyage.
Occasionally slavers were quite explicit about how they conceptualized their human
captives. Captain Irving, a Liverpool slaver wrote to his wife 1786 and concluded his
letter as follows: “I think I’ll desist [writing] as our black cattle are intolerably noisy and
I’m almost melted in the midst of ﬁve or six hundred of them.”7 Whether or not this was
a common manner of referring to slaves, it was almost certainly an accurate way of
describing how slavers conceptualized their cargo in the aggregate. And it was accurate.
It laid bare the commodiﬁcation of humans and the complete de-individualization of the
slaves on board. Irving’s sentence also indicated that he considered his cargo to have

value only in the aggregate, and that the lot of individual slaves interested him not at all.

 

5 Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (New York: AMS Press,
1973), 23.

‘ J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 241.

7 Suzanne Schwartz, Slave Captain - The Career of James Irving in the Liverpool Slave Trade (Wrexham:
Bridge Books, 1995), 67.

254

This too was accurate. It was a conceptualization that allowed individuals to justify their
actions. It made very good sense on at least two levels.

First, it was entirely consistent with the basic rationale of the trade. For the ’
slavers, the trade in humans was a means to an end '— proﬁt. Anything that increased
proﬁt was good management, and anything that threatened proﬁt was bad management.
Anything that did neither was irrelevant. Sentimentality and concern for the humanity of
one’s trade goods was not proﬁtable, and could adversely affect good management
decisions. Second, the conceptualization of slaves as “black cattle” or a similarly
dehumanizing construct was a (perhaps subconscious) survival strategy for the slavers
themselves. By distancing the people they enslaved and transported as much as possible
from an humanity similar to their own, they could in their own mind justify — legitimize
even —their treatment of the slaves.

Intellectual constructs made slaving possible at least as much as the market forces
that made the trade proﬁtable. The large social, racial and cultural gap between slaves
and slavers provided a ﬁrm basis for them to be built on. This, and practice, led the
chasm of understanding and empathy that characterized the trade. The more distance
slavers could create between their own selves and that of slaves, the more justiﬁable their
actions seemed to themselves and outsiders. It is difficult to establish from written
sources to what degree slavers as a group truly believed the dehumanizing constructs they
applied to those they enslaved. But most seem to have had few doubts. They were
products of their time, and subject to the racist attitudes of their day, and these generally
supported their views. There was a difference in degree between individuals, but it is safe

to state that the vast majority of those involved in the trade slaves considered a slaves’

255

humanity to be quite distinct from their own. The conceptualization was hierarchical,
with the slaves regulated to the bottom. This may have allowed some slavers to more
easily keep possible doubts and weaknesses suppressed. No less important, it contributed
to slavers being able to create and project an image of dominance and power towards
slaves and one of conﬁdence towards their superiors, both prerequisites in the trade.

As the dominant and oppressing group, part of their very survival strategy
required them to play a role that supported their function in the trade. Their roles required
that they appear assured, inviolable and superior. Even the lowliest crewmember deﬁned
himself in terms of power and societal standing against the slaves he transported; his
power over the slaves formed his public identity on board, and at least a part of his
private identity. The perception that the slaves had of white power was at least as
important as physical restraints and safeguards in preventing slave resistance. If the
slaves believed the crew to be weak, even if they were mistaken in doing so, resistance
and mutiny became far more likely. From the perspective of the slavers, of course, all
resistance attempts, including failed ones, were unwelcome. They were dangerous,
tended to invite more resistance, and could cost both crew and slave lives. For all their
superiority in control of the tools of violence on board, slavers lived in fear of their
captives.8 They all knew the stories of sailors on other slavers being killed in battles with
mutinying slaves, and veterans of the trade on board were likely to have experienced an

attempted slave uprising ﬁrst hand. As such they constantly monitored the slaves’

 

8 A quote from the slaver Adkins illustrated this neatly. Although he disdainfully refered to slaves as
“natural cowards,” he recommended “civil treatment.” “Civil treatment” to slaves, particularly on the
middle passage, did not come naturally or easily to many slavers. The fact that Adkins advised it was an
indication that it was a code of behaviour that has been forced upon him by the slaves, in spite of his (and
other slavers’) inclinations. Adkins is quoted in Michael Craton, James Walvin et. al., Slavery, Abolition
and Emancipation (London: Longman, 1976), 27.

256

attitudes towards them and implicitly and explicitly sought to convince the slaves of the
futility of resistance. They were constantly on guard for any sign that the perceptions that
the slaves had of them were changing. They could not allow the slaves to develop any
collective sense of conﬁdence.

If the crew suspected unrest among the slaves, a spirit of mutual distrust could
easily develop and escalate to bitter and open hostility. Such was the case in 1807 on
Captain Viall’s vessel the Nancy which had suffered and successfully put down a mutiny
attempt by the slaves. Thomas Bartholomew, a passenger, testiﬁed that “He frequently
heard the Master and Crew say, they were apprehensive the Slaves would break out” and
that a crewmember on watch had ﬁred into the hold, killing a slave, erroneously
suspecting that the slaves were about to mutiny a second time. The following night “the
same Man stabbed another of the Slaves supposing that they were again going to
break out.”9 The fear that crew had of their slaves was not often discussed in the primary
documentation, but whether implicit or explicit, as above, it determined the crew’s
attitude towards the slaves, how the slaves were restricted, and how slaving vessels were
designed and equipped. A balance between fear and conﬁdence dominated both the
slaves and slaver’s lives, and an increase of either usually came at the expense of the
other party.

The relation between crew and slaves was a contradictory one. On the one hand
the slaves’ welfare was of primary importance to the slavers, and on the other they were a
direct threat to slavers’ survival chances. Nowhere was the contradiction in slaver
interests more clearly expressed than in letters from ﬁnanciers to captains. The

instruction issued to Captain William Barry in 1725 to “see the sailors dont abuse [the

257

slaves] which has often been the done to the prejudice of the Voyage” was typical.10 The
order itself was understandable; ﬁnanciers were anxious to obtain the greatest possible
return on their investments, and anything that might adversely affect the value of the
slaves they disagreed with in principle. Being far removed from the actual physical threat
that slaves posed to the lives of crewmembers, they could afford the attitude expressed
above. For crew, however, the matter was different.

Crew realized that they needed to walk a narrow line between a strict discipline
that would prevent uprisings, and indulgences that might make the slaves healthier, but
that exposed them to personal risk. Some ﬁnanciers realized this, and took it into account,
such as the instructions issued to Captain Caesar Lawson in 1803 made clear. He was
ordered to “allow them [the slaves] every indulgence Consistent with your own Safety””,
Captains, of course, understood this balance very clearly — they realized that there was a
conﬂict of interests between crew and financiers on this point. Reminiscing about his
experience as a slaving captain, Newton wrote that he had had “no concern, in point of
conscience, but to treat the slaves, while under my care, with as much humanity as a
regard to my own safety would admit.”12 This reﬂected the attitude of many
conscientious slavers.

Less conscientious slavers tended to err on the side of personal safety. Behrendt,
writing about crew mortality in the eighteenth century, concluded “The primary aim of

merchants in the late eighteenth century was to minimize slave deaths in the middle

passage to ensure a proﬁtable voyage. Minimizing crew mortality was a secondary

 

9 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 401.
1° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 327.
n E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 651.

258

consideration.”13 If the slaves were — or were perceived to be — unusually dangerous, the
restrictions imposed by crew could lead to complaints by ﬁnanciers or their agents. Such
was the case on the Convert that delivered 180 slaves out of the 213 slaves embarked to
Barbados in 1680. The agents complained that “As wee conceive many of the men are
much the worse for being soe loaded with Irons as they have bin all the Voyage the
Captaine saying they are very unruly and once designed to rise and cut him and his
People off Soe durst not trust them otherwise.”"’ Restrictions were usually not so harsh,
but if the crew felt themselves threatened, they had no qualms about increasing the
harshness of restrictions on slaves. Usually only slaves that crew suspected of posing an
above average threat were more heavily conﬁned, not all the slaves, as on the Convert.
Some captains allowed children and women to roam free on the vessel, and most seem to
have unshackled slaves who were very sick. This balancing act was reﬂected in the
conﬁnement routines of slaves when they came on board; usually when there were only a
few slaves on board, the conﬁnement conditions were much less strict than when there
were a larger number on board. As the number of slaves increased, so did the threat they
posed, and the conﬁnement became increasingly restrictive.” This policy had its risks,
and captains did not always get away with it. There are several recorded examples of
such laxness leading to mutinies. The captains and ofﬁcers bore the responsibility for
this. Much less, if any, blame was attached to ordinary crew. Such actions did not always

reﬂect the views of the crew.

 

’2 John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754 (With Newton 's Thoughts upon the African
Slave Trade ’), (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), Bernard Martin and M Spurrell (eds.), 99.

’3 Stephen D. Behrendt, “Crew Mortality in the TransAtlantic Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century,”
Slavery and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.), 66.

'4 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 259.

'5 For examples, see Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981),
153 - 154.

259

As a rule of thumb, the higher the rank of a crewmember, the more important it
was to him to preserve the lives of slaves. This was because the ﬁnancial incentives to do
so were higher, and because with rank came both more responsibility and increased
accountability. Ordinary crewmembers certainly wanted to deliver as many slaves alive
as possible, but they were not willing to compromise their own safety to the degree that
their ﬁnanciers, or even sometimes their captains and ofﬁcers were. But they lacked
power on the vessel; captains set policy and ofﬁcers were responsible for the
implementation of the policy. The lower in rank, the less one had to contribute to this.
Crew, regardless of rank, tended to value their individual lives not only above that of
slaves, but also above that of their colleagues, regardless of rank. Slavers were, in terms
of survival, not homogenous as a group. Collective crew survival certainly dictated many
aspects of the how the middle passage was structured, but there also existed an intragroup
tension, often but not always, along rank lines. This was well nigh universally true, and
ﬁnanciers were aware of it as much as the crew themselves. The instructions received by
Captain William Berry in 1725 illustrated the matter succinctly. His owners, in a jointly
signed letter, urged him to “See your Ofﬁcers does their Duty in their several] stations
and with them and the Men keep a good Harmony and decorum without to much
familiarity or Austerity seeing the Voyage depends on good Conduct.”16 The captain was
a closer ally to the ﬁnancier than the crew was. This internal friction, which had negative
implications for the survival chances of the crew as a whole, can only be partly accounted
for by conceptualizing it in terms of individual crew survival strategies. The potential

returns and the pressures of the voyage also need to be taken into account.

 

’6 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 328.

260

Surviving the middle passage was still to a large degree a matter of luck for all on
board, but the risks and rewards favored those in the higher ranks.l7 Ordinary crew knew
this, and lived with the pressure of that knowledge, as much as with the pressure of the
knowledge that the slaves, given the opportunity, would attempt to regain their freedom.
The lapses in discipline were to a degree an escape valve for the double pressures that
they were under. The strict discipline was a reaction to their insubordinate tendencies, but
was also a means to regulate them to their subordinate positions. Unsurprisingly, this
could threaten crew solidarity. All slavers balanced both their collective and personal
survival chances against the beneﬁts to be gained by keeping as many slaves alive as
possible.

Contrary to the popular descriptions of the middle passage slavers, as a general
rule, did not mistreat slaves to the degree that it endangered slaves’ lives or well-being
unnecessarily. When such mistreatment did occur, it nearly always focused on an
individual slave or a small group of slaves, not all the slaves onboard. The irrational
mistreatment of slaves was also nearly always committed by an individual crewmember
or a small group of crewmembers rather than the crew collectively, even though the
typical treatment on board vessels could vary considerably. The number of deaths of
slaves due to deliberate and willful mistreatment accounted for only a very minor fraction
of slave deaths on the middle passage. Indeed, many slavers believed that mistreatment
was a major cause of mutinies, something they strove assiduously to avoid.18 If a violent

reaction was elicited from slaves by usual cruelty, it usually took the form of rebellion —

 

'7 See chapter 3, “Crew” for a breakdown of mortality and typical remuneration by rank.

'8 As discussed in chapter 6, “Mutiny,” the surviving evidence does not bear this out. This has been
observed in the case of land-based slavery too. See August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, The Making of Black
America: Essays in Negro Life and History, Rudwick, Elliot (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 178.

261

violence directed to the immediate oppressor, and not planned action undertaken with the
taking over the vessel in mind. This too set a precedent that slavers were anxious to
avoid. Consequently generally slaves were treated strictly — even harshly —- but not
irrationally so.19
There are many possible explanations that may account for the incidences of
abuse that did occur. Some was mistreatment meted out by a particularly sadistic
individual, but such individuals though perhaps more common in the trade than
elsewhere, were exceptions. Captains often disciplined crewmembers prone to abusing
slaves for either reason. Other mistreatment was simply ‘normal’ treatment meted out by
particularly hardened individuals, who, all evidence to the contrary, would not have
considered their actions blatant abuse, even by the standards of the trade. There was
among slavers, as everywhere, a spectrum of behaviour that was considered normal. But
this does not explain the extreme abuses that did occur on some ships, usually with the
knowledge, and often participation, of the captain. Financiers warned against this, as did
Captain Lawson’s ﬁnancier who ordered him to “not suffer any of your ofﬁcers or Crew
to abuse or insult them in any respect.”20 The captain set the standards on a slaving vessel
on what was and what was not acceptable behaviour towards slaves. Such abuses may
have been a form of survival strategy that a minority of slavers employed. By (over)
emphasizing their power to the slaves, they may have reafﬁrrned their own power to

themselves. Wanton mistreatment and dehumanization of slaves might have served to

justify the slaves’ generally miserable treatment in the minds of some crewmembers,

 

‘9 Irrational cruelty and inconsistent harshness on slaving vessels did, however, pose an additional risk to
crew. As noted, this usually led to rebellion, but these could escalate to mutinies. It also created a more
dangerous atmosphere on board, increasing the chance of further resistance or rebellion.

2° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2,651.

262

contradictory as it appears. By treating slaves as sub-human, even when not dictated by
economic motives to do so, the notion that they deserved no better was reinforced, as was
the abuser’s sense of superiority. It was the physical equivalent of the dehumanizing
mental constructs that many slavers had of slaves. It relied on attempting to blame the
slaves for their degraded circumstances by degrading them physically further. It may
have created a more comfortable distance between the slaves and the abuser. But as a
general rule slavers did what they could to ensure the survival of as many slaves as
possible without extreme abuse, insofar as it was consistent with their own personal
safety and that of the vessel.

All slavers were acutely aware of the danger that slaves posed to them, and
realized that unanimity among themselves, or at least the appearance of it, was important
to their personal safety. This was expressed toward the slaves implicitly and explicitly.
Irnplicitly, they strove to present as much of a united front towards the slaves as possible.
When Newton was confronted by two mutinous crewmembers, he worried that “such a
mark of division amongst us was a great encouragement to the slaves to be
troublesome.”21 More explicitly, Captain Penny tried to avoid whipping the crew as much
as possible, “as it might alarm the Negroes and discredit the crew with them.”22 Slavers
realized that their situation demanded that both individual and collective weakness, or

appearances of them needed to be hidden from slaves insofar as possible. An apparent,

 

2’ John Newton, The Journal, 72.
22 Penny quoted in Michael Craton, Sinews of Empire: A Short History of British Slavery (London: Temple
Smith, 1974), 36.

263

and preferably actual, united front was a survival necessity for the crew.23 Part of this
crew solidarity relied on racial solidarity.

The aura of power symbolized by a white skin, and the sanctity of a white skin
needed to be unquestioned. Some captains, such as Captain Snelgrave, made explicit
what was always implicit, and warned slaves that if “they offered to strike a white Man,
they must expect to be severely punished.”24 Hegemony of white power on the middle
passage was a prerequisite for survival, given the imbalance in numbers between slave
and enslaver, and the imbalance in stakes — freedom and remaining in Africa on the one
hand, and proﬁts on the other.

Punishment of slaves, and the various forms that it took was another expression of
crew survival strategies. Nearly all captains executed slaves who killed a white
crewmember. To return to Snelgrave — after his vessel suffered a mutiny, he informed the
slave who had killed a white person through an interpreter that “tho’ I knew it was
customary in his Country to commute for Murder by a Sum of Money, yet it was not so
with us; and he should ﬁnd that I had no regard to my Proﬁt in this respect: For as soon
as an Hour-Glass, just then turned, was run out, he should be put to death.” Snelgrave
then had a rope tied around the slave’s chest to hoist him up in the air to be shot, and was
later informed by his linguist that “Some of his Countrymen. . .. would not have him be
frightened; for it was lain that I did not design to put him to death, otherwise the Rope
would have been put around his neck, to hang him.” The slave was shot publicly for his

‘crime,’ and more importantly, for the lesson it was intended to teach the other slaves.

 

2" In this regard the middle passage was no different to land-based slavery. As Monica Schuler noted “The
Europeans in turn pursued a deliberate policy of spreading the notion of their supremacy in order to
strengthen their position: 'Opinion governs the world, and the moment the Negroes shall lose their opinion

264

After the slave was executed, Snelgrave ordered his linguist to inform the gathered slaves
“that now they might judge no one that killed a white Man would be spared”. 25 The
slavers’ projected image of unity and invincibility could only be sustained by the harsh
reinforcement of that image whenever challenged.

The same “crimes” by slaves could elicit wildly different retribution on different
vessels. Extremely cruel and clearly excessive punishments were unusual, but did occur
in the trade.26 These incidents of extreme sadism and cruelty reveal more about the
crew’s fears and the lengths some went to assuage them, than about the transgressions of
the slaves. The slaves’ pecuniary value was usually — but not always — a protection
against irrational violence by members. But if a slave was already condemned to die, this
protection fell away. All punishment, extreme or less so, served ﬁrst and foremost as an
attempt to intimidate the remaining slaves and to impress on them the futility of
resistance. Punishment was a public spectacle, and aimed at the witnesses at least as
much as at the victim. Retribution and rehabilitation were secondary concerns, especially

in the case of serious transgressions, such as mutiny.27 As such punishments were where

 

of the Superiority of the White Men, the authority of the White Men will become precarious’.” M. Schuler
"Ethnic Slave Rebellions in the Caribbean and the Guianas," Journal of Social History 3 (1970), 384.

2’ E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 352.

25 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 352 and 359.

26 These could take very barbaric forms. For an example of a crewmember’s description of the execution of
46 slaves which included strangulation and the chopping off of a leg of a slave still living after being shot
(in order to separate the condemned slave from the slave he was shackled to) among other horrors, see R.E.
Conrad, Children of God 's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1983), 41. A case of mutinous slaves being forced to eat body parts of executed slaves, is
reprinted in E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 266. For a primary example of very harsh punishment — by
mutilation - of a living slave in the Dutch slave trade, see J. Postma, The Dutch, 168.

27 Punishments for very serious transgressions on land - for example, organized rebellions that resulted in
the death of whites (the land-based equivalent of mutinies) — also took extremely barbaric forms. The
dynamic was the same, but such acts by slaves were much less common on land than on sea. For examples
of the horriﬁc tortures inﬂicted on slaves on land in these cases, see David Barry Gaspar, Bondsmen and
Rebels: A Study Master-Slave Relations in Antigua with Implications for Colonial British America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 23—24 and Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in
Colonial South Carolina From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1978), 283-4. See
also Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society: 1650-1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University

265

the most horriﬁc abuses of slaves occurred. When directly threatened, crew did not
hesitate to sacriﬁce slave lives, and sometimes, even a remote semblance of humanity.

Punishment of slaves on board was ﬁrst and foremost a protective strategy for the
crew. While punishments were calculated to maximize crew survival chances, slavers
knew that terror and harsh conﬁnements alone could not ensure their survival, at least not
without adversely effecting the slaves’ market value to an unacceptable degree. Thus
slavers also sought to reassure slaves, and at times, to bribe them. Crewmembers
understood that desperate people will take desperate measures, and some captains tried to
reassure slaves as much as was in their power. Many slaves came on board under the
misapprehension that they had been purchased in order to be cannibalized. This added
greatly to some slaves’ desperation. Some slavers realized this, and explicitly explained
to their slaves that were not to be eaten, but had been purchased for their labor.28

Some captains offered small rewards or treats to the slaves in an attempt to
conciliate the slaves to some degree. These could take the form of a little rum or tobacco
after meals, or of deck privileges, or of beads for the women. Stein has noted that
captains in the French trade regularly relied on bribes to encourage good behavior, and
instruction manuals for the trade recommended the practice.29 Whether these measures

were effective and if so, to what degree, is not clear.

 

Press, 1990), 70 and Sylvia Frey, Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 236.

28 This was indicative of how many Africans conceptualized their enslavers; the ultimate debasement of the
other among many cultures (the enslavers’ included) was to cast the other as cannibals. By the breaking the
nearly universal human taboo against cannibalism, the other was dehumanized, and removed from any
common humanity. See chapter 5, “Mutiny” for more on the role of fears of cannibalism in slave ship
insurrections, as well as the attempts of some captains to remove those fears. For an in depth discussion of
cannibalism, real and imagined see W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

2’ R.L. Stein, The French, 103.

266

All captains, however, relied ﬁrst and foremost on strict discipline to keep the
necessity of using physical violence to a minimum, and, though they may not have
realized it, to provide some form of structure and predictability to the slaves’ lives. Order
and regularity, of whatever form, allowed the slaves to adjust their behaviour to their
circumstances, no matter how bad they may have been, and this in turn was in the
interests of the crew. The use of positive incentives, when used, was an attempt to
supplement discipline and restrictive measures. When everyday coercive measures failed,
overt violence was resorted to.

As crew and slaves spent more time together, particularly if there were not a very
large number of slaves on board, a routine and a form of understanding tended to develop
between the two. This did not mean that the slaves resigned themselves to their fate, or
that the crew became more tolerant, but a routine of sorts did develop. The development
of this understanding was beneﬁcial to both parties, and could reduce tensions and
misunderstandings. Very occasionally this kind of relationship between slaves and
slavers could appear remarkably amicable on the surface as it did on the Elizabeth,
described in chapter 3. But it was always a surface understanding that did not change the
basic conﬂict between the parties, or the survival prerogatives of either side. The slaves
understood this, as did Snelgrave. The ship’s cooper on the Elizabeth'did not.30 If the
crew felt that slaves threatened their survival chances, they did not hesitate to sacrifice
them.

Slavers sometimes sought to protect themselves from non-violent and involuntary
threats slaves posed at the expense of slaves’ lives. The primary literature records several

instances of the slavers throwing overboard living slaves who were suffering from

267

smallpox.31 Some vessels canied poisons to dispatch sufferers before disposing of them
overboard. In the case of the vessel the Polly under Captain De Wolfe in 1788, a woman
was thrown overboard as the captain “was afraid the disease would spread itself among
the other Negroes and the crew which consisted of 15 men of whom ten had not had the
smallpox. Consequently, with the consent of the ship’s officers and men, a conclusion
was reached to sacriﬁce the life of one person.”32 This case was unusual in that the
captain reported the matter, and in that it later came to trial. One of the supporting
reasons given in the trail for making the decision was that “the slaves they had on board
were of a nation famed for its valour and inclination to revolt. If the crew were attacked
with this disease, it would afford the slaves an opportunity to execute any plot they might
form.” But in the ﬁnal analysis, “Many of the crew were under apprehension for their
own personal safety.”33 The judge found in favor of the defendant, and all charges were
dropped. The incident illustrates the quandary that slavers sometimes found themselves
in. They put themselves in extremely dangerous circumstances, fully knowing the risks
they ran. But when the risks became, in their view, too high, they generally chose to
reduce their own risks at the expense of the slaves.

Crew could be expected to argue that if the well-being of the entire vessel’s
occupants, black and white, depended on sacriﬁcing a few, it was reasonable to sacrifice

the few. Smallpox epidemics were the terror of slaving voyages, and could decimate the

 

3° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 357.

3’ See Theodore Canot, Adventures of an African Slaver: Being a True Account of the Life of Captain
Theodore Canot, His Own Story as Told in the Year 1854 to Branz Mayer (New York: Albert and Charles
Boni, 1928) for a graphic description of two such incidences.

32 Isidor Paiewonsky, Eyewitness accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies, ALso Graphic Tales of
Other Slave Happenings on Ships and Plantations (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), 65.

’3 Isidor Paiewonsky, Eyewitness accounts, 67.

268

vessels on which they broke out.” Yet there are, to the best of my knowledge, no
recorded incidents in which a living crewmember who had contracted smallpox was
thrown overboard. While some uninfected crewmembers may have favored such an
action, the value that crew placed on their own humanity far exceeded that which they
granted slaves, and such actions would have threatened crew solidarity. Crew sought to
minimize as many of the risks they faced as the nature of the trade would allow, and were
always far more willing to compromise the lives of the slaves than one of their own
number. This can be clearly seen in times of emergency or distress. In such circumstances
crewmembers were much more likely to survive than slaves were. The more slaves a
vessel had on board, the more likely this was to be true. If an emergency struck, crew did
not only give their own escape priority, but at times deliberately thwarted the slaves’
attempts to escape, either to avoid being surrounded by hostile slaves after escaping the
vessel, or to facilitate their own escape. Such was the case on the Dutch slaver the
Leusden in 1738. After the ship ran aground due to bad weather, the crew closed the
hatches, locking the slaves in the holds, and made good their escape on the ship’s boats.
The slaves drowned or suffocated over the course of the day and the following night.
According to Postma “The crew excused their callous action on the grounds that if they
had let the slaves out pandemonium would have broken out and no one would have

survived because the life boats could barely carry the crew and the few slaves that were

 

3’ Postma has found that in the Dutch trade smallpox was the second most common cause of death (after
dysentery), accounting for approximately 15% of all slave deaths. J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 244. See E.
Donnan, Documents vol. 1, 409 for a description of a voyage that lost 320 slaves and 14 crewmembers to
an epidemic.

269

on deck.”35 Seventy-three crewmembers and fourteen slaves survived the wreck, 702
slaves did not.

The Atlantic slavery dataset supports the contention made above. Of the 183
voyages known to have suffered a shipwreck while slaves were on board, fully 70% (129
cases) are known to have resulted in slave deaths. On average, each vessel had 243.5
slaves on board, but an average of only 29.07 are reported to have disembarked from
those voyages — a mortality of approximately 82%.36 Thirty-ﬁve voyages resulted in the
loss of all slaves on board. The data do not allow a calculation of the percentage of crew
who perished with the vessel in these cases, but it may be conﬁdently assumed that it did
not even remotely approach that of slaves. Qualitative evidence supports this. The
Newport trader Godfrey Malone dispatched three vessels to Africa to trade for slaves
between 1736 and 1740. All met with disaster; the ﬁrst was “over-set and intirely lost”,
the second was “consum’d by lightning on the Coast of Guinea, with a great many
Negroes on Board”, and the third was also wrecked. In the ﬁrst two cases, all the crew
survived, while in the third case, the captain and eight crewmembers survived.37 In none
of the cases did any of the slaves survive.

The crew of slaving vessels did not risk their own safety for that of slaves no
matter how many lives were at stake, least of all when the ﬁnancial motivation to do was
absent or substantially reduced. The stranding of the Grtjﬁn, described by Barbot

illustrated the point well. After having run aground in 1697 with 350 slaves on board,

 

35 J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 243.

36 Only 40 of the 129 voyages allow the number of slaves embarked to be inputed. Thus the ﬁgures are
unlikely to reﬂect the averages over the entire trade; the data is too fragmentary and ﬂawed to generalize
with absolute conﬁdence. However, the trend identiﬁed here is virtually certain to hold over the entire
trade.

37 See Sarah Deutsch, ”The Elusive Guineamen: Newport Slavers, 1735-1774,” The New England
Quarterly (Boston, Mass). See also E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 301.

270

“the crew all got in the long-boat, and ran ashore at Bandy.” They left “the ship with all
her sails out, and all the slaves in her, to be tossed to and fro for three days in the channel,
till at last it was split in pieces.” The slaves were lucky — “the king of Bandy sent
several canoes aboard her, which took out all her slaves.”38 Usually they could not rely
on either the crew or some other savior in times of distress. The crew knew the risks of
their business, and if they exceeded a certain level, they generally chose to live to sail
another day. This is not to suggest that the slavers did what they did out of sadism.

When rescuing the slaves did not imperil their own lives overly much, slavers
would generally do so. Captain Perry’s vessel the Nancy, for example, suffered a leak
with 59 slaves on board “which encreased on them so much, that they were glad to quit
their vessel, taking with them all their slaves and went on board a Marblehead
vessel.”39 In this case there was no extreme haste, there were relatively few slaves on
board, and a vessel spacious enough to accommodate everyone. In short, there was little
extra risk, and the crew could, in terms of their own survival, afford to salvage what they
could of their trade.

The coast of Africa was sufﬁciently dangerous to encourage solidarity between
slavers that extended beyond the crewmembers of any particular slaver. The closest
cooperation took place between slaving vessels that belonged to the same company,
group of ﬁnanciers, or owner. Cooperation, however, was not limited by a shared
ﬁnancial interest. It also occurred between slavers of the same nation that had little else in
common, and even between slavers of different nations. This mutual support, even

among competitors, made good sense. It allowed all parties to spread their risks more

 

3‘ Donnan, Documents vol. 3, 121, 131, 134.
39 Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 459.

271

effectively. Supporting other slavers in times of distress was a sound survival strategy for
all parties. Stein has recognized the cooperation between slavers, and writing about the
French slave trade, remarked that “The oppressive atmosphere along the coast helped
foster a spirit of camaraderie among slaving crews working on different ships from
France or even from abroad.” He noted that in times of peace in Europe, “slavers from
different countries could deal with each other amicably, and food, merchandise and
slaves were exchanged without problem between ships ﬂying different ﬂags?"0 This type
of aid was partly a business transaction between the parties, but more importantly, it set a
precedent that could be looked to in times of emergency.

Such emergencies could take many forms. For example, when the crew of the
English vessel Mary became unruly in 1796 and “Knocked the Capt. Down with a Hatch
bar and wounded him in Several places, (particular two dangerous wounds on the head)
and would have murdered him no doubt”, the captain of a nearby vessel sent his chief
mate and some crew who assisted in putting down the mutiny. But the real reason
Captain Ambrose of the Whim (also an English vessel) came to Captain Henry’s rescue
was because he was “allarmed at the Noise and suppos[ed] that our Slaves had got
loose?"l When on a later date the Mary actually suffered a slave insurrection, a
Portuguese captain came aboard with twenty armed men to aid in the suppressing of the
uprising.42 Fear of slave uprisings lay at the heart of cooperation between slavers on the
coast of Africa. They were the cement that held white collaboration together on the coast

of Africa.

 

’0 Robert L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 88.
" E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 369.

272

There are many references in the literature which unambiguously conﬁrm that
slavers of all nationalities came to each others’ aid in suppressing slave mutinies without
any evident self-interest other than the implicit assumption that, should it ever be
required, they would be similarly helped. The Dutch slaver Captain Bosman, suffering an
uprising among his slaves in 1699 who “would certainly have mastered the ship, if a
French and English ship had not very fortunately happened to lye by us” was relieved by
the two vessels. He actually called upon his rescuers “by our ﬁring a distress’d—gun”, thus
indicating that aid was not given only in a haphazard manner, but that there was an
informal understanding between slavers.43

Such actions could be risky to the vessels offering aid. The Pennsylvania Gazette
of May 16, 1754, for example, reported to its readers that the slaves on board the English
vessel the Thomas, after having taken the vessel, used the ship’s swivel gun “in
experienced Manner” to ﬁght off two other slavers who tried to retake the vessel. The
vessels “held an Hour’s Engagement with her very hot” until they were forced to retire by
the failing light and the need to tend to their own slaves."4 The newspaper was unable to
establish how the conﬂict ended. Offering aid could be risky in other respects too; in
1785 the English vessel the Vigilantie accidentally hit the powder room of the Dutch
vessel the Neptunis which had been taken by the slaves on board. The resulting explosion
killed all seventeen crewmembers on board the vessel, and only eight slaves out of an

indeterminate number on board survived."5 These were both exceptional cases. Usually

the aid worked out well for all parties, the slaves excepted. But cases like them did mean

 

’2 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 375. Mutinous slaves were the cause of most emergencies that led to the
intervention of another slaver.

’3 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 443.

’4 The Pennsylvania Gazette, May 16, 1754.

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that while slavers would aid each other in times of distress, there were sometimes limits
to the aid they were prepared to offer. On the 12th of January 1759 Captain Potter’s vessel
the Perfect suffered an insurrection while he was onshore with a number of his crew. The
slaves captured the vessel, and Captain Potter appealed to Captain Cooke of the Spencer
to help him regain his vessel. Cooke was prepared to help, but only to a degree; in
Potter’s words, “he fired his guns into her for about an hour, but I could not persuade him
to board her.”46 Nonetheless, in spite of the risks involved, and in spite of the fact the
intervention was not always successful, the solidarity among slavers in this regard was
real, and a clear part of their survival strategy. The survival beneﬁts of cooperation
clearly outweighed the risks.

Slaves on board were threatened by many different things, most of which were
beyond their power to control. Foremost among these were illnesses, especially infectious
diseases that could cripple a vessel."7 Ships’ doctors -— though they varied considerably in
quality and dedication - generally did what they could, but the unhygienic shipping
conditions and the limited medical knowledge of the day handicapped them severally.48
Other risks that slaves had no control over included the quality and the quantity of food

and water, the level of care the crew devoted to them (or abuse they engaged in), and the

 

‘5 J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 167.

’6 Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an Account of the
Liverpool Slave Trade (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), 492.

’7 For works that deal with the diseases slaves and crew were at risk for during the middle passage, see H.S.
Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton: Princeton U.P,
1978), 93; Raymond L. Cohn, “Maritime Mortality in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Survey,”
International Journal of Maritime History 1, l (1989), 174; James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave
Trade: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 291 and J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 244. See also
Stephen. D. Behrendt, “Crew Mortality in the TransAtlantic Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century,”
Slavery and Abolition (June 1997, Spec. ed.)

’7 R.L. Cohn, “Maritime Mortality”, 174; J. Rawley, The Transatlantic, 291 and J .M. Postma, The Dutch,
244.

’8 For a discussion on the medical equipment a doctor on a slaving vessel generally had on board, see R.L.
Stein, The French, 61 and J. Rawley, The Transatlantic, 295-7.

274

risks associated with sailing — storms, wrecks, navigation errors and the like. All of this,
and the knowledge that they had been enslaved for life, contributed to a sense of lack of
control about their own lives and destinies. Yet there were certain aspects of their lives
that they could control to a greater or lesser degree while on board. They could choose to
undertake certain actions that could increase or diminish their chances of survival. In
other words, there was room on board for slaves to develop survival strategies. The
journey was too short and the relationship between slave and enslaver was too transient to
develop sophisticated survival strategies that paralleled those that slaves formulated while
enslaved in the Americas; survival on a slaving vessel required a different response. But
because of the principles on which the middle passage was based, and because of the
great similarity of the physical environments on board slaving vessels, recognizable
patterns did emerge.

The ﬁrst order of priority for slaves was to formulate a mental response to their
situation. Slaves understood that while their enslavers wanted them to survive as a group,
their individualism meant nothing to those that had the power of life and death over them.
One of the ﬁrst adaptations slaves needed to make was to accept of the fact that the image
he or she had of themselves was important only to themselves, not to those who held
power over them. To their oppressors they had only pecuniary value. They could not
expect, and seldom got, any recognition of their humanity or suffering on an individual
basis. Accepting this went against the grain of human nature, but survival demanded that
they act accordingly, for to do otherwise was to invite personal suffering and unwanted
attention from their oppressors. This required that they release all the expectations that

they might have had in their previous life, and not allowing those, insofar as was

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possible, to interfere with how they dealt with their present circumstances. This was not
the same as accepting its permanence, or legitirnizing it in any way."9

The slave Baquaqua, who made the middle passage to Brazil in 1840, described
his reactions in the following way: “I did not know my destiny All I knew was, that I
was a slave, chained by the neck, and that I must readily and willingly submit, come what
would, which I considered was as much as I had any right to know.”50 His reaction was
probably extreme; many slaves would have developed a realistic picture of their
circumstances in order to have determined the best way to survive in them without
showing the subrnissiveness that Baquaqua claimed to have shown. But they would have
adopted a dual consciousness. The essence of the dual consciousness that they needed to
adopt to maximize their survival chances was developing a realistic acceptance of their
circumstances, while retaining and drawing on an inner reservoir that insisted that their
enslavers were wrong, and that they were more than their circumstances dictated they
were. The former was necessary to protect them and the latter was necessary to sustain
them. Recognition and a realistic acceptance of their status were important, but if a door
was to be kept open for resistance it was also important to not internalize the knowledge,

and or believe in its necessity. Most slaves remained very much open to opportunities to

 

’9 Nazi concentration camp survivor and psychologist Viktor Franky] put it as follows “At that moment I
saw the plain truth, and did what marked the culminating point of the ﬁrst phase of my psychological
reaction: I struck out my whole former life.” Viktor Frankyl, Man 's Search For Meaning (New York:
Washington Square Press, 1985), 27. More than slavery on land, slavery and survival on a vessel can be
compared to a total system. Even though the goal of those involved in the slave trade was the preservation
of as many slave lives as possible, unlike the death camps in Nazi Germany, the extreme dehumanization
and utter disregard of slaves’ individuality makes the comparison appropriate on some levels. See Stanley
Elkin’s controversial comparison of southern slavery to the death camps in Nazi Germany in Slavery: A
Problem in American Institutional and Public Life (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1959, 1976). See
also his critics Eugene Genovese, "Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Slave: A Critique of the Elkins
Thesis," Civil War History XIII, December (1967) and Earl Thorpe, "Chattel Slavery And Concentration
Camps," Negro History Bulletin XXV, May (1962).

50 RE. Conrad, Children of God 's Fire, 27.

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change their circumstances, remaining alert for chances to escape or mutiny.51 Resistance
and mutinies were far more common on sea than on land.

Mental resilience and the determination to endure and survive were important
factors in determining a slave’s chances of surviving the voyage and its stresses. This
required a mental adjustment that not all slaves were capable of. Some slaves retreated
into a deep depression, and attempted to shut out the reality in which they found
themselves; some even became mentally unbalanced due to the stresses they were
under.52 Other slaves dwelled on the torments of the present and the probable torments of
the future. Ottobah Cugoano, writing about his experiences as a slave in a slaving vessel
recalled that “All my help was cries and tears, and these could not avail; nor suffered
long till one succeeding woe, and dread, swelled up another” after reminiscing about his
parents.’3 While these reactions were natural, and could to some degree inure slaves from
actively engaging their new surroundings, they could be dangerous too. Reading between
the lines of contemporary slaver accounts, it is appears that some slaves became so
despondent and disengaged that they hardly cared what happened to them. They had, in
effect, given up. They became passive and did not struggle as hard as they might have to
survive the ordeal. This was true only of a minority, but it was a real phenomenon.

Very little is known about what actually happened in the holds of a slaving vessel,

and less yet about what slaves thought and talked about. The interior lives of slaves on

 

5' Circumstances could sometimes change very rapidly. A case in point was the initially successful mutiny
on the English vessel the King David in 1750. According to the Boston News-Letter of September 6, 1750,
“The insurrection was contrived and begun by 15 that had for considerable Time been treated with the same
Freedom as the white men; and a great many of the later dying, encouraged them in their Design. As the
Chief of these Slaves spoke very good English, he often convers’d with the Captain in his Cabbin, where

all the arms were loaded they at once ﬂew into the Cabin, and secured the Arms in a few Minutes, kill’d
the Captain and ﬁve of the People ....” In E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 486.

52 For a brief discussion on this, see J.M. Postma, The Dutch, 242.

277

the middle passage are nearly completely lost, and very likely to stay that way. Yet with
the fragmentary evidence that does exist, some observations can be made. The ﬁrst point
that must be made is the sense of loss, fear and alienation that was pervasive in the holds.
In the words of Baquaqua, “Our sufferings were our own, we had no one to share our
troubles, none to care for us, or even to speak a word of comfort to us.”54 Slaves on the
middle passage had interior lives that were completely out of the realm of white
observation. Just how diverse they were, what forms they took, and how they effected
survival chances cannot be precisely recovered. The closest we can come is to examine
the close friendships that could develop between slaves on the middle passage. Forged in
common suffering, danger and the need for human support, these ties could last a lifetime
and transcended the limits of everyday friendship. Several writers have recognized these
friendships, and occasionally compared them to familial ties.55 A slave who was released
from a slaving vessel after its capture by the Royal Navy in 1818, Samuel Crowther,
conﬁrmed this. He wrote, “we were divided into several of the vessels around us. This
was now cause of new fears, not knowing where our misery would end. Being now, as it
were, one farnily.”56 The phenomena was well known throughout the slave trade dispersal
area; in Jamaica it was referred to as “shipmate”, in Surinam “sippi”, in Brazil

“mulongo”, and “malongue” in Trinidad.57 These relationships were likely to have been a

 

53 Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments ofthe Evil of Slavery (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1787),
10.

5‘ R. E. Conrad, Children ofGod's Fire, 27.

’5 Orlando Patterson has written that “so strong were the bond[s] between shipmates that sexual intercourse
between them was considered incestuous” and that shipmates “looked upon each other’s children as there
own.” Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure
of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969), 149-150, 163.
56 Philip D. Curtin, Africa Remembered; Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 313.

’7 Okon Edet Uya, “The Middle Passage and Personality Change Among Diaspora Africans,” in Global
Dimensions of the African Diaspora (2nd ed. ), Harris (ed.), 93.

278

source of not only comfort, but also strength to the slaves. While they were powerless to
change much about their circumstances, the act of sharing their suffering may have
allowed them to draw on reservoirs of strength that they might not otherwise have
discovered. Both the giving and the receiving of support will have been important. It was
important to feel that one was not alone in one’s suffering, and to know that someone else
cared. The act of giving might have made an otherwise unbearably hard life livable. The
sense of purpose and agency this created can only have had a positive effect on the
mental and physical survival chances of the slaves.

There is some evidence that these kinds of friendships were particularly likely to
form among individuals of the same ethnic group. There is direct evidence, such as
presented by Chambers, that slaves tended to rely on their own ethnic group, and there is
indirect evidence from the trade itself.58 Captains used different ethnic origins to control
the slaves by appointing overseers from particular ethnic group to control and betray
slaves from other groups.59 That the practice worked is not surprising; in nearly any
group of individuals, some will seek to better their position at the expense of their
fellows. The greater the distance between the individuals, the more likely one would be
willing to proﬁt at the expense of the other’s suffering. Conversely, it is not too much to
speculate that slaves who spoke the same language, or who knew each other from the
barracoons, would have been more likely to form close friendships.

While the friendships formed between some slaves on board was real, it is

important not to romanticize slave solidarity on the middle passage. While considerable

 

5” Douglass B. Chambers, “'My Own Nation': Igbo Exiles in the Diaspora,” Slavery and Abolition (June
1997, Spec. ed.), 73, 87.

59 For examples, see E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 1, 361 and 407. See chapter 3, “Crew” for a more detailed
consideration of this phenomenon.

279

attention has been paid to shipmate ties on the middle passage, virtually none has been
accorded to the frequent quarrels and ﬁghts among slaves. This reﬂects what scholars
consider important, but does not present a balanced picture of the reality of slave life in
the holds of slaving vessel. In actuality, both occurred on the middle passage, and on the
same vessel. The primary literature abounds with references to ﬁghts between slaves in
the holds, some mere squabbles, and others ending in the death of a slave. The slaver
Barbot, wrote that “those poor wretches, the slaves of New Calabar, are always
quarrelling, biting and ﬁghting, and sometimes choaking and murdering one another,
without any mercy, as happened to several aboard our ship.”60 Barbot was far from alone
in his views. Even some of the few surviving accounts written by slaves refer to slaves
ﬁghting amongst themselves. Crowther, a boy when enslaved, wrote that “Very often at
night, when two or three individuals quarrelled, the whole suffered punishment, without
any distinction.”61 The point here, of course, is the phrase “Very often.”

The circumstances slaves found themselves in determined that slaves would
quarrel and ﬁght amongst themselves. Being held as a slave under horrendous conditions,
about to be taken away from one’s homeland on a dangerous voyage with an
unpredictable but certainly unpleasant end, without hope of redemption, understandably
did not bring out the best in many individuals. Tempers ran short, and were easily lost.
There was no possibility solitude to collect oneself, like there was on land. The risk of
attacking a crewmember - the direct oppressor — was too large, and so it was fellow
slaves who suffered. It must be emphasized that not all slaves turned their fear and anger

into violence directed at their fellow captives, but a minority did. Wilberforce, the

 

6° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 15.
6‘ Philip D. Curtin, Africa Remembered, 311.

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abolitionist, observed that “when men of different countries and languages, or of opposite
tempers are linked together, [] such scenes take place as are too nauseous for
description.”62 While it is impossible to recover, it seems plausible that ﬁghts were more
likely to occur between individuals who had little in common other than their slavery.
Personal and ethnic animosities were likely to come to a head in the dreadful conditions
and the stresses of life onboard a slaving vessel.

Purely practical considerations could also lead to ﬁghts breaking out. After
describing the buckets placed in the holds that served the slaves as toilets, the slaving
ship surgeon Falconbridge noted that “It often happens, that those who are placed at a
distance from the buckets, in endevouring to get to them, tumble over their companions,
in consequence of their being shackled. These incidents, although unavoidable, are
productive of continual quarrels, in which some of them are always bruised. In this
distressed situation, and unable to proceed, and prevented from getting to the tubs, they
desist from the attempt; and as the necessities of nature are not to be repelled, ease
themselves as they lie. This becomes a fresh source of broils and disturbances.”63 It does
not require much imagination to understand and accept Falconbridge’s point.

Competition for scarce resources was also a major cause of disputes and violence
among slaves. It was also a part of the survival strategy that some slaves chose to adopt.
Water — especially unspoiled water — was often in short supply, and slaves could easily
lose a considerable amount through perspiration in the hot and stuffy holds, through
seasickness, and the dreaded “ﬂux” (diarrhea). Thirst was a serious problem on many

voyages, and the lack of water was frequently mentioned by slaves as being a major

 

‘2 Quoted in T.F. Buxton, African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), 134.
’3 A. Falconbridge, An Account, 20.

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source of suffering. Baquaqua recalled that “We suffered very much for want of water,
but was denied all we needed. A pint a day was all that was allowed, and no more.” It
was safer to steal water from a fellow slave than to attack a crewmember. Baquaqua
related that on his vessel “There was one poor fellow so very desperate for want of water,
that he attempted to snatch a knife from the white man who brought in the water, when he
was taken up on deck and I never knew what became of him?”54 Wilson and Grim have
argued that the ability to withstand dehydration was a major factor in selecting those
slaves who survived the middle passage, and that because of this, their descendants today
have an increased chance of suffering from hypertension."5 Water was a resource worth
fighting for.

Access to fresh air too, was a source of disputes. The holds were hot, fetid and
had a nauseating stench that pervaded the entire vessel. Several of the few surviving
accounts written by slaves indicate how desperate they were for fresh air. After aniving
in Brazil, Baquaqua, referred to above, relates that “I felt thankful to Providence that I
was once more permitted to breathe pure air, the thought of which almost absorbed every
other.”66 So desperate were slaves for fresh air that ﬁghts for access to it could lead to
deaths. Commodore Bullen of the Royal Navy captured the vessel Le Daniel in 1826 for
engaging in the illegal trade in slaves. He reported to his superiors that “in consequence
of the heavy rain which commenced shortly after I brought him to, the slaves quarelled

among themselves regarding the right of precedence of those below to get on deck for

 

‘4 In R. E. Conrad, Children of God’s Fire, 27.

65 Thomas W. Wilson, and Clarence E. Grim, “Biohistory of Slavery and Blood Pressure Differences in
Blacks Today: A Hypothesis,” Hypertension 17, 1 (Suppl.) (1991).

6‘ R. E. Conrad, Children of God's Fire, 29.

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fresh air, and those who had already the possession of it, when, shocking to relate, 19 fell
victims.”67
Competition for resources that was part of the survival battle on a slaving vessel.
We know very little about the power groups in the holds, how they were formed, or who
tended towards these actions and who did not. Perhaps ethnic groupings, or brute
physical strength, or previous standing were important in determining status in the holds,
or perhaps other factors were involved. The exact dynamics cannot be recovered. What
may be safely deduced is that there must have been such groups, and that whatever
success they had, came at the expense of their fellow slaves. As in any closed society
were survival was at stake, some individuals dominated the weaker among the slaves, and
did so in order to maximize their survival chances, regardless of the lot of their fellows.
An important part of the slaves’ survival strategy was avoiding actions and
situations that were or had the potential to negatively effect their survival chances.
Blending in with the mass of slaves was an integral part of surviving the passage. This
cannot simply be reduced to compliance with slaver dictates. From the slave’s
perspective, the crew was an unknown quantity: unpredictable, untrustworthy and
potentially dangerous. As there was not enough time on the middle passage to articulate a
fully-ﬂedged structure that balanced accommodation and the need toretain a sense of
individuality and own agency, however limited, discretion was the safest option. The
physical environment of the vessel was well suited to this strategy. The slaves greatly
outnumbered the crew, and the crew did not generally need to have a working

relationship with any of the slaves. Thus attempting to blend into what was for the crew a

more or less homogenous mass was far more practical than on land. Outward compliance

 

‘7 Reprinted in T. F. Buxton, African Slave Trade, 149.

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on the middle passage was a complex balancing act, and tended to take the form of
accommodation combined with a concealing of the self, both of the physical body and of
one’s character. The balance between blending and compliance was in most
circumstances an effective survival strategy in a situation that offered few promising
alternatives.

While the strategy was a general one, it was probably adapted to take into account
good’ and ‘bad’ crewmembers as the slaves learned to recognize and take into account
individual crewmember’s characters. In the case of a sympathetic crewmember - that is,
one who might positively inﬂuence any given slave’s survival chances - the strategy of
blending might be discarded entirely in favor of a dissemblence strategy more closely
related to that of slaves on land.68 On both land and sea the true self was kept hidden by
the creation of a public persona, and in both cases the slave relied on a strict internal
discipline to keep the two separate. Self-control and constant watchfulness were
essentials for any masking activities, and this was even more overtly the case on the
middle passage than on land. However, the middle passage did not last long enough for
the mask to become well-practiced or to learn the ways of one’s oppressors nearly as well
as on land, and the physical environment was different.

It was occasionally in the slaves’ best interests to actively cooperate with their
oppressors. This was particularly the case in situations where the survival of the vessel
itself was at stake. For example, the slaver on which Mungo Parks sailed in 1797 “after
having been three weeks at sea, became so extremely leaky, as to require constant

exertion at the pumps.” Given this, “It was found necessary, therefor, to take some of the

 

6" For more on dissemblence, see D. Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West:
Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblence,” Signs 14 (Summer, 1989).

284

ablest of the Negro men out of irons, and employ them at this labour.” Even though it
was in the slaves’ interests that the vessel remained aﬂoat, “they were often worked
beyond their strength.”69 But slaves generally did not need to be coerced to aid the crew
when it was in their best interests to do so, or could be made to be in their interests.

Sometimes an incentive was offered to gain the slaves’ cooperation, as was the
case on a slaver owned by the slave traders Godfrey and John Malbone. When attacked
by privateers Godfrey Malbone offered “freedom to all the slaves who would join in
defending the vessel.”70 The vessel was successfully defended, and the slaves
consequently freed. Sometimes, however, the crew falsely convinced the slaves that it
was in their interests to join with their oppressors, for example, by convincing them that
their lives would be forfeit if the vessel were taken.71 Both these types of incidents were,
however, very unusual. Usually survival strategies that involved the cooperation of one or
more slaves with their oppressors were of a more unpalatable variety, particularly from
the perspective of their fellow slaves.

Crew knew that their vigilance and the restrictions that they placed on slaves
could not always be relied upon to prevent uprisings. As such they sometimes recruited
slaves to watch over their fellow captives and to betray any plotting or lapses in
discipline. These slaves had a hazardous job. On the face of it, it appears to be a very
risky survival strategy. They were subject to the dangers of the holds, and if conﬂict
broke out between the regular crew and the slaves, they could expect no mercy from the

slaves. The evidence suggests that they were effective, both in betraying plots and in

 

‘9 E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 2, 641.

7° E. Donnan, Documents, vol. 3, 131. See chapter 3 “Crew,” for a discussion of this and other instances
when slaves joined crew in ﬁghting for the vessel.

7’ For an example of such a case from a primary document, see G. Williams, History of the, 560.

285

keeping order among the slaves. These slaves voluntarily betrayed their comrades’
interests in order to better the survival chances of their oppressors, and possibly their
own. But the privileges they received -- better rations, more water, the right to carry a
whip, or greater freedom of movement perhaps, or even a greater familiarity with the
wielders of power, the crew — was sufﬁcient to persuade at least some slaves to accept the
task, and to carry it out faithfully. Whether they ultimately improved their own survival
chances while on board cannot be conclusively determined, but it is probable that they
did. What is evident is that regardless of how they might have felt about their position,
they were ultimately survival tools for the regular crew, and if they bettered their own
survival chances, they did so at the expense of the remaining slaves.

Slaves who were not appointed agents of the crew also sometimes betrayed their
fellows. These betrayals worked to the betrayers’ beneﬁt on two levels. In the ﬁrst place,
it ensured that the plot would not come to fruition, or if it did, that the ﬁghting would be
of short duration. Thus the slave could avoid the risk of injury or death during the
confrontation, and the risk of punishment after the confrontation if the attack failed, as
was usually the case. Not all slaves were prepared to risk joining a conspiracy, and some
were so adverse to the risks, that they would betray the conspirators. In the second place,
there was the possibility of a reward by the slavers; perhaps better accommodation, or
food.72 The temptation to choose personal safety and possible rewards over the risky

strategy of one’s fellow slaves was large, and in many cases irresistible. The betraying of

 

72 The crew encouraged slaves to betray their comrades. Even those who saw the betrayal for what it was,
such as Newton, were forced in the interests of their own survival encourage it. In Newton’s words,
“Sometimes, when the slaves are ripe for an insurrection, one of them will impeach the affair; and then
necessity, and the state policy, of those small but most absolute governments, enforce maxims directly
contrary to the nature of things. The traitor to the cause of liberty is caressed, rewarded and deemed an
honest fellow. The patriots, who formed and animated the plan, if they can be found out, must be treated as

286

plots by fellow slaves did not necessarily mean that the informer identiﬁed with his or her
oppressor. Nor did it mean that they had necessarily conceded the struggle against
slavery. It was a personal choice, often made with the slave’s personal survival chances

in mind. And in this sense, it could easily be a wise choice. I know of no account that
explicitly indicates that a slave who betrayed a plot was subsequently murdered by fellow
slaves for the deed.

Acts of resistance and rebellion, when considered in terms of pure physical
survival, were not sound choices. The chance of betrayal and failure was too high, as was
the risk of injury or death both in the actual battle and in the aftermath of the battle, when
the slavers, if victorious, attempted to identify and punish the leaders. The fact that
actions that on aggregate reduced the slaves’ physical survival chances were so regularly
attempted tells volumes about the extent to which they rejected their enslavement. Given
the (lack of) future prospects, the terrible current conditions, and the abrupt break with
the past and all that they knew and held dear, many slaves were willing to grasp at straws.
Their estimation of the value of their present and future lives had ebbed to such a degree
that the risk — losing one’s life — often did not weigh as heavily as the projected beneﬁts —
freedom.73

Survival imperatives determined that slaves dynamically balanced
accommodation and resistance, constantly adapting their choices to changing

circumstances. Slaves on the middle passage did what they could to survive mentally and

 

villains, and punished, to intimidate the rest.” See chapter 5, “Mutiny” for more on the betrayal of plots by
slaves.

73 It is possible to view acts of resistance, rebellion and mutiny as survival strategies of a sort, if one is
willing to conceptualize the slave as a whole person, body and spirit. To some slaves it was more important
have themselves as they conceptualized themselves survive, rather than their physical body. In this context
rebellion and mutiny made sense, in spite of the risks. And of course, there was always the possibility that
the attempt might succeed. Hope too, was a survival response.

287

physically in extremely conﬁned circumstances. They had little room to maneuver, but
what room there was, they exploited. Some of their actions were in solidarity with their
fellow sufferers, and some even with the crew. But survival on the middle passage for
slaves depended heavily on individual survival strategies, and those were the ones that
dominated slave behaviour. The structure of the voyage determined that slaves would
emphasize personal survival in their survival strategies, even though there were,
paradoxically enough, a greater number of slaves than crew who did not care for their
personal survival.

Group survival was the primary guiding principle for crew when formulating their
survival strategies, even though they attached no less value to their individual lives than
the slaves did, and often more. The reason for this was that crew could better ensure their
personal survival by group cohesiveness than slaves could. The slavers had a greater
imperative to form a united front than the slaves did. This was ﬁrst and foremost a
function of the relative numbers of each group on board, and second, a function of their
roles. Oppression called forth resistance, and the only way to counter the resistance was
to form a cohesive united front, particularly when outnumbered. For slaves, mental
resilience was more important than for crew, as was careful self-control. Dissemblence
and blending was far more important to slaves for their personal survival than it was for
crew. Slaves needed to avoid the attention of crew as much as possible, while crew
needed to emphasize their presence and power to slaves as much as possible. In the ﬁnal
analysis, the complex interplay between individual and group survival strategies among
slaves and slavers, the facts of oppression and resistance to oppression, and the physical

microcosm of the slaving vessel caused slave voyages to be structured as they were.

288

While not accounting for all individual experiences, this interplay of fundamental forces

accounted for much of the experiences of crew and slaves alike.

289

CONCLUSION

The middle passage was peculiar form of slavery that had its own dynamics, and
its own system. It is as amenable to study as slavery on land is. Much work remains to be
done on the social history of the middle passage, but my work demonstrates that it is a
feasible undertaking. The experiences of those on board were not homogenous, but the
actions of all parties on slaving vessels were informed by rational responses to particular
environmental pressures. All parties acted and reacted within the constraints of their
circumstances. There were structural forces that can be recovered that inﬂuenced the
experiences of those on board, and it is possible to construct a theoretical framework that
explains the context in which both slaves and crew took the decisions they did, and how
those effected the interactions between them.

Using quantitative data to supplement the qualitative sources traditionally used to
write social histories is an effective method to recover aspects of the social history of the
middle passage that are otherwise inaccessible. It allowed me to establish, for instance,
that contemporary observers were incorrect to place an added value on having
experienced captains command their vessels, and to establish that the ratio of plotting
slaves to active crewmembers was one of the primary risk factors for mutinies to occur.
It is a useful method, and more intensive mining of the large body of quantitative data
that are available will allow almost certainly allow historians to ﬁnd other patterns that
shed light on the social history of the trade. At least as important, a careful exploration of
the data will result in ﬁndings that will raise questions that requires historians to look to

qualitative sources for answers. Both will enrich the social history of the middle passage.

290

The comparative approach between slavery on land and on sea used has isolated
both differences and similarities between the systems. On a macro-level there were
several similarities. The nature of the oppression was the same; violence and the threat of
violence were the main formative factors in both. On a micro-level, however, the
differences were numerous. The transient nature of the voyage, the imbalance between
the number of slaves and slavers on board, cultural differences and the restricted nature
of the location all caused the form that slavery took on sea to differ from land. Slavers on
the middle passage were, to a much greater degree than on land, a law unto themselves.
They were part of a closed — male - society that was far less under the inﬂuence of the
mores of the larger society. Slavery on sea commodiﬁed slaves to a far greater extent
than on land, and often tended towards the extremes described for slavery on land. A
comparative approach between the two promises to allow the form of slavery that took
place on slaving vessels to be integrated into the various systems that took place on land,
and to provide a greater understanding of both. It brings both into sharper focus, and
contributes to the understanding of Atlantic slavery as a whole. The areas I chose to focus
on in my study of the middle passage were chosen, among other reasons, because of the
lack of work on them. Most have been much better documented for land-based systems.
Women in slavery, in particular, have drawn a considerable amount of attention in the
past two decades.

Women on the middle passage have not been the subject of nearly so much
attention. Other than quantitative studies, they have been almost ignored. My work shows
that this is not justiﬁed. While it is probable that fewer adult women than has generally

been supposed made the middle passage, their lives on slaving vessels showed both

291

similarities and substantial differences to those of the male slaves. Slavers conceptualized
them differently, often treated them differently in terms of conﬁnement and other matters,
and sometimes sexually abused them. Women resisted on the middle passage, as did their
male counterparts, but they did so differently. The middle passage was not a stage that
favored resistance strategies preferred by most women, and this was reﬂected in their
actions. When they resisted, they were, however, subject to the full penalties of failure.
Some women were pregnant on the middle passage, and many came on board with
infants.

While much work remains to be done on children and infants on slaving vessels, it
is already clear that they were a deliberate target of some slavers. Infants were more
common on slave ships than has previously been suspected. The middle passage children
experienced by differed from both that of male and female adults. Their conditions of
conﬁnement could vary considerably - sometimes they were segregated, and sometimes
they were conﬁned with the adults — but they remained under the inﬂuence of adults on
the middle passage. They were not only subject to the authority of the crew, but also
relied upon (and were sometimes abused by) the adult slaves. In matters of resistance
they were very much agents of the adults on board, both slave and crew.

Resistance and rebellion on the middle passage was in many respects different
from that which took place on land. The dynamics of the slaving voyage determined that
the type of slave dissent that took place on slaving vessels was nearly always of a serious
nature, and very often violent. The incidence of such acts far outstripped the incidence of
comparable acts on land, as did the serious contemplation of them. The actual deeds and

the threat of them led to slave dissent being one of the main formative forces of the

292

middle passage. Resistance on the middle passage was, however, nearly always doomed
to failure. The only relatively common exception to this was suicide. While it can be very
difﬁcult to recover the motivations of slaves for any particular type of action, deliberate
suicide and escape attempts were the most common form of resistance. Both occurred
more commonly when the vessel was close to land, when rumors of cannibalism spread
through the vessel, and in the aftermath of failed mutiny attempts.

Mutiny was by far the most serious expression of slave dissent. It was plotted and
occurred far more often than has hitherto been recognized. There were several minor
factors that could inﬂuence the chance of a mutiny occurring on board, but most mutinies
occurred either when the vessel was close to land, when rumors of the cannibalism of
their enslavers swept the vessel, or when the ratio of slaves plotting a mutiny to the ratio
of active crew changed to increase the chances of success. There were distinct patterns in
mutinies, and factors that determined the likelihood of success or failure. The most
important of these factors was whether the slaves managed to cross the barricado, and
whether they managed to take control of the powder room. While mutinied far more often
on sea than on land the incidence of mutinies was moderated by slaver precautions, at
least as importantly, the survival imperative of slaves.

Both crew and the majority of slaves wanted, above all, to survive the middle
passage. This informed most of their actions and interactions, both with each other and
amongst themselves. Paradoxically, while slaves heavily outnumbered crew, their
survival strategies emphasized individual action. Some slave survival strategies were in
solidarity with their fellow slaves, but others were purely personal. Many slave survival

strategies were directly opposed to the interests of the other slaves on board, though it is

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not possible to establish with certainty how many slaves availed themselves of them. The
crew relied far more on collective survival strategies than the slaves did. They were
outnumbered, and the perception that slaves had of their power was essential to them.
Solidarity, or at least the appearance of it, was vital. Slave conﬁnement conditions and
punishment rituals were an integral part of the crew’s survival strategy. Slavers were in a
contradictory position: they were responsible for the well-being of those who threatened
them. They generally did what they could to ensure slave survival, but if the risks
became, in their view, too large they did not hesitate to sacriﬁce the slaves.

The experiences of all who made the middle passage and factors that determined
their experiences were to a very large degree determined by the closed and cramped stage
on which they occurred. A slaving vessel was a microcosm that, more than almost all
locations on land, was isolated from the mores and controls of the larger society. The
journey was a transient one, but it was long enough to develop on a nature of its own and
to contain a myriad of experiences. While the forces that structured the voyage were
remarkably consistent, the experiences of those on board were similar in some respects
but differed signiﬁcantly in others. They could differ for those on board the same vessel
as easily as they differed between vessels. The middle passage was a complex and
important event that historians have not begun to describe adequately.

My work is not a complete social history of the middle passage. There is still much
that needs to be considered that is not covered here, and much of what is covered here
needs to be worked out in greater depth. More perspectives on the social history of the
middle passage are also needed. Detailed case studies on many of the issues raised would

be a useful contribution to the work on the middle passage. A discussion between

294

historians needs to be initiated and a range of methods need to be applied. Given the
often fragmentary nature of the sources and the paucity of sources by slaves who made
the middle passage, a large body of source material gathered by several scholars
interested in the middle passage would be a valuable resource for further work. This is
especially necessary for aspects of the middle passage that are only sporadically referred
to in the primary documentation. The relations that took place between slaves and slavers
(other than mutinies, which tend to be relatively well documented), the interactions
between slaves, and the experience of children are examples of areas that would benefit
from such a collection.

There are still several import areas that require investigation before anything
approaching a comprehensive social history of the middle passage can be written. The
recommendations below are by no means exhaustive, but work on these topics would be
a signiﬁcant step towards according the social history of the middle passage the attention
that is its due.

A detailed examination of the intimidation, punishments and coercive measures,
both positive (such as bribes and rewards), passive (such as chaining), and negative
(physical violence, for example) employed on slaving vessels is essential in order to
contextualize the actions of crew and slaves alike. A study of the methods by which
slavers sought to forces and elicit the behaviour they desired from slaves is essential.
Central to this work will be an examination of the types of punishments typically used for
various transgressions, the attempts to maximize their effectiveness as weapons of terror,
their effectiveness in enforcing slaver-dictated role behavior and the factors inﬂuencing

that effectiveness. It is equally important to establish what coercive measures were the

295

norm, and to what degree these were deviated from. If there were distinct forms of
control used by different captains or at different times, these need to be identiﬁed. The
extremes within the trade in this regard need to be recovered too, both in order to
establish their relative frequency, their effects, and to establish the range of coercive
measures. A study of the threat of violent oppression and the factors effecting the
effectiveness of that threat is equally necessary. It was the fear of punishment, not actual
punishment that controlled the behaviour of most slaves and crew on board. A study of
coercive measures on board slaving vessels also needs to take into account how the
power to punish interacted with the threat of violent opposition, and how that interplay
contributed to shaping ship-routines. An examination of coercion on slaving vessels
should be related to the survival strategies of both slaves and crew. Both slaves and crew
were subject to violent and sometimes fatal punishment, and both need to be taken into
account when considering coercion on the middle passage.

Both slaves and crew took their cultural backgrounds and previous experiences on
board with them. These inﬂuenced the actions, reactions and interactions of those on
board. As such, a comprehensive examination of how the cultural context that both slaves
and slavers acted in is essential, as is a study of how the different cultural backgrounds
interacted with each other.

A close collaboration with Africanists will be necessary to recover the cultural
background of slaves. The Atlantic slave trade was inﬂicted on a great diversity of
African peoples, and much work is needed to establish how this impacted the middle
passage. Future work needs to consider more closely what the likely ethnic composition

of slaving vessels was, how diverse it was, and whether discernible differences existed on

296

slaving vessels due to the ethnic composition of the vessel. Primary documents frequently
contain references to the supposed “traits” or “characters” of the slaves’ ethnic groups.
Historians need to establish how much of this was uninformed stereotyping, and whether
anything useful can be distilled from these observations. If there is no supporting
evidence, such contemporary observations should be openly discredited. In this work it is
important to bear in mind that slaves were generally not a balanced cross-section of their
originating societies.

More work needs to be done on who was most likely to be sold into the Atlantic
trade, and what their prior histories were likely to have been. The time slaves spent in the
barracoons prior to their purchase by slaving ships’ crew, is also an area in which there is
a great lacuna. Time spent in the barracoons was likely to have profoundly effected, both
mentally and physically, most slaves who were so conﬁned. The same applies to slaves
who were drawn from the interior and marched to the coast. Both need to be recovered
for their own sakes, and for the effect that these experiences may have had on slaves
making the middle passage. Crew too, brought their cultures and life experiences on
board with them, and these informed their actions and reactions on board.

Collaboration with scholars working on the social history of the 17‘“, 18th and
early to mid 19th centuries of slaving nations is necessary to providea cultural
background for slavers. This should be related to the socio-economic backgrounds of
those on board, from “landsmen” to captains. More work is required to establish how this
effected their outlook and behaviour while on board. Both their behaviour towards slaves
and the interactions among crew themselves need to be examined in the light of their

cultural backgrounds. These backgrounds were diverse, and the heterogeneity of slaving

297

ships’ crews need to be taken into account. National, class, race and socioeconomic
differences all need to be considered. All crewmembers acted in ways that were framed
by their social, ideological, economic and political environments. The recovering of these
is vital to a comprehensive social history of the middle passage.

The physical surrounding of the vessel was of primary importance in determining
the dynamics between slave and crew, and the structure of the voyage. All the other
factors determining the experiences all on board were related to the fact that the physical
environment — the location — for this particular form of slavery was an extremely densely
populated space that placed clear limits on both slave and crew actions. This effected
security arrangements, interactions between crew and slaves, and interactions between
the slaves themselves and the crew themselves. The physical constraints dictated the
absolute lack of privacy, the severe rationing of food and water, the restrictions on
movement, the ratio of slaves to enslavers and the transient nature of the relationship. In
some respects life on a slaving vessel placed similar restrictions on crew and slaves, but
in other respects they differed enormously. Both need to be considered, and the effect of
both need to be related to the experiences of those on board, and to the actions and
relationships they contributed to giving rise to. An enormous diversity of vessels made
the middle passage and this too needs to be taken into account. In 1852,for example, the
American vessel the Lady Eclipse left Africa with approximately 1,574 slaves on board,
destined for Cuba. On the other hand, standardized to British measured tons, the smallest
10% of vessels (for which information on the number of slaves carried can be recovered)
carried an average of only 90.24 slaves. The smallest vessel in the Atlantic Slavery

dataset, the Abigail, sailed for the Gold Coast in 1758. It displaced only 12 tons, and

298

 

carried 40 slaves.l Late in the (illegal) trade several steam vessels made the crossing with
very large numbers of slaves — often more than 1,000 — on board as technological
advances in seafaring made themselves felt in the Atlantic slave trade.

Some work has been done on the male slaves on the middle passage, and this
work needs to be integrated into a comprehensive social history of the middle passage.
Additional research on male slaves, however, is also still required. Too little is known
about their experiences in the holds, the interactions between the male slaves, and the
authority structure among them. How male slaves interacted — and how much opportunity
they had to do so - with crew and the other slaves on board also needs to be probed.

In terms of social history, the post 1808 illegal trade has yet to be considered in
comparative light with the legal trade. The illegality of the trade required slavers to take
new factors into account - capture by the British navy being the most obvious —- but it is
not yet clear what impact this had on the dynamics of the voyage for those involved. It is
not yet clear to what degree the illegality of the trade effected the experiences of slaves or
crew. Social historians need to establish whether it typically changed any of the basic
factors that effected experiences of those on board, and if so, to document them for both
slaves and crew.

There are also several related studies that, if undertaken, will broaden the
understanding of the social history of the middle passage. A detailed study of the rhetoric
of both opponents and proponents of the trade with regard to the actual middle passage
would be an important study in its own right. It would also provide future historians of

the middle passage with a context within which to locate their own work, and offer a

 

I The Abigail sailed under the command of Captain Sam Holiway. The Lady Eclipse sailed under Captain
Eugenio Venice. D. Eltis et al The Atlantic Slavery Database, records no. 36,228 and 4,166.

299

useful reference point in the often-difﬁcult process of evaluating the plethora of primary
documentation extant on the middle passage. Comparative studies contrasting the debates
around the actual Atlantic trade to the debates around slavery in North and South
America and the slave holding islands would similarly be useful. A work that
concentrates on establishing the differences and similarities between the different major
slaving nations in this regard would also form a very useful addition to the scholarship on
the middle passage.

For many slaves the middle passage was not over once the vessel clocked at the
port of disembarkation. Some slaves spent time in quarantine, and some slaves, if not
sold at the ﬁrst port of arrival, were shipped to a second or third destination before being
sold. This aspect of the middle passage has yet to be examined in any detail. The
inﬂuence of European wars on the middle passage, especially with regard to privateering,
is another area that begs investigation. Slaving vessels that were captured by either
British or French antagonists account for nearly 8.5% of all voyages.2 The danger of
being captured by hostile forces was a constant threat in the trade, and a reality for more
than 10% of all vessels. The substantial number of vessels taken, and the number of
vessels that successfully resisted being taken, suggests that this aspect of the middle
passage may have contributed substantially to the nature of the voyage, and as such it is
one that needs to be recovered.

Clearly work remains to be done before the social history of the middle passage

can stand on an equal footing with the work done on slavery on land. The sources allow

 

2 2,302 out of 27,233 voyages (8.45%) are listed in the Atlantic slavery dataset as having been captured by
either French or British forces. This includes the voyages for which the outcome is not known. For more
details on the point, including vessels captured by other nations or by Africans, see chapter 3, “Crew”. D.
Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen D. Behrendt, and Herbert S. Klein The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A

300

for a much more comprehensive social history than is currently available. More detailed
studies are necessary, and a synthetic work is long overdue. It is my hope that my work
demonstrates that the project is feasible, and will serve as a ﬁrst step in the process of
integrating the social history of the middle passage with the social history of slavery in

the Americas.

 

Database on CD-ROM. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1999).

301

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