History - Discussion Respsone

Primary Sources: First Person Accounts of The Transatlantic Slave Trade Compiled and revised by Bridgette Byrd O’Connor for WHP, originally from the Crash Course World History Curriculum

These primary source excerpts provide a glimpse into the journey of African captives to the New World, including the harsh and dangerous conditions they experienced.

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Primary Sources: First Person Accounts of The Transatlantic Slave Trade Compiled by Bridgette Byrd O’Connor

Document A Reverend John Newton was an English minister and captain of slave ships in the mid-eighteenth century. While experienced in the slave trade, in his later years he became a minister and composer who was a supporter of the abolitionist movement. He is most famous for composing hymns including “Amazing Grace”. This hymn would be adopted by African-Americans as a spiritual song associated with the fight for civil rights in America.

“With our ships, the great object is, to be full. When the ship is there, it is thought desirable she should take as many as possible. The cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons, or little more, is calculated to purchase from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty slaves. Their lodging-rooms below the deck, which are three (for the men, the boys, and the women), besides a place for the sick, are sometimes more than five feet high, and sometimes less; and this height is divided towards the middle, for the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, like books upon a shelf. I have known them so close, that the shelf would not, easily, contain one more. And I have known a white man sent down, among the men, to lay them in these rows to the greatest advantage, so that as little space as possible might be lost…

Epidemical [widespread] fevers and fluxes, which fill the ship with noisome and noxious effluvia [odors], often break out, and infect the seamen likewise, and thus the oppressors, and the oppressed, fall by the same stroke. I believe, nearly one-half of the slaves on board, have, sometimes, died; and that the loss of a third part, in these circumstances, is not unusual. The ship, in which I was mate, left the coast with two hundred and eighteen slaves on board; and though we were not much affected by epidemical disorders, I find by my journal of that voyage (now before me), that we buried sixty-two on our passage to South Carolina, exclusive of those which died before we left the coast, of which I have no account.

I believe, upon an average between the more healthy, and the more sickly voyages, and including all contingencies [possibilities], one fourth of the whole purchase may be allotted to the article of mortality [one fourth may die]: that is, if the English ships purchase sixty thousand slaves annually, upon the whole extent of the coast, the annual loss of lives cannot be much less than fifteen thousand.”

Source: Newton, John. The Posthumous Works of the Late Rev. John Newton, Rector of the United Parishes of St. Mary Woolnoth, and St. Mary Woolchurch, Haw, London. Published by the Direction of His Executors (Vol. II). Philadelphia: W. W. Woodward, 1811: 247-9.

Model of an eighteenth-century slave ship on the Middle Passage from the National Museum of American History. By Kenneth Lu, CC BY 2.0.

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Primary Sources: First Person Accounts of The Transatlantic Slave Trade Compiled by Bridgette Byrd O’Connor

Document B John Riland was the son of an English plantation owner in Jamaica and was due to return home to learn the family business. After finishing school at Oxford, Riland traveled aboard a slave ship that was collecting its cargo on Africa’s west coast before proceeding to Jamaica.

“At 2 P.M. the ship got under weigh, and proceeded with a favourable wind. The slaves had a very unhealthy look; being meagre [thin], dirty, and, without one exception, scorbutic [afflicted with scurvy, a deficiency in vitamin C]. There were on board, in all, two hundred and forty—viz. [namely] one hundred and seventy males and seventy females. Four slaves had already died…The men slaves were brought on deck for the first time since our sailing. They seemed exceedingly dispirited, and drooped very much: some of them also looked very sickly, and proved to be so. In some of their countenances [expressions] there appeared a settled gloom [sadness]; which the captain wished to attribute [assign] partly to their having been confined below for some days, and partly to their not seeing land. Both he and the officers seemed to think that they had mischief in their minds. While the ship was on the coast they had made an unsuccessful attempt to get possession of her [take over the ship and rebel]…

23d. I observed to-day, as on former occasions, several of the slaves rejecting their food. The officer on duty began to threaten to shake his cat [whip] at such as refused to eat. One argument he made use of was, that if they did not eat, they would soon be thrown into the sea…The slaves then made a shew [show] of eating, by putting a little rice into their mouths; but whenever the officer’s back was turned, they threw it into the sea.

24th. The captain again wanted the slaves to dance; but they did not seem disposed [willing] to comply with [obey] his wish. He began to dance himself, by way of setting them an example; but they shewed [showed] no inclination [desire] to follow it, till the cat was called for. Then, indeed, they began to sing and skip about. A few, however, were content to have the cat smartly applied across their shoulders several times, before they would so much belie [oppose] their feelings as to make merry, when their heart was sad…

…if my state—possessed as I was of so many superior comforts; cheered by the hope of soon beholding friends who were dear to me; with various means in my power of amusing my thoughts and alleviating [easing] my sufferings; with the consolations [comforts] also arising from religion to support as well as to soothe the mind—if my state, under all these favourable circumstances, was so uncomfortable,—what must theirs have been whom I saw around me, extended naked on the bare boards; fettered [bound] with irons; deprived of every mean of chasing away the gloom of confinement [captivity]; unable when sick to reveal the cause of their complaints; strangers to any measure of that hope which makes the slave a freeman; ignorant of the fate which awaited them; filled with fears either of a horrid death or a cruel servitude [slavery]; and without the most distant prospect of ever visiting their native land, or of beholding [seeing] the face of one of those friends or relatives from whom they had been forcibly torn!—It seems scarcely possible for the imagination to conceive [imagine] a state of more unmitigated [absolute] suffering than theirs. Their cup was full of pure, unmingled sorrow.”

Source: Riland, John. Memoirs of a West-India Planter. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co., 1827: 51-58.

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Primary Sources: First Person Accounts of The Transatlantic Slave Trade Compiled by Bridgette Byrd O’Connor

Document C The excerpt below is from the first-hand account of a young African boy, who was sold into slavery in Africa in the mid-eighteenth century, and later learned to read and write before purchasing his freedom. Olaudah Equiano, also known by the name Gustavus Vassa, recalls his time on a slave ship after being captured with his sister in Africa. Equiano eventually arrived in Virginia by way of Barbados and was sold several times before earning enough money to buy his own freedom. In his later years, he traveled and worked with abolitionists in England to help others who had been enslaved gain their freedom.

“Soon after this, the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived [robbed] of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly, and even wished for my former slavery, in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief, I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation [greeting] in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness [awfulness] of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across, I think, the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged [beat] me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it; yet, nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side; but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water; and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself. In a little time after, amongst the poor chained men, I found some of my own nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I inquired [asked] of them what was to be done with us? They give me to understand we were to be carried to these white people’s country to work for them. I then was a little revived [renewed], and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate: but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves.”

Source: Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. London, 1794: 47-49.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano from his autobiography. By Daniel Orme, public domain.

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Primary Sources: First Person Accounts of The Transatlantic Slave Trade Compiled by Bridgette Byrd O’Connor

Bridgette Byrd O’Connor Bridgette Byrd O’Connor holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford and has taught Big History, World History, and AP U.S. Government and Politics for the past 10 years at the high school level. She is also a freelance writer and editor for the Big History Project and the Crash Course World History and U.S. History curriculums.

Image credits Cover: Letter to Mr and Mrs Liversege from Gustavus Vassa “The African” [Olaudah Equiano] (1745-1797), Colchester, concerning a recent trip to London to see if the king’s messengers were seeking him and on the continuing sale of his ‘narrative’ (The Interesting Narrative Of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African). Archives & Manuscripts, Wellcome, CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Letter_to_Mr_%26_Mrs_Liversege_from_Gustavus_Vassa_ Wellcome_L0049683.jpg

Model of an eighteenth-century slave ship on the Middle Passage from the National Museum of American History. By Kenneth Lu, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kenneth_Lu_-_Slave_ship_model_(_(4811223749).jpg#/media/File:Kenneth_Lu_-_ Slave_ship_model_(_(4811223749).jpg

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano from his autobiography. By Daniel Orme, public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Olaudah_Equiano,_frontpiece_from_The_Interesting_Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Olaudah_Equiano.png#/media/File:Olaudah_ Equiano,_frontpiece_from_The_Interesting_Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Olaudah_Equiano.png