Part 2 (2/2)
The chiefs were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. ”Grandy King George” of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace a mirror six feet square, an arm chair ”for my salf to sat in,” a gold mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, pewter plates, bra.s.s flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ball molds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for use in trade.[31]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 545-547.]
The typical New England s.h.i.+p for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner or barkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinary freighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a second flooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the s.p.a.ce between forming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, two mates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel of this type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rum was reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be ”full bigg for dispatch,”[32]
while among the Liverpool slave traders such a s.h.i.+p when offered for sale could not find a purchaser.[33] The reason seems to have been that dry-goods and sundries required much more cargo s.p.a.ce for the same value than did rum.
[Footnote 32: Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, LXIX, 524.]
[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., 500.]
The English vessels were generally twice as great of burthen and with twice the height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slaves could stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for when full cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width were laid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling the floor s.p.a.ce on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of the s.h.i.+p, it loaded slaves if it could get them to the limit of its capacity.
Bosnian tersely said, ”they lie as close together as it is possible to be crowded.”[34] The women's room was divided from the men's by a bulkhead, and in time of need the captain's cabin might be converted into a hospital.
[Footnote 34: Bosnian's _Guinea_, in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 490.]
While the s.h.i.+p was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake of fresh air. But on departure for the ”middle pa.s.sage,” as the trip to America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the s.h.i.+p's triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men were usually kept shackled for the first part of the pa.s.sage until the chances of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave place to confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of poverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by some of the partic.i.p.ants in the trade, wrote in 1768: ”Yet I never saw an instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on sh.o.a.r upon the cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what condition they were landed.”[36]
[Footnote 35: _E. g_., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.]
[Footnote 36: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1915), pp.
67, 68. For the tragic sufferings of an English convict s.h.i.+pment in 1768 see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373]
William Snelgrave, long a s.h.i.+p captain in the trade, relates that he was accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be severely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, ”I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death itself.” In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of an hour's time. ”He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I should lose all the money I had paid for him.'” When the captain professed himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments a.s.suring his fellows that his life was safe.[37]
[Footnote 37: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp.
162-185. Snelgrave's book also contains vivid accounts of tribal wars, human sacrifices, traders' negotiations and pirate captures on the Grain and Slave Coasts.]
The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave s.h.i.+ps may be imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit of human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smooth by virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coa.r.s.e was generally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. In a word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorest accommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers and hards.h.i.+ps of the sea.[38]
[Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middle pa.s.sage was published by Parliament and the Privy Council in 1789-1791.
Summaries from it may be found in T.F. Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and the Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W.O. Blake, _History of Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.]
Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India Company's s.h.i.+p _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died, and the slave cargo was daily diminis.h.i.+ng. Five weeks of sailing then carried the s.h.i.+p across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her destination at Curacao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally a sloop sent by the Curacao governor to remove the surviving slaves was captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher, made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the average s.h.i.+p may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or ten per cent.
[Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.]
[Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.]
Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at 300 sterling, was to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of 65, and provisioned for 50 more.
Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages of 10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco, tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of 775--it was to sail for the Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some 35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85 gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rum and miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of gold in exchange as well as to procure food supplies for the westward voyage.
Recrossing the Atlantic, with an estimated death loss of a man, a woman and two children, the surviving slaves were to be sold in Jamaica at about 21, 18, and 14 for the respective cla.s.ses. Of these proceeds about one-third was to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of mola.s.ses at 8_d_. per gallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dust was also to be sent. The mola.s.ses upon reaching Newport was expected to bring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor's commissions of from 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on all sales and purchases, and of ”4 in 104” on the slave sales as the captain's allowance, after providing for insurance at four per cent. on s.h.i.+p and cargo for each leg of the voyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. of the rum and five per cent. of the mola.s.ses, and after charging off the whole cost of the s.h.i.+p's outfit and one-third of her original value, there remained the sum of 357, 8s.
2d. as the expected profits of the voyage.
[Footnote 41: ”An estimate of a voyage from Rhode Island to the Coast of Guinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloop of 60 Tons.” The authorities of Yale University, which possesses the ma.n.u.script, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. The estimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were then depreciated, as stated in the doc.u.ment, to twelve for one and seven for five sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximate sterling equivalents.]
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