The Middle Passage
The Atlantic crossing of black slaves was called the Middle Passage. It was a nightmarish middle leg of a triad that had its beginning and end in England. From English ports, ships loaded with manufactured goods set off for Africa where the goods were traded for humans. The human cargo was transported to the Americas and traded for raw materials to be sold in England. It was a terse, efficient triangle, unaffected by the mournful wails of those forever lost or by the moans of the dying.
Half of the more than the estimated 20 million Africans captured and sold into slavery never even made it to the ships. Most died on the March to the sea. It is impossible to determine how many more lost their lives during the crossing. The Atlantic crossing could take as long as ten weeks. It was a pilgrimage so hellish it battles description. No words can hold enough horror.
Imagine: the seamless voyage, the damp stink in the bowel of the creaking ship, almost no food, a frightening numbness in the limbs -- and the man chained to you is dead.
Disease was rampant. A sailors common cold could be fatal to an African. The ship's surgeon who was often medically ignorant, but one of a few willing to undertake the expedition -- made his rounds between the decks each morning to separate the dead from the living. When a dead slave was found manacled to one still living, the dead man was unshackled and thrown overboard. Free. In 1781 a ship captain faced with an epidemic, dumped 132 living slaves into the water. His cargo was, after all, insured.
As nightmarish as it was the passage forced many of the Africans, who before their capture had been separated both physically and culturally, to find ways to communicate. They had purposely come from different regions of Africa with differing languages.
For most of the Africans of the English triangle trade, the Middle Passage ended in the Caribbean on the tiny island of Barbados crowded with sugar cane plantations, the most profitable plantations in the British Empire.
Throughout the West Indies, slavery's brutal signature was stamped on the very structure of society. Barbados was one of the worst places in the world to be a slave. Barbados led the way in the creation and enactment of slave codes to manage the burgeoning population of enslaved Africans. The black population skyrocketed; in 1660, the ratio was roughly 20,000 slaves to 22,000 whites. By 1713, it was about 45,000 to 18,000. At this stage, North America slaves of the British Empire slaves were still few, almost all of them obtained by purchase in the West Indies.
Britain was in these years and thereafter, dominant in the Atlantic commerce in slaves. Between 1740 and 1750, her ships probably took to the Americas over two hundred thousand slaves: far more than any other country had carried in any ten years before. Of these British shipments, nearly sixty thousand were probably taken to Virginia and the Carolinas. Over fifty thousand slaves went to Jamaica, and thirty thousand to Barbados, with well over sixty thousand to other colonies.
*Olaudah Equiano, son of an Ibo tribal leader, was one of ten million to 20 million Africans sold to Europeans by men whose faces mirrored his own. But instead of succumbing to the terror of his circumstances, he survived to chronicle forty-six years of his life, beginning with his birth in 1745. Equiano died in London in 1797. (See excerpts from his story on the "dropdown" of this page.)
Half of the more than the estimated 20 million Africans captured and sold into slavery never even made it to the ships. Most died on the March to the sea. It is impossible to determine how many more lost their lives during the crossing. The Atlantic crossing could take as long as ten weeks. It was a pilgrimage so hellish it battles description. No words can hold enough horror.
Imagine: the seamless voyage, the damp stink in the bowel of the creaking ship, almost no food, a frightening numbness in the limbs -- and the man chained to you is dead.
Disease was rampant. A sailors common cold could be fatal to an African. The ship's surgeon who was often medically ignorant, but one of a few willing to undertake the expedition -- made his rounds between the decks each morning to separate the dead from the living. When a dead slave was found manacled to one still living, the dead man was unshackled and thrown overboard. Free. In 1781 a ship captain faced with an epidemic, dumped 132 living slaves into the water. His cargo was, after all, insured.
As nightmarish as it was the passage forced many of the Africans, who before their capture had been separated both physically and culturally, to find ways to communicate. They had purposely come from different regions of Africa with differing languages.
For most of the Africans of the English triangle trade, the Middle Passage ended in the Caribbean on the tiny island of Barbados crowded with sugar cane plantations, the most profitable plantations in the British Empire.
Throughout the West Indies, slavery's brutal signature was stamped on the very structure of society. Barbados was one of the worst places in the world to be a slave. Barbados led the way in the creation and enactment of slave codes to manage the burgeoning population of enslaved Africans. The black population skyrocketed; in 1660, the ratio was roughly 20,000 slaves to 22,000 whites. By 1713, it was about 45,000 to 18,000. At this stage, North America slaves of the British Empire slaves were still few, almost all of them obtained by purchase in the West Indies.
Britain was in these years and thereafter, dominant in the Atlantic commerce in slaves. Between 1740 and 1750, her ships probably took to the Americas over two hundred thousand slaves: far more than any other country had carried in any ten years before. Of these British shipments, nearly sixty thousand were probably taken to Virginia and the Carolinas. Over fifty thousand slaves went to Jamaica, and thirty thousand to Barbados, with well over sixty thousand to other colonies.
*Olaudah Equiano, son of an Ibo tribal leader, was one of ten million to 20 million Africans sold to Europeans by men whose faces mirrored his own. But instead of succumbing to the terror of his circumstances, he survived to chronicle forty-six years of his life, beginning with his birth in 1745. Equiano died in London in 1797. (See excerpts from his story on the "dropdown" of this page.)
