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NATURE AND THE PITCHFORK 21
slaves were chained up and padlocked in. Any negro strong enough to offer possible resistance was beaten half to death and then manacled between two others.
The Shipment of Slaves
How did they travel to their destination? A British naval chronicle of that 'enlightened' age, the 19th century, says: "The slave ships stank five miles off." This is how the notorious slave trader Theodore Canot explains the stowage of his first human cargo —a shipload of 108 boys and girls all under 15 and crammed into a hold 22 inches high—"I found it impossible to adjust the whole in a sitting posture; but we made them lie down in each other's laps, like sardines in a can."
To make the utmost profit from costly shipping space, it was customary to store slaves "seated on their hams, with the head thrust between the knees. In this state, nature's offices are performed." Small wonder that many of these human boatloads were infected with dysentery, yellow fever, ophthalmia, skin diseases and parasites, or were "covered from head to foot in smallpox". In 1827, Commodore Bullen reported to the Admiralty on the capture of a Brazilian brig with 525 slaves on board: "Many females had infants at their breasts, and all were crowded together in a solid mass of filth and corruption, several suffering from dysentery, and although but a fortnight on board, 67 of them had died from that complaint." |
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