The Slave Ship (31 page)

Captains also compared notes on their officers, sailors, and slaves. Here the reputation of a rising officer might be enhanced or damaged, as all captains would take note of skilled and dependable men they might wish to hire, or others they would refuse to hire, on future voyages. They also talked, and often complained, about surgeons and their qualifications. They were quick to blame a surgeon who could not prevent mortality, and in a few instances serious conflicts developed between captains and their usually more educated and occasionally “enlightened” physicians.
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Conversations about sailors and slaves tended to concentrate on rebelliousness and health. The blacklisting of working seamen was an order of business in these meetings, and so, too, were decisions to remove mutinous sailors to nearby men-of-war when possible. Captains compared notes on punishments, offering encouragement to one another for torturing innovations. Conversations about African slaves were not dissimilar, although undoubtedly laced with more racist invective, about the various ethnic groups and their responses to being on the ship. There existed an unwritten rule of the fraternity of slave-ship captains on the coast: they would, regardless of nationality, come to one another’s assistance in dealing with their crews and especially their slaves, particularly in moments of rebellion.
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A collective of slave-ship captains sometimes acted as a sort of government on the coast of Africa. When an issue of concern to all slavers in a given area had to be addressed, someone called a council meeting to be attended by all nearby captains. Like naval officers who met to confer on battle strategy, the slave-ship captains deliberated and gave their collective judgment on the best course of action. They might decide the fate of the ringleader of a failed insurrection, as William Snelgrave asked a group of eight to do in 1721: their verdict was to gather all the ships close together, bring all slaves upon deck, hoist the malefactor into the air, then shoot him while elevated so everyone could see and thereby imbibe the lesson of terror. The slave in question argued with Snelgrave, convinced that he had too much economic value to be executed. He was wrong. Snelgrave and the other captains were determined to send the message that this is what would happen to any African who killed “a white Man.” Hugh Crow called a meeting of all the captains at Bonny to ask what should be done with a mate who was often drunk, fomenting mutiny among the crew, and causing the captain to fear for his life. Their verdict was to allow him to keep his cabin (because he was from a “respectable family in Liverpool”) but to remove him from duty.
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The captains also bragged much among themselves about their fraudulent trading practices—watered spirits, false heads in kegs of gunpowder, big pieces cut from the middle of a bolt of cloth, cheating in “number, weight, and measure, or quality of what they purchase, in every possible way.” Newton recalled that “the man who was most expert in committing frauds was reckoned the most handy and clever fellow in the business.” This was the art of the trade. The captains, in sum, showed camaraderie, a community of interest, a consciousness of kind. Their meetings represented a sort of propertied white man’s mutual-aid society.
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The long, slow purchase of the enslaved was conducted within a “warlike peace” on the coast of West Africa. Slavers spent six months and more on the ship while the purchase was being completed and six to ten weeks aboard during the Middle Passage. A few captains tried to randomize their “cargo,” mixing peoples of different African cultures and languages to minimize their ability to communicate, cooperate, and resist, but this was difficult, costly, and in the end impractical. Given the competitiveness of the slave trade and the nature of its organization on the African side, captains had very little control over which slaves they could buy, so they took what they could get. During this long stretch of time, the captain and indeed every member of the crew assumed that the people brought on board were held against their will and that they would do anything possible to escape captivity. The captain’s power depended first and foremost on brute force.

The captain usually made initial contact with an enslaved person at the moment of inspection and purchase, whether in a fortress, in a factory, in a coastal village, or on the ship. At that time the captain and the doctor assessed that individual’s age, health, and working capacity, according to the criteria of his employer. He would also “read” that person’s “country marks,” ritual scars distinctive to each West African cultural group, and he would, based on experience, ascribe likely behaviors rooted in stereotypes—Igbos, the wisdom among captains went, were prone to suicide and must be watched; Coromantees were rebellious and must be chained; Angolas were passive and need not be chained. Related to this was an assessment of attitude—that is, each individual’s probability of cooperation with or resistance to the ship- board regime. If the captain decided to purchase a given person, he offered a combination of goods to the traders and haggled until they closed the deal. From that moment forward, the enslaved person, whether man, woman, boy, or girl, would be known to the captain as a number. The first purchased was Number 1, and so on, until the ship was fully “slaved” and ready to sail to the Americas.

Captains varied in their degree of involvement in the daily activities of the ship. After delegating authority, most seem to have remained somewhat aloof and remote, to be seen only at certain, limited times, usually pacing the quarterdeck. Some might go forward among the male slaves, but only occasionally and under heavy guard, and few seem to have gone below among the enslaved on the lower deck under any circumstances. Captain Francis Messervy of the
Ferrers
galley discovered why, the hard way, in 1721. According to fellow captain William Snelgrave, Messervy was guilty of “over-care, and too great Kindness to the Negroes on board his Ship,” helping, for example, to prepare and serve their food. Snelgrave wrote, “I could not forbear observing to him, ‘How imprudent it was in him to do so: For tho’ it was proper for a Commander sometimes to go forward, and observe how things were managed; yet he ought to take a proper time, and have a good many of his white People in Arms when he went; or else they having him so much in their Power, might incourage the Slaves to mutiny. ’” Messervy apparently disdained the advice, for soon, while walking among the men slaves at mealtime, they “laid hold on him, and beat out his Brains with the little Tubs, out of which they eat the boiled Rice.” They then exploded into a long-planned insurrection, during and after which eighty Africans were killed or died, by gunshot, by drowning (after they jumped overboard), or by hunger strike (refusing to eat after the initial slaughter). The moral of the story for Snelgrave was that captains must be circumspect about their involvement in the daily routines of the slaves, not least because the captives studied the ship’s hierarchy and would always strike first, given the opportunity, at the most powerful person aboard: “they always aim at the chief Person in the Ship, whom they soon distinguish by the respect shown him by the rest of the People.” It was never hard to figure out who was the big man on a slave ship.
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Every time a new group of slaves came on board, captain and crew would watch closely to see who among them might prove to be what they called “guardians” or “confidence slaves.”
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These were Africans the captain and officers felt they could trust and who might therefore be recruited to help maintain order on board the ship. Those who seemed well disposed to their captors, especially if they were people of some influence among their own countrymen and -women on board, might be offered a deal. “Guardians” might be chosen to “domineer over the rest.” Anyone who knew English could serve as a translator among his or her own countrypeople and perhaps others. Women might be offered jobs as cooks, maybe even the captain’s cook (which would probably imply other responsibilities). One African man found a job in the shipboard division of labor as a tailor. But most important would be those who would help to manage the enslaved, keep them in order. The captain (or the mate) might offer incentives to boys, who had the run of the ship, if they would spy on the men and inform of conspiracies.
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William Snelgrave explained how a slave might be used to help manage the ship. An older woman, who was apparently close to the king of Dahomey, perhaps even a wife, fell out of favor and was sentenced to death: she was, on his orders, thrown overboard from a canoe, hands tied, to the sharks. Somehow the woman survived the ordeal and was rescued unharmed by Snelgrave’s sailors and brought aboard the ship. Snelgrave feared that the king would take revenge if he learned that he had saved the woman, so he apparently kept her hidden. The “sensible” woman, conscious that her advanced age made her “useless” as a slave, felt grateful to Snelgrave for saving her life and did everything she could to assist him during the voyage. Because of her high social standing, she was well known to many of the other enslaved people on board. She used her influence to convince them that the “white People” were not as bad as they had been told; she consoled the captives, made them “easy in their Minds.” She had special influence, wrote Snelgrave, among the “female
Negroes,
who used always to be the most troublesome to us, on account of the noise and clamour they made.” They “were kept in such Order and Decorum by this Woman, that I had never the like in any Voyage before.” Snelgrave expressed his gratitude in return, finding the woman a “generous and good” master, Charles Dunbar of Antigua. A strategy of co-optation could help to keep order on the ship.
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Another kind of co-optation, or deal making, was less voluntary and was in some ways indistinguishable from the rape and sexual abuse of the African women on board. Captains, and less frequently officers, took “favorites” from among the enslaved women, moving them from the lower deck to the captain’s cabin, which meant more room, more and better food, greater freedom, and perhaps in some cases less-violent discipline. Such appears to have been the case with a slave woman on board John Fox’s slave schooner who was known as Amba to the Africans and as Betsey to the captain and other Europeans. Thomas Boulton complained of an African woman who used her privileged relationship to (mulatto) Captain John Tittle in order to wield power on the ship. He wrote of “Dizia, an
African
Lady”:

 
Whenever the captain tired of current favorites, he removed them from that “high station” and found replacements right outside his cabin door, which on many slave ships abutted the women’s apartment.
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Captains also offered incentives for what they considered good behavior. Hugh Crow trained some enslaved men to work the ship’s cannon in 1806, in the event of an attack by a French privateer. In return, he explained, the enslaved “were each provided with a pair of light trowsers, a shirt, and a cap.” They “were very proud of this preferment” and thereby came to resemble the crew more than the other slaves. A substantial number of captains rewarded the enslaved for work they did aboard, giving tobacco or brandy, for example, for scrubbing the apartments of the lower deck. Other incentives might be beads, extra food, or the privilege, for a man, of getting out of chains. During an insurrection of 1704, a seventeen-year-old male slave shielded the captain from a rebel’s blow with a stave, suffered a fractured arm for it, and was rewarded with his freedom upon arrival in Virginia. These positive inducements were important to the captain’s power to keep order aboard the slave ship, but they should not be overemphasized. Relatively few of the enslaved got any special deal, and the vast majority on any given ship were ruled by brute force and abject terror.
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The government of the slave ship depended on what was called exemplary punishment and its hoped-for deterrent effect. If, therefore, the captain’s instruments of discipline helped to establish and maintain power among the sailors, they were even more decisive among the enslaved. The cat was used in full, flailing force whenever the enslaved were on deck, especially at mealtime. The mates and the boatswain employed it to “encourage” people to obey orders—to move quickly, to line up in orderly fashion, to eat properly. The person who refused food could expect a longer lashing from the cat, and indeed this was the only way many could be made to eat. A substantial number still refused, which often brought into play another functional instrument of terror, the
speculum oris
. The lower deck itself might also be used to discipline the rebellious, as a passenger aboard a slaver noted in 1768: the “Captain would not suffer a soul on deck for several days, designing, as he said, to lower their spirits by a sweating.” When he did finally let them come on the main deck, they revolted, prompting him, after regaining control, to say that “not a soul should see the sun till they arrived in Barbados.”
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A more common approach in the aftermath of failed insurrections was for the captain to whip, torture, and execute the rebels on the main deck, to maximize the terror. Here was a moment when the captain shed his remoteness and demonstrated his power with utmost effort—and effect. During these exemplary public punishments, the captain himself usually wielded the cat or turned the thumbscrews, to torture the rebels and terrorize their compatriots. Another preferred instrument was called “the tormentor.” This was a large cook’s fork, which was heated white hot and applied to the flesh of rebels. Nothing more certainly called forth the raw power of the captain than the will of the enslaved to resist it.
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