The Slave Ship (34 page)

Deeply embedded in this culture was an oppositional sensibility, which Robinson captured in a description of mealtime, when meat and bread were divided among the sailors aboard his ship. Rather than “expressing thankfulness,” as Robinson thought they should have done, “every one commences cursing his own eyes and limbs in particular, if ever he was on board such a bloody hooker in his life, and expressing a general wish that the ship, captain and owners, all and sundry, may be sent to a certain place which need not be named.” This set of attitudes would find expression over the course of the voyage in various forms of resistance: desertion, mutiny, and piracy. Against the concentrated power of the captain, common sailors would assert power of their own, from below. They also wielded power over those below them, who defined the limits of their occupational culture.

On the outward passage from a British or American port to West Africa, sailors by and large did what they did on most deep-sea vessels. They were organized into watches, starboard and larboard, the captain taking one, the chief mate the other on the smaller ships, the mates taking charge on the larger ones. Everyone would be on deck working all day, from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., then four hours on and four hours off until the next morning. The mate or the boatswain would mark the changing of the watch by clanging the ship’s bell or blowing a whistle. The modest amount of time each sailor had off might easily be lost to a change in the weather, when all hands were called up to set sail and adjust the ship’s course. William Butterworth complained that he “never enjoyed a sound sleep during the entire voyage.”
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Within each watch, groups of five or six seamen were organized into messes, to which food would be allocated by the mate on a weekly basis. According to a slave-trade merchant in 1729, “The usual Allowance given to Marriners on board of the Merchant Men on the Coast [of Africa] aforesd is Five Pounds of Bread a Week each Man, a piece of Beef weighing between Four and Five Pounds before it is salted between five men a Day with pease and flower the allowance being generally of Pease half a Pint& flour half a pound each day when allowed the same.” This allowance might be supplemented by fish if the sailors were skillful enough to catch them. Grog and sometimes brandy were also important parts of the customary weekly allowance, and they could be matters of sharp contention. Sometimes the captain would put the men to short allowance, reducing the amount of food and drink given to each mess, which inevitably brought curses, especially if the allowance in the captain’s cabin continued as before, which it always seemed to do.
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The work to be done at this point in the voyage was the usual for a common seaman—to hand, reef, and steer—that is, to manage the sails (often aloft) by extending or reducing them as the situation required and to direct the ship’s movements by the helm (usually two hours per stint), all under the direction of the mate of the watch. Many captains swore there would be no idleness aboard their ships, so every working hour was filled, sometimes with scrubbing, or holystoning, the decks. Sailors also wove mats, thick webs of spun yarn or small ropes, used to protect the standing rigging from the friction of other ropes. They made sinnet, a braided cordage. When the vessel neared the African coast, sailors would go below, into the hold and the lower deck, to hoist and maneuver the trade goods for exchange.

Some aspects of work, however, were distinctive to the slaver. On a ship in which armed watch would be a matter of life and death, the gunner urgently checked and cleaned the small arms. He also tended to the blunderbusses and swivel cannon, while the sailors assembled ammunition, cartridges of shot. Sailors also knitted the netting, which would be used to prevent slaves from escaping the ship and unwelcome traders from coming aboard. Captain William Miller of the
Black Prince
noted in his journal in 1764, “The People Emp[loy]’d about netting and other necessarys.” Sailors also counted and bagged cowrie shells for trade.
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When a slave ship arrived on the coast of Africa, sailors soon became something more than sailors. They continued to do the work of the ship—dropping and raising anchor and setting sails to take the vessel here and there, especially if the captain had in mind a “coasting voyage” in which he would buy slaves at several locations, as was common on the Windward Coast. Seamen also maintained the ship—cleaning, mending sails, repairing rigging, and tending to stores. At the same time, they would, as James Field Stanfield explained, build a thatched or tarpaulin roof over a large portion of the ship’s deck, to provide shade against the tropical sun and to constrain the captives whom the captain would purchase. Once the actual buying and selling began, sailors would be redeployed to the yawl and longboat, rowing, sometimes great distances, back and forth from ship to shore and to other ships, hauling trade goods, people, and provisions (yams, corn, rice, water). As soon as the trade goods were people—that is, as soon as the captain began to buy slaves—the seamen’s social function changed: they suddenly became prison guards. They would remain so for the coming seven to ten months or more—five to seven months or more on the coast, two to three months in the Middle Passage—until the vessel arrived in its American port of delivery.

As soon as the enslaved came aboard the vessel, “keeping watch” acquired a new meaning. The captain mobilized a guard, to be present and vigilant on the main deck anytime the enslaved were there. Each member would be armed, some with pistols, some with muskets, and all, apparently, with a cutlass, the handle of which featured a lanyard, which the sailor wound around his wrist so that a rebelling slave might not take it away from him.
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The primary worries at this point in the voyage were escape and insurrection, both of which were encouraged by the proximity of the ship to the shore and the prospect of getting back to one’s native society (even though recapture and resale were likely as the runaway tried to make his or her way home over many miles inland). The primary purposes of the sailor’s work were now to keep a vigilant watch and to preserve the new human property of his captain and shipowner.

After about ten men slaves had been brought on board, all of them, and every man thereafter, would be manacled and shackled. Under the direction of the captain and mate as well as the armorer or gunner, the sailors would hammer the cuffs into place, linking the men by twos, the left wrist and ankle of one to the right wrist and ankle of the other. Thereafter, whenever the men came upon the main deck, the sailors would reeve a chain through their leg shackles and lock them in groups of ten to a ringbolt. Sailors were to check the men’s irons carefully and regularly, at least twice a day, morning and night.
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Women and child slaves were not normally constrained, unless rebellious. As soon as the house was dismantled, members of the crew manned the barricado and trained their muskets through “Loop Holes.” Two sailors took their stations at elevated four-pound cannon, “loaded with a Cannister of Musket Balls to rake the Main deck, if there should be any Occasion for it.”
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As the ship filled up, sailors oversaw the routines of the captives on both the lower and main decks. Belowdecks the sailor would assist in “stowing” the slaves—that is, the assignment of a particular space where each person was to lie or sit whenever belowdecks, while on the coast and during the Middle Passage. The chief mate and the boatswain, cat-o’-nine-tails in hand, supervised stowing the men; the second mate and gunner, the women. The sailors helped to pack the enslaved together tightly, “adjusting their arms and legs, and prescribing a fixed place for each.” Those who did not “get quickly into their places” were compelled by the cat. George Millar, who served on the
Canterbury
on a voyage to Old Calabar in 1767, recalled, “I was the person that had the care of the men Slaves, and when stowed, there was not room to put down the point of a stick between one and another.”
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When the enslaved were on the main deck during the daytime hours, a detachment of sailors went below to clean their apartments. Sometimes this work would be done by the enslaved themselves, but more commonly by the sailors, who frankly despised it. This work had several aspects, some daily, others more occasional. One constant task was emptying the necessary tubs of urine and excrement. Alexander Falconbridge wrote, “In each of the apartments are placed three or four large buckets, of a conical form, being near two feet in diameter at the bottom, and only one foot at the top, and in depth about twenty-eight inches; to which, when necessary, the negroes have recourse.” The seamen also scrubbed the deck and the beams, using sand and other abrasives to remove dried filth, vomit, and mucus. Once every week or two, the sailors would, after cleaning, fumigate the apartments, which was done in various ways. Captain William Littleton had them put a “a red hot loggerhead into vinegar,” confine the smoke, and let it suffuse the woodwork. Seaman Samuel Robinson wrote that on his ships the lower deck was kept “scrupulousley clean, washed and scrubbed with sand twice a week, dried with fire-pans, and fumigated with vinegar and tobacco smoke; while large tubs, with close covers, are placed at proper distances for necessary purposes.”
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Another detested piece of service among sailors was guard duty belowdecks among the men slaves overnight. Not all captains required this; some were content to lock the slaves below and tend to them again the following morning. But other ships did require the duty, and William Butterworth left a detailed record of what it entailed. In the aftermath of a failed insurrection, Captain Jenkin Evans of the
Hudibras
“deemed it necessary that a person should be stationed in the men’s apartment during the night.” When he heard the news, Butterworth was mortified. He thought, “Unenviable situation! uncoveted post!” But as the captain’s will (fate) would have it, he and another man were chosen for the duty. Wishing suddenly that the enslaved were “all in their native woods” and that he himself was “safe in my own native town,” Butterworth hid himself to try to avoid duty. To no avail: he was found out and made to go below for four hours. When he arrived at his post, he found the man he was replacing “on the top of the ladder” that led up from the lower deck, “with his hands [gripping] hold of the gratings, and tears in his eyes.” He was terrified, as was Butterworth, who fearfully went below and took a seat as far from the slaves as he could get, “keeping a most respectful distance.” Time passed slowly as he listened to the clanking irons of the Coromantee and Igbo ringleaders of the insurrection, who were chained together in groups of ten. To his horror he was soon forced to take a second four-hour watch, during which he used his cat-o’-nine-tails—which he called the “credential of authority below deck”—to drive back to his spot an “old offender,” already in strong fetters, who had approached him. Eventually Butterworth grew sleepy but feared that he would be ripped limb from limb if he dozed off. Slowly he began to talk to the enslaved Igbo men near the ladder, hoping to cultivate allies. By his watch the following day, he had decided that the policy was working to guarantee his safety. Little did he know that another uprising was being planned. Two of the men Butterworth was “guarding” were soon found to have large knives in their possession. He was apparently considered too insignificant a target.
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Another important task sailors carried out was to conduct a daily search among the captives for hard-edged tools or indeed anything that might be used as a weapon—against the crew in insurrection, against themselves in suicide, or against each other in the frequent quarrels that broke out amid the hot, crowded, miserable circumstances of the lower deck. On some ships this meant clipping the fingernails of potential rebels. On almost all it meant keeping an eye on the more mobile women and child slaves, who sometimes passed tools through the gratings to the men below. Sailors were also dispatched to break up fights that flared up from conflicts over space, sickness, cleanliness, or cultural difference. Vaunting his own humanity (with no apparent sense of irony), the slave trader Robert Norris explained that such attention was necessary so that “the strong do not oppress the weak.”
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Every morning at around eight, when the weather was good, some sailors took their positions under arms while others brought the enslaved up from the lower deck, the men on the forward side of the barricado, the women and children aft. After chaining the men to the deck, seamen would assist in a morning washup of face and hands, then arrange the bodies as the surgeon made his rounds, listened to complaints, and looked for the telltale signs of illness. Around ten o’clock the sailors began to serve the morning meal, which usually consisted of African food according to the region of origin of the enslaved: rice for those from Senegambia and the Windward Coast, corn for those from the Gold Coast, yams for those from the Bights of Benin and Biafra. The sailors also served a pannikin of water. After the meal, sailors collected eating bowls (called “crews”) and spoons and made arrangements for a full wash. At noon the sailors began the activities for the afternoon. Of special importance was something called “dancing.”

Physicians and slave traders alike believed that exercise would help to maintain the health of the enslaved. Therefore each afternoon the Africans would be required to dance (and also to sing, on many ships). This could take many forms, from something more or less freely chosen, accompanied by African instruments (more common among the women), to the dreary, forced clanking of chains (more common among the men). Some refused to take part in the exercise altogether; others did so sullenly. These reactions brought the scourge of the cat, wielded by the mate or boatswain.

The same was frequently true of feeding: some people refused to eat, willfully or because they were sick or depressed. Violence would force them. The preferred instrument was the omnipresent cat, used by the officers. Numerous observers noted that it did not always work: many still refused to eat, which brought out other means of force, including hot coals and finally the
speculum oris
. Sailors would have assisted in these tortures but would not have taken the lead.