The Slave Ship (39 page)

The process of stripping began, under threat of violence from both the black traders and the white, with clothes. It soon extended to name, identity, and to some extent culture, or so the new captors hoped. Various merchants and captains gave the official reason for removing clothes: to “preserve their health”—that is, to reduce the likelihood of vermin and disease. Some of the women, when stripped, immediately squatted to hide their genitals. (Some unknown number of ship captains gave women a small square of fabric to wear around their waists.) Perhaps just as important—although this reason for removing clothes was rarely mentioned—captains did not want the enslaved to have any place on their person where they might hide a weapon of any kind.
⁴

The mental state of the captives varied considerably. A twenty-seven-year-old woman who had apparently traveled hundreds of miles to get to the coast eyed the members of the ship’s crew with the “greatest astonishment.” She had never seen white people before and was brimming over with curiosity. Slave trader John Matthews described a man of even “bolder constitution” who looked at “the white man with amazement, but without fear.” He carefully examined the white man’s skin, then his own, the white man’s hair, then his own, “and frequently burst into laughter at the contrast, and, to him no doubt, [the] uncouth appearance of the white man.” On the other hand, Matthews also noted that a much greater number came aboard in abject terror, in “a state of torpid insensibility” in which they remained for some time. These people thought that “the white man buys him either to offer him as a sacrifice to his God, or to devour him as food.”
⁵

Cannibalism was one of the idioms through which the war called the slave trade was waged. Europeans had long justified the trade, and slavery more broadly, by saying that Africans were savage man-eaters, who must be civilized by exposure to the more “advanced” life and thought of Christian Europe. Many Africans were equally sure that the strange pale men in the houses with wings were the cannibals, eager to eat their flesh and drink their blood. This belief was apparently strengthened as some African elites used the slave trade to discipline their own slaves: “the Masters or Priests hold out as a general Doctrine to their Slaves, that the Europeans will kill and eat them, if they behave so ill as they do to their respective Masters, by which Means the Slaves are kept in better Order, and in great Fear of being sold to the Europeans.” In any case a huge number of people, like Equiano, arrived at the ship in morbid fear of being eaten alive. The belief was more common in some regions of Africa than others: people from the interior were more likely to believe it than were people from the coast; the Igbo more likely than the Akan. The fear of being eaten would prove to be a powerful motive to resistance of all kinds, from hunger strike to suicide to insurrection.
⁶

Perhaps the most infamous symbols of control aboard the slave ship were the manacles, shackles, neck rings, and chains that made up the hardware of bondage. Many of the enslaved were already constrained when they came aboard the ship, especially the so-called stout men (physically strong adults), but moving from African cordage or vine to the iron technology of the Europeans evoked a special horror. Manacles took several forms, from handcuffs to rounded clamps. Leg shackles, also known as bilboes, consisted of a straight iron rod, on which were slid two U-shaped metal loops. The rod had a finished end, large and flattened, and a slotted end with a lock or, more commonly, a hammered ring, through which a chain might be reeved when two captives came on deck. The most punishing constraint was reserved for the most rebellious slaves, whose necks were locked into large iron collars, which made it even more difficult to move, lie down, or rest. The point was to limit movement and control potential resistance.

The general rule was, all men manacled and shackled at the wrist and leg, women and children left unconstrained. But captains did vary in their uses of fetters. Some apparently always chained certain groups of Africans (Fante, Ibibio) but not others (Chamba, Angola), who were considered unlikely to rise up. The Asante might be chained, depending on how and why they ended up on the ship. Several captains swore that they let even the men out of chains once they had left the African coast, although equally experienced captains did not believe it. Some captains used only manacles or shackles, not both. One captain said he let men out of chains once they seemed to be “reconciled” to their fate on board the ship. Women who proved rebellious were also fettered, and quickly.
⁷

The iron constraints excoriated the flesh. Even minimal movement could be painful. Trying to get oneself and a partner through a mass of bodies on the lower deck to the necessary tubs could be excruciating, and the forced “dancing” on the main deck for exercise could be torture.

In the late 1780s, the youthful John Riland befriended (in England) an old African named Caesar, who still bore the scars of the fetters he wore on the slave ship. The skin on his ankles was “seamed and rugged,” not least because he had been chained to a man whose language he did not understand, which made it difficult for them to coordinate their movements. When his partner sickened and convulsed with starts and twitches, the movements against the metal lacerated both men. The experience of wearing these fetters, Caesar explained to Riland, would never be forgotten: “the iron entered into our souls!”
⁸

Early in the history of the slave trade, Europeans took control of slave bodies by branding them, burning symbols of European ownership into the flesh, usually on the shoulder, upper chest, or thigh. Branding was most common when the purchasing trader was the representative of a large chartered company such as the Royal African Company or the South Sea Company. Some merchants also required captains to brand their privilege slaves to hold them accountable for the loss in case of mortality. But the practice of branding seems to have diminished over time. By the early 1800s, it was rarely mentioned.
⁹

Other, more “rational” means arose in order to transform human beings into property. Gaining strength throughout the eighteenth century was an accounting system that operated aboard each ship to reduce all captives to the deadened anonymity of numbers. Each person who was purchased was assigned a number, and sometimes a new name. But a numbering system was more pervasive and functional, for both captains and surgeons, who routinely referred in their logs and journals to the death of man “No. 33,” a boy “No. 27,” a woman “No. 11,” or a girl “No. 92.” According to the official records of the voyage, each slave was a nameless entry in a bookkeeping system. Captains numbered the living as they came aboard; surgeons numbered the dead as they flung them overboard.
¹⁰

A significant number of the enslaved worked aboard the vessel, at a wide variety of tasks central to the shipboard economy. Probably the most common work was “domestic” in the broad sense, part of the necessary daily reproductive labors of the ship. A substantial number of women seem to have been involved in food preparation. They performed what were likely familiar duties: they cleaned rice, pounded yams, and ground corn. Women also worked as cooks, in place of or in some instances alongside the ship’s cook, to prepare food for the hundreds on board. Occasionally an enslaved woman (considered trustworthy) might cook the higher-quality food to be served to the captain’s table. Other Africans, men and women, washed and cleaned the decks and scraped and sanitized the slave apartments. Some found a niche in the shipboard economy washing and mending the clothes of the crew. They often got “pay” for these tasks—a dram of brandy, tobacco, or extra food.
¹¹

Other labors were more commonly the result of crisis. In the event of a storm or damage to the vessel, African men might be mobilized to work at the pumps. Captain John Rawlinson of the
Mary
“let the Negroes out of Irons to assist in pumping the Ship” in 1737, as did Captain Charles Harris of the
Charles-Town
in 1797. In the latter, reported explorer Mungo Park, “It was found necessary, therefore, to take some of the ablest of the Negro men out of irons, and employ them in this labour; in which they were often worked beyond their strength.” Their strength might have been the difference between capsizing and making it to port.
¹²

In wartime some captains elected to train a portion of the men in the use of knives, swords, pikes, small arms, or cannon in case of an attack by an enemy privateer. Captain Edwards of the snow
Seaflower
faced a Spanish privateer in 1741 with only six sailors and a boy, but 159 slaves. Rather than surrender, he opened a chest of small arms and “put Firelocks, Pistols, and Cutlasses into the Hands of some of the Negroes,” who “fought so desperately in their Way, shooting, slashing, and throwing Fire into the Privateer, when they attempted twice to board him, that by their Bravery they sav’d the Ship and Cargo,” that “cargo” being themselves! The privateer was obliged to “sheer off ” with no booty and having done little damage. Captain Peter Whitfield Branker testified before the House of Lords that on a voyage of 1779 he trained a large number of slaves every night during the Middle Passage: “I had at least a Hundred and fifty Slaves to work the Guns, Sails, and Small Arms; I had Twenty-two Marines; there were ten Slaves in each Top, that lived there continually, that were exercised to hand the Sails as Top Men in His Majesty’s Ships.”
¹³

The last comment points toward the most common work of all for boys and men: helping to sail the ship. This, too, was often a matter of necessity. When ten sailors deserted the
Mercury
in 1803-4, their “places were filled by negro slaves.” More commonly, however, it was not desertion but sickness and death that set the enslaved to work as sailors. When nineteen of the twenty-two crew members of the
Thetis
fell ill in 1760, they “set sail with the assistance of our own slaves, there being no possibility of working the ship without them,” wrote the ship’s carpenter, who was himself slowly going blind from a “distemper” in his eyes. Many captains declared that they could never have brought their ships to port without the labors of the enslaved.
¹⁴

African boys on board the ship worked with the sailors and indeed some were being trained to become sailors. A few were the captain’s privilege slaves, trained to enhance market value. One captain claimed that the boys were “allowed to go aloft, work with the Sailors, and are reckoned upon as a Part of the Ship’s Company.” This was an exaggeration, but it contained a truth confirmed by others. When the slave ship
Benson
came near his own vessel, the
Neptune,
in the early 1770s, mate John Ashley Hall “could only see two White men upon her yards handing the sails, the rest were Black boys, Slaves.” Aboard the
Eliza
in 1805, three “working boys” named Tom, Peter, and Jack not only helped sail the ship, they talked with the other captives and reported what they learned to the crew.
¹⁵

Violence lay at the very heart of the slave ship. The gunned ship itself was an instrument of war making and empire building, and of course violence of one kind or another had brought most everyone aboard.

Moreover, almost everything that happened on the slave ship had the threat or actuality of violence behind it. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the Africans brought together on the slave ship sometimes fought among themselves, especially given the fear, rage, and frustration they all must have felt. The reasons for conflict among Africans were first and foremost circumstantial, related to the brutal conditions of enslavement and incarceration, especially on the hot, crowded, stinking lower deck. But cultural causes can also be discerned in ship- board ruckus.

The noisome conditions of the lower deck caused an endless number of fights, especially at night when the prisoners were locked below without guards. Most fights were occasioned by the efforts of the captives to get through the mass of bodies to the necessary tubs to relieve themselves. The fighting was worst in the men’s apartment, not only because men were more apt to fight but because they were manacled and shackled, which made getting to the tubs more difficult. In 1790 a member of the House of Commons committee investigating the slave trade asked Dr. Alexander Falconbridge, “Have you known instances of quarrels between Slaves who have been shackled together?” He answered, “It is frequently the case, I believe, in all Slave ships.” And so it was. Among the men belowdecks, there were “continual quarrels.”
¹⁶

Any man who had to answer the call of nature had to coordinate the trip with his partner, who might not wish to be disturbed, and this in itself could cause a fight. If the partner proved willing, two people then tried to make their way through the multitude of bodies, all the while negotiating the rolling motions of the ship. Inevitably one person stepped or fell on another, who, “disturbed by the shock, took umbrage at it” and hit the “accidental offender.” Then someone else struck back to defend the person who had been hit. The escalation of the clash in such crowded circumstances was rapid, and soon the incident had grown into what seaman William Butterworth called a “battle.”
¹⁷

These difficulties pale, however, when compared to what happened when sickness—especially dysentery or any other malady that produced diarrhea—swept through the lower deck. Suddenly the afflicted could not always get to the tubs in time, or in some instances they were simply too weak to make the effort, especially if the tubs were at a distance. When the sick “ease[d] themselves” where they lay, furious disturbances broke out. This, and indeed the entire filthy condition of the lower deck, was a special torment to West Africans, who were known to pride themselves on personal cleanliness. Fighting was therefore chronic.
¹⁸