The Great Stain

by Noel Rae

  “She was 202 tons burden and carried 450-odd steerage passengers. They were so thick between decks that the air became putrid and whenever her sick squads were ordered up the gangways, one or more was sure to gasp and die with the first gulp of pure air. The steerage became pestilential before our voyage was half made, for the emigrants’ beds were never cleaned, and whole families literally wallowed in poisonous filth. The bodies of men and women, and their tattered garments, were crusted and impregnated with the most offensive matter. Typhus fever and dysentery soon broke out, and then mortality raged fearfully … I can remember one day in particular, when I had clambered to the deck and crept out to a coil of chain near the capstan. Thirty corpses were hauled up during the morning and cast overboard, to feed a school of hungry sharks that constantly followed the vessel. Most of the bodies were women, with long hair tangled in their filthy garments. No sooner did one of them strike the water than two or three sharks snapped at it, till the ship’s track was marked with blood. It was a sight that no after horror ever effaced from my mind.” When, after seventy-seven days at sea, the ship reached Cape Ann, “we had 186 left out of 450 odd passengers.”

  In 1789, after hearing a great deal of evidence, a committee of England’s Privy Council concluded that, on average, four and a half per cent of slaves died while being held in factories and forts before sailing; twelve and a half per cent died during the crossing; and thirty-three per cent died during their first year in the colonies, a period known as “seasoning.” No estimates were made of the numbers killed in the raids and wars that provided so many of the captives, or of those who died during the long trek from the interior to the coast. In their campaign to end the slave trade, English abolitionists focused on the twelve and half per cent who died during the crossing. Among those testifying on their behalf was Alexander Falconbridge, a ship’s doctor:

  “View of chained African slaves in cargo hold of slave ship, measuring three feet and three inches high.” 19th century woodcut. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library, Digital Collections.

  “It frequently happens that the Negroes, on being purchased by the Europeans, become raving mad; and many of them die in that state, particularly the women. While I was one day ashore at Bonny I saw a middle-aged, stout woman, who had been brought down from a fair the preceding day, chained to the post of a black trader’s door, in a state of furious insanity. On board a ship in Bonny River I saw a young negro woman chained to the deck, who had lost her senses soon after she was purchased and taken on board. In a former voyage, on board a ship to which I belonged, we were obliged to confine a female negro of about twenty-three years of age, on her becoming a lunatic. She was afterwards sold during one of her lucid intervals.

  “The men Negroes, on being brought aboard the ship, are immediately fastened together, two and two, by hand-cuffs on their wrists, and by irons riveted on their legs. They are then sent down between the decks and placed in an apartment partitioned off for that purpose. The women are likewise placed in a separate apartment between decks, but without being ironed. And an adjoining room, on the same deck, is besides appointed for the boys. Thus are they all placed in different apartments.

  “But at the same time they are frequently stowed so close as to admit of no other posture than lying on their sides. Neither will the height between decks, unless directly under the grating, permit them the indulgence of an erect posture, especially where there are platforms, which is generally the case. These platforms are a kind of shelf, about eight or nine feet in breadth, extending from the side of the ship towards the centre. They are placed nearly midways between the decks, at the distance of two or three feet from each deck. Upon these the Negroes are stowed in the same manner as they are on the deck underneath.

  “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. It often happens that those who are placed at a distance from the buckets, in endeavouring to get to them, tumble over their companions in consequence of their being shackled. These accidents, although unavoidable, are productive of continual quarrels in which some of them are always bruised. In this distressed situation, unable to proceed, and prevented from getting to the tubs, they desist from the attempt and, as the necessities of nature are not to be repelled, ease themselves as they lie. This becomes a fresh source of broils and disturbances, and tends to render the condition of the poor captive wretches still more uncomfortable. The nuisance arising from these circumstances is not infrequently increased by the tubs being much too small for the purpose intended, and their being usually emptied but once every day.

  “About eight o’clock in the morning the Negroes are generally brought up on deck. Their irons being examined, a long chain, which is locked to a ring-bolt fixed in the deck, is run through the rings of the shackles of the men, and then locked to another ring-bolt, fixed also in the deck. By this means fifty or sixty, and sometimes more, are fastened to one chain in order to prevent them from rising or endeavouring to escape. If the weather proves favourable they are permitted to remain in that situation till four or five in the afternoon, when they are disengaged from the chain and sent down.

  “Their food is served up to them in tubs, about the size of a small water bucket. They are placed round these tubs in companies of ten to each tub, out of which they feed themselves with wooden spoons. These they soon lose, and when they are not allowed others they feed themselves with their hands. In favourable weather they are fed upon deck, but in bad weather their food is given them below. Numberless quarrels take place among them during their meals; more especially when they are put upon short allowance, which frequently happens if the passage from the coast of Guinea to the West India islands proves of unusual length. In that case the weak are obliged to be content with a very scanty portion. Their allowance of water is about half a pint each at every meal.

  “Upon the Negroes refusing to take sustenance I have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel and placed so near their lips as to scorch and burn them. And this has been accompanied with threats of forcing them to swallow the coals if they any longer persisted in refusing to eat. These means have generally had the desired effect.

  A medical instrument for prying open the mouths of patients with lockjaw, the speculum oris was also used to force-feed slaves who tried to starve themselves to death. To operate, the two points were closed to form a spike which was then forced between the slave’s teeth, then the screw was turned by the butterfly nut, the jaws were forced open, and liquid food poured down the throat.

  “Exercise being deemed necessary for the preservation of their health they are sometimes obliged to dance when the weather will permit their coming on deck. If they go about it reluctantly, or do not move with agility, they are flogged, a person standing by them all the time with a cat-o’-nine-tails in his hand for that purpose. Their musick upon these occasions consists of a drum, sometimes with only one head; and when that is worn out they do not scruple to make use of the bottom of one of the tubs before described. The poor wretches are frequently compelled to sing also; but when they do, their songs are generally, as may naturally be expected, melancholy lamentations of their exile from their native country.

  “The women are furnished with beads for the purpose of affording them some diversion. But this end is generally defeated by the squabbles which are occasioned in consequence of their stealing them from each other. On board some ships the common sailors are allowed to have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure. The officers are permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure, and sometimes are guilty of such brutal excesses as disgrace human nature.

  “The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived. They a
re far more violently affected by the sea-sickness than the Europeans; it frequently terminates in death, especially among the women. But the exclusion of the fresh air is among the most intolerable. For the purpose of admitting this needful refreshment, most of the ships in the slave-trade are provided between decks with five or six air-ports on each side of the ship, of about six inches in length and four in breadth; in addition to which some few ships, but not one in twenty, have what they denominate wind-sails. But whenever the sea is rough and the rains heavy it becomes necessary to shut these and every other conveyance by which the air is admitted. The fresh air being thus excluded, the Negroes’ rooms very soon grow intolerably hot. The confined air, rendered noxious by the effluvia exhaled from their bodies, and by being repeatedly breathed, soon produces fevers and fluxes, which generally carries off great numbers of them.

  “During the voyages I made I was frequently a witness to the fatal effects of this exclusion of the fresh air. I will give one instance, as it serves to convey some idea, though a very faint one, of the sufferings of those unhappy beings whom we wantonly drag from their native country and doom to perpetual labour and captivity. Some wet and blowing weather having occasioned the port-holes to be shut and the grating to be covered, fluxes and fevers among the Negroes ensued. While they were in this situation, my profession requiring it, I frequently went down among them, till at length their apartments became so extremely hot as to be only sufferable for a very short time. But the excessive heat was not the only thing that rendered their situation intolerable. The deck, that is, the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture to itself a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were carried up on deck, where several of them died, and the rest were, with great difficulty, restored. It had nearly proved fatal to me also. The climate was too warm to admit the wearing of any clothing but a shirt, and that I had pulled off before I went down; notwithstanding which, by only continuing among them for about a quarter of an hour, I was so overcome with the heat, stench, and foul air, that I had nearly fainted; and it was not without assistance that I could get upon deck.

  “The place allotted for the sick Negroes is under the half-deck, where they lie on the bare planks. By this means those who are emaciated frequently have their skin, and even their flesh, entirely rubbed off by the motion of the ship from the prominent parts of the shoulders, elbows and hips, so as to render the bones in those parts quite bare. The excruciating pain which the poor sufferers feel from being obliged to continue in such a dreadful situation, frequently for several weeks, in case they happen to live so long, is not to be conceived or described. Few indeed are ever able to withstand the fatal effects of it.

  “The surgeon, upon going between decks in the morning to examine the situation of the slaves, frequently finds several dead; and among the men sometimes a dead and living negro fastened by their irons together. When this is the case they are brought up on the deck and being laid on the grating the living negro is disengaged and the dead one thrown overboard.

  “One morning, upon examining the place allotted for the sick Negroes, I perceived that one of them, who was so emaciated as scarcely to be able to walk, was missing, and was convinced that he must have gone overboard in the night, probably to put a more expeditious period to his sufferings. And, to conclude on this subject, I could not help being sensibly affected, on a former voyage, at observing with what apparent eagerness a black woman seized some dirt from off an African yam, and put it into her mouth, seeming to rejoice at the opportunity of possessing some of her native earth.”

  Slave uprisings—or, as the traders preferred to call them, mutinies—occurred on about one in ten of the ships, mostly while they were still on the African coast. They were of course expected, and precautions were taken: when on deck the slaves were usually chained; the hilts of the swords and cutlasses carried by the sailors were tied to their wrists by lanyards so that they could not be snatched away; and an eight-foot wooden wall called a barricado was built across the rear part of the deck, with only one small door so that it could not be rushed. If the slaves rebelled, the crew would retreat behind this wall, fire at them through loopholes, and work the guns that were mounted on the upper deck and were loaded with small shot. Captain Snelgrave, who had earlier described his visit to the victorious king of Dahomey, considered himself something of an expert on the subject of uprisings:

  “I have been several voyages when there has been no attempt made by our negroes to mutiny; which, I believe, was owing chiefly to their being kindly used, and to my officers’ care in keeping good watch. But sometimes we meet with stout stubborn people amongst them who are never to be made easy; and these are generally some of the Cormantines, a nation of the Gold Coast. I went in the year 1721, in the Henry of London, a voyage to that part of the Coast and bought a good many of these people. We were obliged to secure them very well in irons and watch them narrowly; yet they nevertheless mutinied, though they had little prospect of succeeding. I lay at that time at a place called Mumfort, on the Gold Coast, having near five hundred Negroes on board, three hundred of which were men. Our ship’s company consisted of fifty white people, all in health. And I had very good officers, so that I was very easy in all respects.

  “This mutiny began at midnight, the moon then shining very bright, in this manner: two men that stood sentry at the fore hatch-way, where the men slaves came up to go to the house of office [latrines], permitted four to go to that place; but neglected to lay the gratings again, as they should have done. Whereupon four more Negroes came on deck who had got their irons off, and the four in the house of office having done the same, all eight fell on the two sentries, who immediately called out for help. The Negroes endeavoured to get their cutlasses from them, but the lineyards (that is the lines by which the handles of the cutlasses were fastened to the men’s wrists) were so twisted in the scuffle that they could not get them off before we came to their assistance. The Negroes perceiving several white men coming towards them, with arms in their hands, quitted the sentries and jumped over the ship’s side into the sea.

  “I being by this time come forward on the deck, my first care was to secure the gratings, to prevent any more Negroes from coming up; and then I ordered my people to get into the boat and save those that had jumped over-board, which they luckily did; for they found them all clinging to the cables the ship was moored by.

  “After we had secured these people I called the linguists [interpreters] and ordered them to bid the men-Negroes between decks be quiet (for there was a great noise amongst them.) On their being silent I asked, ‘What had induced them to mutiny?’ They answered, ‘I was a great rogue to buy them, in order to carry them away from their own country; and that they were resolved to regain their liberty if possible.’ I replied, ‘That they had forfeited their freedom before I bought them, either by crimes or being taken in war, according to the custom of their country; and they being now my property I was resolved to let them feel my resentment if they abused my kindness;’ asking at the same time, ‘Whether they had been ill used by the white men, or had wanted for anything the ship afforded?’ To this they replied, ‘They had nothing to complain of.’ Then I observed to them, ‘That if they should gain their point and escape to the shore it would be no advantage to them, because their countrymen would catch them and sell them to other ships.’ This served my purpose, and they seemed to be convinced of their fault, begging ‘I would forgive them, and promising for the future to be obedient, and never mutiny again, if I would not punish them this time.’ This I readily granted, and so they went to sleep. When daylight came we called the men-Negroes up on deck and examining their irons, found them all secure. So this affair happily ended, which I was very glad of; for these people are the stoutest and most sensible Negroes on the Coast.”

  S
oon afterward the Henry left Mumfort and arrived at Annamaboe, a fort on the Gold Coast, where they met up with another ship, the Elizabeth, whose captain and chief mate having died was now commanded by the second mate. Since both ships belonged to the same owner, Snelgrave outranked the other officer and used his authority to oblige him to transfer the slaves he had already acquired to the Henry. Snelgrave would then transfer the remainder of his trading goods to the Elizabeth, and, his cargo complete, be free to cross the Atlantic. Unsurprisingly, the crew of the Elizabeth objected strongly, but Snelgrave overruled them. “But that very night, which was near a month after the mutiny on board of us at Mumfort, the moon shining now very bright as it did then, we heard, about ten a-clock, two or three muskets fired on board the Elizabeth. Upon that I ordered all our boats to be manned, and having secured everything in our ship to prevent our slaves from mutinying, I went myself in our pinnace (the other boats following me) on board the Elizabeth. In our way we saw two Negroes swimming from her, but before we could reach them with our boats, some sharks rose from the bottom and tore them to pieces.

  “We came presently along the side of the ship where we found two men-Negroes holding by a rope, with their heads just above water; they were afraid, it seems, to swim from the ship’s side, having seen their companions devoured just before by the sharks. These two slaves we took into our boat, and then went into the ship, where we found the Negroes very quiet, and all under deck.” These slaves had all been bought earlier, “did not understand a word of the Gold Coast language, and so had not been in the plot,” which was the work of a few recently acquired Cormantines. Snelgrave also found the crew cowering behind the barricade on the quarter-deck, where “they all stood with arms in their hands,” and, in the forepart of the ship, “the cooper lying on his back, quite dead, his skull having been cleft asunder with a hatchet that lay by him.” One of the two Negroes found clinging to the ship’s rope—both of them Cormantines—accused the other, who “readily confessed.” Hearing this, “the white men wanted to have cut him to pieces; but I prevented it, and carried him to my own ship.”