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SLAVE SHIPS AND SLAVING
[Illustration:
BARTERING FOR SLAVES ON THE GUINEA COAST
From a colored lithograph in the Macpherson Collection
]
SLAVE SHIPS
AND
SLAVING
By
GEORGE FRANCIS DOW
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
CAPT. ERNEST H. PENTECOST, R.N.R.
[Illustration: colophon]
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
MARINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
1927
PUBLICATION NUMBER FIFTEEN
OF THE
MARINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
THE MARINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
E. L. HILDRETH & CO.
BRATTLEBORO, VT.
PREFACE
The infamous deeds of the pirates alone excepted, there is no blacker
page in the story of the sea than that which records the voyages of the
slave ships. Captivated in tribal wars and kidnapped in times of peace,
uncounted millions of negroes were closely stowed in the holds of all
kinds of sailing craft and carried to the West Indies and America to be
sold as slaves to work the sugar plantations. The cruelty and horror of
“the middle passage”—the voyage from the Guinea coast—can never be told
in all its gruesome details. It is enough to recall that the ships were
always trailed by man-eating sharks.
The slaving trade was also the grave of many of the seamen who engaged
in it, for the African coast reeked with fevers and other fearful
diseases and those who escaped the infection and ophthalmia of “the
middle passage,” on reaching the West Indies frequently opened their own
graves by unrestrained drinking of new rum. Many masters of slave ships
were cruel and overbearing by nature; the trade exacted its toll; and
cruelty inflicted upon slaves was easily transferred to equally helpless
seamen.
The ships of America and the principal maritime nations of Europe were
engaged in this trade for centuries and few voices were raised in
protest until after the revolutions in the American colonies and in
France, when a new conception of personal freedom began to gain ground.
Even after the traffic in human flesh was prohibited by law, for many
years, or until the market failed, slave ships surreptitiously collected
their cargoes and ran the blockade of naval vessels keeping guard on
eastern and western coasts.
This volume does not attempt to give a history of the African slave
trade; it would require many volumes to do justice to the subject. It
merely presents an account of the trade as conducted at different times
and by different nations and is a piece of narrative and description and
not a history of events. The Introduction has been written by Captain
Pentecost, a British officer in the Naval Reserve, now retired after a
long and varied service at sea, during which he gathered a knowledge of
slaving from the lips of those formerly engaged in the trade. He also
placed at our disposal certain printed and illustrative material which
has been utilized in the preparation of this volume. Thanks are also due
to Mr. A. G. H. Macpherson of London, England, from whose unrivaled
collection of pictures and engravings relating to ships and the sea most
of the plates in this volume have been reproduced.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE v
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
INTRODUCTION BY CAPT. ERNEST H. PENTECOST, R.N.R. xvii
I. THE GUINEA COAST 1
II. SIR JOHN HAWKINS, SLAVE TRADER 19
III. THE VOYAGE OF THE SHIP “HANNIBAL” OF LONDON, IN 1693 31
IV. THE SLAVING VOYAGE OF THE “ALBION-FRIGATE” OF LONDON 73
V. THE LIVERPOOL AND BRISTOL SLAVERS 89
VI. MUTINIES ABOARD SLAVE SHIPS IN THE EARLY DAYS 113
VII. THE SHIP DOCTOR’S NARRATIVE 133
VIII. THE GUINEA VOYAGE AND THE SAILOR 155
IX. THE BRIG “RUBY” OF BRISTOL, AFRICAN SLAVER 167
X. CAPTAIN CROW, THE LAST SLAVER OUT OF LIVERPOOL 181
XI. THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A SLAVE TRADER 189
XII. FACTORY LIFE ON THE GUINEA COAST 211
XIII. SLAVE SMUGGLING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 237
XIV. SLAVING VOYAGES BY RHODE ISLAND VESSELS 255
XV. SOME AMERICAN SLAVE SHIPS 267
XVI. SIX MONTHS ON A SLAVER IN 1860 281
XVII. THE LAST VOYAGE OF AN AMERICAN SLAVER 319
INDEX 345
ILLUSTRATIONS
BARTERING FOR SLAVES ON THE GUINEA COAST _Frontispiece_
From a colored lithograph in the Macpherson
Collection.
CAPE COAST CASTLE, THE PRINCIPAL ENGLISH SETTLEMENT ON 2
THE GOLD COAST
From a colored aquatint by J. Hill, published in 1806,
in the Macpherson Collection.
THE GUINEA COAST ABOUT THE YEAR 1700 6
From the map in Churchill’s _Collection of Voyages_,
engraved by R. W. Seale.
CHRISTIANSBORG, THE DANISH SETTLEMENT ON THE GOLD COAST 10
From the engraving by J. Hill, published in 1806, in
the Macpherson Collection.
ELMINA, ON THE GOLD COAST, NEAR CAPE COAST CASTLE 16
From a colored aquatint, published about 1830, in the
Macpherson Collection.
MAP OF THE COAST OF AFRICA FROM SIERRA LEONE TO THE CAPE 20
OF GOOD HOPE
From an original by Arnoldus F. a Langren, engraved in
1599, in the Macpherson Collection.
DUTCH SHIPS TRADING ON THE GUINEA COAST. FROM DE BRY’S 26
“VOYAGES,” 1601
(A) Ship. (B) Negro merchants. (C) How goods are
passed from the canoes to the shore. (D) Where the
merchants have to pay a tax to the chief. (E) Canoe
being carried up the beach.
PROSPECT OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE, LONDON, IN 1714, WITH 32
SHIPPING OF THE PERIOD
From an engraving by John Harris, in the Macpherson
Collection.
NEGRO SLAVES FROM LOANGO, AFRICA 46
From an engraving in Stedman’s _Narrative of an
Expedition to Surinam_, London, 1796.
THE DUTCH CASTLE CORMANTINE, NEAR ANAMABOE ON THE GOLD 54
COAST
From an engraving in Ogilby’s _Africa_, London, 1670.
(A) HAND-CUFFS FOR SLAVES. (B) LEG SHACKLES. (C-E) THUMB 66
SCREWS. (F-H) “SPECULUM ORIS,” TO OPEN CLOSED JAWS
From Clarkson’s _Abolition of the Slave Trade_,
London, 1808.
NEGROES BEING CARRIED OUT TO A SLAVE SHIP; AND CASTLE ON 74
THE GOLD COAST
From an engraving in Churchill’s _Collection of
Voyages_, London, 1756.
THE CEREMONY OF “CROSSING THE LINE” 86
From an engraving in Drake’s _Collection of Voyages_,
London, 1771.
VIEW OF LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND, FROM THE FORT, IN 1798 92
From a colored aquatint by John T. Serres, in the
Macpherson Collection.
VIEW OF CLARENCE COVE, ISLAND OF FERNANDO PO 100
Colored aquatint, after a painting by W. J. Huggins,
in 1833, in the Macpherson Collection.
GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA, SHOWING THE BRITISH BARK “CAESAR” 108
ENTERING THE HARBOR, SEPTEMBER, 1839
From a colored aquatint, after a painting by W. J.
Huggins, in the Macpherson Collection.
GROUP OF NEGROES JUST LANDED TO BE SOLD FOR SLAVES 118
From an engraving in Stedman’s _Narrative of an
Expedition to Surinam_, London, 1796.
SECTION SHOWING METHOD OF STOWING SLAVES, IN 1786, ON THE 126
SHIP “BROOKES” OF LIVERPOOL
From Clarkson’s _Abolition of the Slave Trade_,
London, 1808.
CARRYING SLAVES TO A PORTUGUESE SLAVE BRIG LYING IN BONNY 134
RIVER
From a drawing by T. F. Birch, made in January, 1837,
in the Macpherson Collection.
A VIEW OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 144
From a line engraving after a painting by T. Mellish,
published about 1750, by John Bowles, London, in the
Macpherson Collection.
THE VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS, FROM ANGOLA TO THE WEST 152
INDIES
From a painting by T. Stothard, engraved for Edward’s
_History of the West Indies_, London, 1818.
METHOD OF STOWING SLAVES ON THE FRENCH BRIG “VIGILANTI” 158
OF NANTES
Captured in the River Bonny, April 15, 1822.
SECTION AND DECK PLAN OF THE FRENCH BRIG “VIGILANTI,” OF 168
NANTES, CAPTURED IN THE RIVER BONNY, APRIL 15, 1822
VIEW OF THE TOWN AND HARBOR OF LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND 182
From a colored aquatint by W. J. Bennett, engraved in
1811, in the Macpherson Collection.
VIEW OF THE CITY AND HARBOR OF RIO DE JANEIRO 192
From a colored lithograph published by Lemercier,
Paris, in the Macpherson Collection.
SLAVE HUNTERS ATTACKING A NEGRO TOWN 198
From a wood engraving in Canot’s _Twenty Years of an
African Slaver_.
BRANDING A NEGRESS AT THE RIO PONGO 204
From a wood engraving in Canot’s _Twenty Years of an
African Slaver_.
A DUTCH PLANTER IN SURINAM IN HIS MORNING DRESS 208
From an engraving in Stedman’s _Narrative of an
Expedition to Surinam_, London, 1796.
CAPTURE OF THE SLAVER “HENNA,” OCT. 26, 1843, OFF MERCURY 212
ISLAND, S. W. COAST OF AFRICA, BY H.M. SCHOONER “ARIEL”
From a water color in the Macpherson Collection.
VIEW OF THE TOWN OF THE FOULAH TRIBE OF NEGROES 218
From an engraving by Basire in Astley’s _Collection of
Voyages_, London, 1745.
CAPTURE OF THE SLAVER “BORBOLETA,” MAY 26, 1845, BY THE 226
BOATS OF H.M. BRIG “PANTALOON,” AFTER A TWO DAYS’ CHASE
OFF LAGOS, WEST AFRICA
From a colored lithograph, after a drawing by H. John
Vernon, in the Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF THE SPANISH SLAVER “FORMIDABLE,” DEC. 7, 1834, 230
OFF SIERRA LEONE, BY H.M. BRIG “BUZZARD”
From a colored aquatint, after the painting by W. J.
Huggins, in the Macpherson Collection.
FEMALE SAMBOE SLAVE GIVEN TWO HUNDRED LASHES 234
From an engraving in Stedman’s _Narrative of an
Expedition to Surinam_, London, 1796.
VIEW OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 240
From a colored aquatint, published in 1841, after a
painting by William J. Bennett, in the Macpherson
Collection.
BRITISH PRIZE BRIGANTINE “NETUNA,” BEATING OFF THE 246
SPANISH SLAVER “CAROLINE,” MAR. 20, 1826, IN THE BIGHT
OF BENIN
The _Netuna_ carried 1 gun and 5 men; the _Caroline_,
10 guns and 90 men.
From a colored aquatint, after the painting by W. Joy,
in the Macpherson Collection.
A SLAVER DRIVEN ASHORE ON THE BRAZILIAN COAST BY H.M. 250
BRIG “FROLIC”
From a colored lithograph by H. John Vernon, published
about 1840, in the Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF THE AMERICAN SLAVER “MARY ADELINE,” OFF THE 260
CONGO, IN 1852, BY H.M. BRIGANTINE “DOLPHIN”
From a colored lithograph by H. John Vernon, in the
Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF AMERICAN SLAVER “ORION,” NOV. 30, 1859, WITH 264
888 SLAVES, BY H.M. SLOOP-OF-WAR “PLUTO”
From a water color by J. Taylor (1876) in the
Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF AMERICAN SLAVE SHIP “MARTHA,” JUNE 6, 1850, 270
OFF AMBRIZ, BY U.S. BRIG “PERRY”
From a lithograph in Foote, _Africa and the American
Flag_, New York, 1854.
“NIGHTINGALE,” 1060 TONS, BUILT AT PORTSMOUTH, N. H., IN 276
1851
From a lithograph by N. Currier, after the drawing by
C. Parsons made in 1854.
CHASE OF THE SLAVER “GABRIEL,” JULY 6, 1841, BY H.M. BRIG 282
“ACORN”
From a colored lithograph, after a drawing by N. M.
Condy, in the Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF SPANISH SLAVER “DOLORES,” APR. 4, 1816, OFF 288
THE CONGO, BY H.M. BRIG “FERRET”
From a colored lithograph, after the painting by W. J.
Huggins, in the Macpherson Collection.
THE CAPTURE OF THE SLAVER “BOLODORA” BY H.M. SCHOONER 296
“PICKLE,” JUNE 6, 1824
From the colored aquatint, after the painting by W. J.
Huggins, in the Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF THE SLAVER “EL ALMIRANTE,” FEB. 1, 1829, IN 304
THE BIGHT OF BENIN, BY H.M. BRIG “BLACK JOKE”
From a colored aquatint, after the painting by W. J.
Huggins, in the Macpherson Collection.
THE SLAVER “L’ANTONIO,” WITH OTHER BLACK CRAFT, LYING IN 312
BONNY RIVER
From a colored lithograph published in London, in
1841, in the Macpherson Collection.
VIEW OF NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, FROM ABOVE THE MIDDLE 320
FERRY
From a colored aquatint, published in 1841, after a
painting by William J. Bennett, in the Macpherson
Collection.
A VIEW OF FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE 326
From a colored aquatint, published Sept. 14, 1837,
after the painting by W. J. Huggins, in the
Macpherson Collection.
CAPTURE OF THE SPANISH SLAVER “MIDAS,” JUNE 27, 1829, ON 332
THE GREAT BAHAMA BANK, BY H.M. SCHOONER “MONKEY”
From the colored aquatint, after the painting by W. J.
Huggins, in the Macpherson Collection.
THE HARBOR OF HAVANA, CUBA 338
From a drawing by J. W. Hill, made about 1850.
THE GUINEA COAST ABOUT THE YEAR 1860 342
From Black’s _Atlas of the World_, Edinburgh, 1867.
TO THE READER
Read this book and visions see
Of Afric land and tropic sea;
Of beaches wide where great waves roar,
Where sea birds scream and vultures soar;
Of lofty palms that bow and sigh
And cast their shade where slavers lie;
Of steaming forests and calm lagoons,
And swelt’ring blacks in barracoons;
Of brutal captains and negro kings,
And dusky belles in anklets and rings;
Of muddy rivers where black craft hide
Among the mangoes—at anchor ride;
Of brig and schooner, snow and ship,
Casting from shore with anchor atrip;
Filling away for the Western World
With cargoes below oft-times hurled
To feed the ravenous water brutes
Which ever cruise on the slavers’ routes;
Of idle ships on a sea asleep
Along the line where the latitudes meet;
Of a western land where “Cotton was King”
And the markets were busy when the slavers were in.
ERNEST H. PENTECOST.
INTRODUCTION
“Next to a pirate give me a slaver,” said the boy. A sky pilot in charge
of a bethel in a far eastern port, finding that prayers, sermons and
psalms were not sufficient to keep his sea-faring flock on the course he
wished them to steer, reinforced his efforts with moral stories, which
he read to them when the day drew towards those hours during which
“Himself” of the lower regions is said to be most active. Instead of his
reinforcement having the desired effect, he was grieved to see his
congregation soon reduced to a penniless few; the rest he had good
reason to fear were frequenting those haunts from which he had wrought
to keep them. The poor padre, at last realizing that he was losing
ground in his fight with evil, sought the advice of an ancient seafarer,
who, when he heard of the sort of stories the parson had read to his
brother seamen, said, “Parson, read ’em yarns about pirates, slavers and
highwaymen and you’ll soon have a full bethel.”
Although pirates, slavers and highwaymen were what in our childhood we
would have described as “naughty, wicked, bad men,” kindly Time having
clothed those lewd fellows with a mantle of romance they but ill
deserve, we now love to read of their destructive adventures.
There is no record of either pirates or highwaymen ever having been
regarded as persons following an honest calling; whereas, the slave
trade, until the early part of the nineteenth century, was a perfectly
legitimate business and those engaged therein were considered as
respectable as any other traders. Man, being by nature a slaver, it is
quite probable that in those far-away days when he carried a lanyard
fast to his stern, some unfortunate animal was forced to carry the end
of it for him, when he was making a passage.
The Spaniards, ten years after their discovery of the West India isles,
sent out negro slaves to do the hard work in their new possessions for
which the original inhabitants were found to be unfit. Although all the
maritime nations of Europe engaged in the western slave trade, the
English, according to some authorities, during the two and a half
centuries they were engaged in that traffic, took more than double the
number of negroes from the coast of Africa than all other nations
combined.
Life was ever cheap in teeming Africa, where the process of reproduction
was both rapid and continuous, and Nature exercised her “right of might”
without let or hindrance. The working of that unchangeable law, “eat and
be eaten,” was there apparent on every hand.
In the account of Capt. John Lok’s voyage to Guinea, in 1555, the
negroes are described as “a people of beastly living, without a God,
lawe, religion, or common wealth, and so scortched by the heat of the
sunne, that in many places they curse it when it riseth.”
In 1568, Capt. John Hawkins helped three negro kings take a town of
negroes, and the narrator, John Hartop, says: “We took and carried
thence for traffique to the West Indies five hundred negroes. The three
Kings drove seven thousand negroes into ye sea at low water, at the
point of the land, where they were all drowned in the ooze, for they
could not take their canoes to save themselves.”
Capt. William Snelgrave’s book, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea
and the Slave Trade_, published in 1734, contains interesting
information about negro life and death. The captain says: “I have in my
younger years traded to many places in this tract especially at Old
Callabar, where, in the year 1704, I saw a sad instance of barbarity.
The King of the place, called Jabrue, being fallen sick, he caused, by
the advice of his priests, a young child about ten months old, to be
sacrificed to his god, for his recovery. I saw the child after it was
killed, hung on the bough of a tree, with a live cock tied near it, as
an addition to the ceremony.”
In 1727, Captain Snelgrave, with other white men, visited the camp of
the King of Dahome a few weeks after that chief had conquered the people
of Whidaw. Soon after their arrival at the camp, a messenger came to
them, desiring them to go to the King’s gate. “Accordingly we went,”
says the captain, “and on our way saw two large stages on which were
heaped a great number of dead men’s heads, that afforded no pleasing
sight or smell. Our interpreter told us they were the heads of four
thousand of the Whidaws who had been sacrificed by the Dahomes to their
God.” The white men saw other gruesome sights including the sacrifice of
many men, women and children. Their interpreter told them that the “head
of the victim was for the King, the blood for the Fetiche, and the body
for the People.”
And so down through time the killing went on until the bloody shambles
found at Benin when the British took that place in 1897.
The number of Africans taken to the Americas and West Indies, during the
three and a half centuries of the slave traffic to those countries, was
probably small compared with the number violently done to death in
various ways in that steamy coastland of blood, lust and tomtoms. The
writer when a boy in a South African port, met an old man who had lived
with the Zulus for many years. When asked what the Zulus reckoned their
losses in men to have been at the battle of Isandhlwana, he replied,
“The Zulus don’t keep any account of their men, but are very careful to
do so of their cattle, which they, like many other African tribes, think
more valuable than their own kind.”
Captain Snelgrave, a slaver of great experience, offers a few words in
justification of the trade.
“As for the manner how those people became slaves, it may be reduced
under these several heads.
“1. It has been the custom among the negroes, time out of mind, and is
so to this day, for them to make slaves of all the captives taken in
war. Now, before they had an opportunity of selling them to white
people, they were often obliged to kill great multitudes, when they had
taken more than they could well employ in their own plantations, for
fear they should rebel and endanger their master’s safety.
“2. Most crimes among them are punished by mulcts and fines; and if the
offender has not wherewithal to pay his fine, he is sold for a slave.
This is the practice of the inland people, as well as of those on the
sea side.
“3. Debtors who refuse to pay their debts, or are insolvent, are
likewise liable to be made slaves; but their friends may redeem them.
And if they are not able and willing to do it, then they are generally
sold for the benefit of their creditors. But few of these come into the
hands of the Europeans, being kept by their countrymen for their own
use.
“4. I have been told, that it is common for some inland people to sell
their children for slaves, tho’ they are under no necessity for so
doing; which I am inclined to believe. But I never observed that the
people near the sea coast practise this, unless compelled thereto by
extream want and famine, as the people of Whidaw have lately been.
“Now, by these means it is that so many negroes become slaves, and more
especially by being taken captives in war. Of those the number is so
great, that I may safely affirm, without any exaggeration, that the
Europeans of all nations, that trade to the coast of Guinea, have in
some years, exported at least seventy thousand. And tho’ this may no
doubt be thought at first hearing, a prodigeous number; yet, when ’tis
considered how great the extent of this coast is, namely from Cape Verd
to Angola, which is about 4000 miles in length; and that polygamy is
allowed in general among them by which means the countrys are full of
people, I hope it will not be thought improbable that so many are yearly
exported from thence.
“Several objections have often been raised against the lawfulness of
this trade, which I shall not here undertake to refute. I shall only
observe in generall, that tho’ to traffic in human creatures, may at
first appear barbarous, inhuman and unnatural, yet, the traders herein
have as much to plead in their own excuse, as can be said of some other
branches of trade, namely, the advantage of it; and that not only in
regard of the merchants, but also of the slaves themselves, as will
appear from these following reasons.
“First, it is evident, that abundance of captives, taken in war, would
be inhumanely destroyed, was there not an opportunity of desposing of
them to the Europeans. So that at least many lives are saved, and great
numbers of usefull persons kept in being.
“Secondly, when they are carried to the plantations, they generally live
much better there, than they ever did in their own country; for as the
planters pay a great price for them,’tis their interest to take care of
them.
“Thirdly, the English plantations have been so much improved, that ’tis
almost incredible, what great advantages have accrued to the nation
thereby; especially to the Sugar Islands, which, lying in a climate near
as hot as the coast of Guinea, the negroes are fitter to cultivate the
lands there than white people.
“Then as to the criminals amongst the negroes; they are by this means
effectually transported, never to return again; a benefit we very much
want here.
“In a word, from this trade proceed benefits, far outweighing all,
either real or pretended mischiefs and inconveniences, and let the worst
that can be said of it, it will be found, like all other earthly
advantages, tempered with a mixture of good and evil.”
Judged by the ethics of today, however, the slave trade was wrong, and
cannot be defended even by the law of economics, of which it was the
result.
The philanthropic frenzy of the abolitionists, few of whom had ever seen
a slave ship with her cargo aboard, created, by their exaggerated
statements, a wrong impression of the conditions aboard such craft,
which usually were among the cleanest and best found merchantmen afloat.
The common conception of the treatment of slaves aboard slavers,
previous to the abolition of the slave trade, is very different from
what it really was. In reality the slaves were much better cared for
than free white emigrants and other poor passengers were until the
second decade of the nineteenth century. The reason for this difference
in favor of the slaves is not far to seek. As in the cattle trade, the
healthier the cargo, the greater the profit; whereas in the case of the
poor white passengers, who had to pay their passage money before
embarking, the sooner they died, the better for the shipowner.
In support of the above statements, the following is quoted from _Notes
on the West Indies_, by George Pinckard, M.D., London, 1806. Doctor
Pinckard’s work was written in 1795-1796 in the form of letters to a
friend.
“It will be quite within your recollection how long, and how I have
wished to visit the ships trading to Africa and to witness personally
the manner of treating those poor beings of sable skin, who are torn
from their native home by the iron hand of commerce, to be transported
to a home of slavery; and you will be pleased to learn that in this
wish, I have had an early opportunity of being gratified.
“A slave ship belonging to North America, and bound to Savannah in
Georgia, had arrived from the coast of Guinea just before we came into
harbour [Barbadoes] and was lying very near to us, with a cargo of
negroes on board. Fearing she might sail for America and being unwilling
to lose the first occasion that offered, of administering to a curiosity
which beat strong in our breasts, Master Cleghorn and myself took off a
boat, the morning after we came to anchor, and went to visit the Guinea
man. We considered ourselves fortunate in finding both master and mate
of the ship disposed to shew us every civility, and to indulge us in
ready reply to the questions which our curiosity suggested....
“The cargo consisted of a hundred and thirty slaves, of whom two-thirds
were males and one-third females. The two sexes were kept seperate by a
partition, or bulk-head, built from side to side, across the ship;
alloting the waist to the men and to the women, the quarterdeck. A great
majority of them were very young, being from ten to eighteen years of
age. We were pleased to observe that an air of cheerfullness and
contentment prevailed among them. In a few only we remarked despondency,
and dejection of countenance. Both sexes were without apparel, having
only a narrow band of blue cloth put around the waist, and brought to
fasten before, so as to serve the office of the fig-leaf worn by our
first parents in the fruitful garden of Eden.
“As we walked through the different groups of them, they fixed their
eyes upon us, with seeming curiosity, and some of the boys, like those
of fairer skin, were inclined to be playful and to exhibit youthful
tricks. One or two of the females, unchecked by the reserve of
education, occasionally glanced an expressive look or displayed a
significant gesture. Many of them had marks upon the skin, which
appeared to have been made by a cutting instrument. These, we learned,
were distinctive of the nation to which they had belonged. Some had
their teeth cut, or filed to sharp points, giving them a very hideous
and canine appearance. They looked well fed and healthy, although some
of them had an eruption, called the ‘Cra-Cra,’ upon the skin.
“Their sleeping berths were the naked boards. Divided into two crowded
parties they reposed, during the night, upon the bare planks below—the
males on the main deck—the females upon the deck of the aft cabin. In
the day time they were not allowed to remain in the place where they had
slept, but were kept mostly upon the open deck, where they were made to
exercise, and encouraged by the music of their loved banjor, to dancing
and cheerfulness. We saw them dance and heard them sing. In dancing they
scarcely moved their feet, but threw about their arms and twisted and
writhed their bodies into a multitude of disgusting and indecent
attitudes. Their song was a wild and savage yell, devoid of all softness
and harmony, and loudly chanted in harsh monotony.
“Their food is chiefly rice which they prepare by plain and simple
boiling. At the time of messing they squat around the bowl in large
bodies, upon their heels and haunches, like monkies, each putting his
paw into the platter to claw out with his fingers. We saw several of
them employed in beating the red husks off the rice, which was done by
pounding the grain in wooden mortars, with wooden pestles, sufficiently
long to allow them to stand upright while beating in mortars placed at
their feet. This appeared to be a labour of cheerfulness. They beat the
pestle in time to the song and seemed happy; yet nothing of industry
marked their toil, for the pounding was performed by indolently raising
the pestle and then leaving it fall by its own weight.
“I am most happy to conclude my report of this visit by informing you
that we discovered no marks of those horrors and cruelties said to be
practised on board the ships occupied in this sad traffic of human
flesh; and which are represented as so frightfully augmenting the
manifold ills of slavery. Chains, stripes, and severities did not seem
to have been in the catalogue of means employed in conveying these poor
Africans to their American masters. Our minds, necessarily, suffered in
contemplating the degrading practices of civilized beings towards the
less cultivated heathen of their species; but the eye was not shocked by
the abuses of tyranny and inhumanity. The comfort and health of the
slaves was promoted with every care.
“Being fond of washing in cold water, they were encouraged to the free
use of it; and their persons, as well as the whole ship, were kept
remarkably clean. They were plentifully fed; and, in the day time, were
dispersed about the ship so as to be prevented, as much as possible,
from assembling together in close, unwholesome crowds. Mirth and gaiety
were promoted among them; they were roused to bodily exercise and care
was used to divert their minds from dwelling upon their change of state
and loss of home: and I may truly say, that a more general air of
contentment reigned among them than could have been expected. While many
were dancing and singing and playing together, others were giving their
assistance in working the ship; and, we even learned that several of
them had made themselves highly usefull on the passage and were already
becoming expert sailors. They all seemed to regard the master of the
vessel more in affection than fear; and although strictly obedient, they
did not at all appear to be under the influence of terror. Crowded in
some degree, they, necessarily must be, particularly in the place where
they slept; but every attention was paid to prevent the injury which
might derive from it and to keep them in health.
“We went down below to see their place of repose where the hard planks
form one common bed and each individual employed his arm as his pillow.
The men could not stand between decks, without stooping, and when they
lay down the boards were so closely spread that it was scarcely possible
to set a foot between their naked bodies. They were always taken upon
deck early in the morning and the sleeping berth was thoroughly cleaned
and washed; but still it was highly offensive to European olfactories
and plainly indicated, that were it not for the great attention paid to
cleanliness and ventilation, disease must inevitably be generated. Their
nakedness is, perhaps, their best security; for although they had
neither bed-clothes nor personal covering, nor any kind of baggage, or
furniture in the place, we perceived that all the cleaning and airing
employed could not subdue the stench created by their sleeping together
in such crowded heaps. Although they are fond of washing, and seem to
have some sense of personal cleanliness, they have none of cleanliness
of place nor of common decency, for, notwithstanding the strictest
injunction against it, they cannot always be prevented from the filthy
habit of depositing their natural excretions upon the spot where they
sleep....
“The next day after our visit to the American slaveship, an opportunity
offered of seeing one of our own nation, a Liverpool Guinea-man, a ship
of much greater burden, fitted out expressly for the trade, with a
sufficient number of hands and of guns on board to protect her against
the enemy’s privateers and calculated for a cargo of five hundred
slaves. We were taught to believe that we should find the negroes much
better accommodated in this, than in the American ship; but we could not
observe that the superiority was either great or striking. Although the
vessel was larger, the number of slaves was more than proportionally
greater. In other respects the accommodations were nearly equal. The
Liverpool ship was kept remarkably clean; but the American was not less
so and, between the deck, the American ship was the most commodious,
being higher and having more room in proportion to the cargo, from which
the slaves had the advantage of being less close and confined during the
night.
“The difference in point of health is peculiarly striking between the
troops convoyed in transports from England and the slaves brought in
Guinea ships from Africa. Perhaps, from the present mode of conducting
slave ships, might be derived some useful hints for the management of
our transports. The slaves are much more crowded than the soldiers, yet
far more healthy. It becomes us, therefore, to ascertain the cause of
this and I much suspect that it will be found in the difference of
treatment and accommodation. According to the present method of
conducting them, I might venture it as an opinion that a Guinea ship
would carry—with less danger of disease being generated among them—a
cargo of slaves more than thrice as numerous as a transport would carry
of soldiers.”
Professor Edward Ashworth Ross says in his _The Old World in the New_:
“Were the Atlantic dried up today, one could trace the path between
Europe and America by the cinders from our steamers; in the old days it
would have revealed itself by human bones.”
The conditions of oversea passage then brought about a shocking
elimination of the weaker. The ships were small and crowded, the cabins
close, and the passage required from six to ten weeks. “Between decks,”
writes a colonist, “there can hardly a man fetch his breath by reason
there ariseth such a funk in the night that it causeth putrification of
the blood and breedeth disease much like the plague.”
William Penn urged in a circular, that those who came over should keep
as much upon deck as might be, “and to sprinkle vinegar about the
cabin.” The ship on which he came over lost a third of her passengers by
smallpox.
In 1639, the wife of the Governor wrote that the ship on which she came
out had been “so pestered with people and goods; so full of infection
that after a while they saw little but throwing people overboard.” One
vessel lost 130 out of 150 souls. One sixth part of three thousand
Germans sent over in 1710 perished during a voyage that lasted from
January to June. No better fared a shipload of Huguenot refugees in
1689,—a ship that left Rotterdam, with 150 Palatines and landed fewer
than fifty after a voyage of twenty-four weeks. In 1738, “malignant
fever and flux” left only 105 out of 400 Palatines. In 1775, a brig
reached New York having lost 100 Highlanders during the passage. It was
estimated that between the years 1750 and 1755, 2,000 corpses were
thrown overboard from ships plying out of Rotterdam. In 1756, Muhlenberg
thus describes the horrors of the passage. “During the voyage there is
aboard these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, vomiting, many kinds
of sickness, fever, dysentery, scurvy, mouth rot, and the like. All of
which come from sharply salted food and meat; also from very bad and
foul water, so that many die miserably.... Many hundred people
necessarily perish in such misery and must be cast into the sea. The
sighing and crying and lamenting on board the ship continues night and
day.”
The excellent regulations for the preservation of health on board
slavers continued until the trade was declared illegal by the various
nations engaged therein, after which it was carried on by smugglers, a
set of piratical scoundrels, the riffraff of the maritime nations. The
slaves were no longer carried in comfortable, broad-beamed, bluff-bowed
craft, but in sharp-built, fast vessels with comparatively small deck
and hold space, aboard of which the poor negroes often suffered
hardships, disease and death. These craft were driven for all they were
worth in all sorts of weather, especially when being chased, which made
it frequently necessary to batten the hatches down. Under such
conditions the state of the living cargo must have been terrible indeed.
One no longer hears of slaves helping to work the ship or of their being
taught the use of arms to assist their white masters to defend
themselves.
In an old book of voyages there is an account of the voyage of the
French slaver _Le Rodeur_, of 200 tons burden, which sailed from the
port of Havre for the river Calabar, on the coast of Africa, where she
arrived and anchored at Bonny, March 14, 1819. During a stay of three
weeks she obtained 160 negroes and sailed for Guadaloupe on April 6th.
The following authentic account of this voyage, intended for the eye of
his mother, was kept by a lad of twelve, named J. B. Romaigne. He was
the son of a planter of Guadaloupe and had been sent out as a passenger
in _La Rodeur_, under the especial care of the captain. This document is
highly valuable for its simplicity and for the light it throws upon the
human heart in circumstances that seem to baffle observation.
I
“It is now just a week since we sailed; but, indeed, it is not my fault
that I have not sooner sat down to write. The first two days I was sick,
and the other five were so stormy that I could not sit at the table
without holding. Even now we are rolling like a great porpoise yet I can
sit very well and keep the pen steady. Since I am to send you what I do
without copying it over again at the end of the voyage, I shall take
what pains I can; but I hope, my dear mother, you will consider that my
fingers are grown hard and tarry with hauling all day on the ropes, the
Captain being determined, as he says, to make me a sailor. The Captain
is very fond of me and is very good-tempered; he drinks a great deal of
brandy; he is a fine, handsome man and I am sure I shall like him very
much.
II
“I enquired of the Captain today, how long it would be before we should
get to Guadaloupe; and he told me we had a great distance to go before
we should steer that way at all. He asked how I should like to have a
little black slave and I said very well; that I was to have plenty of
them at Guadaloupe. He asked me what I could do with them. ‘Feed them,’
I said. ‘That is right,’ said the Captain; ‘it will make them strong.
But you will make them work won’t you?’ added he. ‘Yes, to be sure,’
said I. ‘Then I can tell you you must flog them as well as feed them.’
‘I will,’ said I, ‘it is what I intend, but I must not hurt them very
much.’ ‘Of course not maim them,’ returned he, ‘for then they could not
work; but if you do not make them feel to the marrow, you might as well
throw them into the sea.’
III
“Since we have been at this place, Bonny Town in the Bonny river, on the
coast of Africa, I have become more accustomed to the howling of these
negroes. At first, it alarmed me, and I could not sleep. The Captain
says that if they behave well they will be much better off at
Guadaloupe; and I am sure, I wish the ignorant creatures would come
quietly and have it over. Today, one of the blacks whom they were
forcing into the hold, suddenly knocked down a sailor and attempted to
leap overboard. He was caught, however, by the leg by another of the
crew, and the sailor, rising up in a passion, hamstrung him with a
cutlass. The Captain, seeing this, knocked the butcher flat upon the
deck with a handspike. ‘I will teach you to keep your temper,’ said he,
with an oath. ‘He was the best slave in the lot.’ I ran to the main
chains and looked over; for they had dropped the black into the sea when
they saw that he was useless. He continued to swim, even after he had
sunk under water, for I saw the red track extending shoreward; but by
and by, it stopped, widened, faded, and I saw it no more.
IV
“We are now fairly at sea again, and I am sure my dear Mother, I am
heartily glad of it. The Captain is in the best temper in the world; he
walks the deck, rubbing his hands and humming a tune. He says he has six
dozen slaves on board, men, women and children, and all in prime
marketable condition. I have not seen them, however, since we set sail.
Their cries are so terrible that I do not like to go and look down into
the hold. At first, I could not close my eyes; the sound froze my very
blood; and, one night, jumping up in horror, I ran to the Captain’s
state-room. The lamp shone upon his face; it was as calm as marble, he
slept profoundly, and I did not like to disturb him.
V
“Today, word was brought to the Captain, while we were at breakfast,
that two of the slaves were dead, suffocated, as was supposed, by the
closeness of the hold; and he immediately ordered the rest should be
brought up, gang by gang, to the forecastle, to give them air. I ran up
on deck to see them. They did not appear to me to be very unwell; but
these blacks, who are not distinguished from one another by dress, are
so much alike one can hardly tell.
“However, they had no sooner reached the ship’s side, than first one,
then another, then a third, sprang up on the gunwale, and darted into
the sea, before the astonished sailors could tell what they were about.
Many more made the attempt, but without success; they were all knocked
flat to the deck, and the crew kept watch over them with handspikes and
cutlasses till the Captain’s pleasure should be known with regard to the
revolt.
“The negroes, in the meantime, who had got off, continued dancing about
among the waves, yelling with all their might, what seemed to me a song
of triumph, in the burden of which they were joined by some of their
companions on deck. Our ship speedily left the ignorant creatures
behind; their voices came fainter and fainter upon the wind; the black
head, first of one, then of another, disappeared; and then the sea was
without a spot; and the air without a sound.
“When the Captain came up on deck, having finished his breakfast, and
was told of the revolt, his face grew pale, and he gnashed his teeth.
‘We must make an example,’ said he, ‘or our labour will be lost.’ He
then ordered the whole of the slaves in the ship to be tied together in
gangs and placed upon the forecastle, and having selected six, who were
known to have joined in the chorus of the revolters and might thus be
considered as the ringleaders, he caused three of them to be shot, and
the other three hanged, before the eyes of their comrades.
VI
“Last night I could not sleep; cold sweats broke over my body. I thought
the six negroes were passing to and fro through the cabin, and looking
in at the door of the Captain’s stateroom. The Captain, I could hear,
was sound asleep, and this made me more afraid. At last I began to pray
so loud, that I awoke him, and he asked me, what was the matter. ‘I am
saying my prayers,’ said I. ‘That is a good boy,’ replied he, and, in an
instant he was as sound asleep as before.
VII
“The negroes, ever since the revolt, were confined closely to the lower
hold and this brought on a disease called ophthalmia, which produced
blindness. The sailors, who sling down the provisions from the upper
hold, report that the disease is spreading frightfully and today, at
dinner, the Captain and the surgeon held a conference on the subject.
The surgeon declared that, from all he could learn, the cases were
already so numerous as to be beyond his management; but the Captain
insisted that every slave cured was worth his value and that it was
better to lose a part than all. The disease, it seems, although
generally fatal to the negro, is not always so. The patient is at first
blind; but some escape, eventually, with the loss of one eye or a mere
dimness of vision. The result of the conversation was, that the infected
slaves were to be transferred to the upper hold and attended by the
surgeon the same as if they were white men.
VIII
“All the slaves and some of the crew are blind. The Captain, the
surgeon, and the mate are blind. There is hardly enough men left, out of
our twenty-two, to work the ship. The Captain preserves what order he
can and the surgeon still attempts to do his duty, but our situation is
frightful.
IX
“All the crew are now blind but one man. The rest work under his orders
like unconscious machines; the Captain standing by with a thick rope,
which he sometimes applies, when led to any recreant by the man who can
see. My own eyes begin to be affected; in a little while, I shall see
nothing but death. I asked the Captain if he would not allow the blacks
to come up on deck. He said it was of no use; that the crew, who were
always on deck, were as blind as they; that if brought up, they would
only drown themselves, whereas, if they remained where they were, there
would, in all probability, be at least a portion of them salable, if we
had ever the good fortune to reach Guadaloupe.
“We rolled along on our dreadful pain, with no other steersman than
fate; for the single individual of the crew who was our last hope and
stay, had added a thousand fold to the calamity of his fellows by
sharing in it himself.
“You cannot comprehend our situation. It will not do to figure yourself
tossing on the black and midnight deep, with not a star to cheer you,
and not a hand to help; for even then you could see; you could see the
glitter of the waters and the white crest of the wave and half see, half
conjecture, the form of the objects around you. In the midst of all, you
would at least possess an absolute conviction that, in a few hours more,
a new sun would rise out of the ocean, a new morning dawn upon the
world.
“Our night was not like that of the sea, the darkness of which is
mingled with light like the faint memory of day and relieved by the
certainty of approaching morning. We were blind, stone blind, drifting
like a wreck upon the ocean and rolling like a cloud before the wind.
The Captain was stone blind, yet had hopes of recovering his sight,
while most of the others were in despair. A guard was continually
placed, with drawn swords, at the store room, to prevent the men getting
at the spirit-casks and dying in the frenzy of intoxication. Some were
cursing and swearing from morning till night, some singing abominable
songs; some kissing the crucifix and making vows to the blessed saints.
A few lay all day long in their hammocks, apparently content to starve
rather than come abroad for food. For my part, I snatched at anything I
could get to eat; cookery was unthought of. I thought myself fortunate
when I was able to procure a cupfull of water to soften a biscuit as dry
and as hard as a stone.
X
“Mother, your son was blind for ten days, although now so well as to be
able to write. I can tell you hardly anything of our history during that
period. Each of us lived in a little dark world of his own, peopled by
shadows and phantasms. We did not see the ship, nor the heavens, nor the
sea, nor the faces of our comrades.
“Then there came a storm. No hand was upon the helm, not a reef upon the
sails. On we flew like a phantom ship of old, that cared not for wind or
weather, our masts straining and cracking; our sails bursting from their
bonds, with a report like that of musketry; the furious sea one moment
devouring us up, stem and stern, and the next casting us forth again, as
if with loathing and disgust. Even so did the whale cast forth the fated
Jonah. The wind, at last, died moaningly away, and we found ourselves
rocking, without progressive motion, on the sullen deep. We at length
heard a sound upon the waters, unlike that of the smooth swell which
remained after the storm, and our hearts beat with a hope which was
painful from its suddenness and intensity. We held our breath. The sound
was continued; it was like the splashing of a heavy body in smooth
water; and a simultaneous cry arose from every lip on deck and was
echoed by the men in their hammocks below and by the slaves in the hold.
“Our cry was answered! We shouted again, our voices broken by sobs, and
our burning eyes deluged with tears. Our shout was still answered; and,
for some minutes, nothing was heard but an interchange of eager cries.
“The Captain was the first to recover his self-possession, and our
voices sank into silence when we heard him speak the approaching vessel
with the usual challenge.
“‘Ship Ahoy! Ahoy! What ship?’
“‘The _Saint Leon_ of Spain. Help us for God’s sake!’
“‘We want help ourselves,’ replied our Captain.
“‘We are dying of hunger and thirst. Send us on board some provisions
and a few hands to work the ship and name your own terms.’
“‘We can give you food, but we are in want of hands. Come on board of us
and we will exchange provisions with you for men,’ answered our Captain.
“‘Dollars! dollars! We will pay you in money, a thousand fold; but we
cannot send. We have negroes on board; they have infected us with
ophthalmia, and we are all stone-blind.’
“At the announcement of this horrible coincidence, there was a silence
among us, for some moments, like that of death. It was broken by a fit
of laughter, in which I joined myself; and, before our awful merriment
was over, we could hear, by the sound of the curses which the Spaniards
shouted against us, that the _St. Leon_ had drifted away.
“This vessel, in all probability, foundered at sea, as she never reached
any port.
XI
“The man who preserved his sight the longest, recovered the soonest; and
to his exertions alone, under the providence of God and the mercy of the
blessed saints, is it owing that we are now within a few leagues of
Guadaloupe, this twenty-first day of June 1819. I am myself almost well.
The surgeon and eleven more are irrecoverably blind; the Captain has
lost one eye; four others have met with the same calamity; and five are
able to see, though dimly, with both. Among the slaves, thirty-nine are
completely blind and the rest blind of one eye or their sight otherwise
injured.
“This morning the Captain called all hands on deck, negroes and all. The
shores of Guadaloupe were in sight. I thought he was going to return God
thanks publicly for our miraculous escape.
“‘Are you quite certain,’ said the mate, ‘that the cargo is insured?’
“‘I am,’ said the Captain. ‘Every slave that is lost must be made good
by the underwriters. Besides, would you have me turn my ship into a
hospital for the support of blind negroes? They have cost us enough
already. Do your duty.’
“The mate picked out thirty-nine negroes who were completely blind, and,
with the assistance of the rest of the crew, tied a piece of ballast to
the legs of each. The miserable wretches were then thrown into the sea.”
The Abolitionist party was probably older and stronger in Great Britain
than in any other country and it was there that the press gang
flourished for centuries and was not abolished until long after the
slave trade. By that unjust system multitudes of free-born British
seamen were condemned to a life in many respects worse than that of the
negro slave. On board men-of-war, life was unnatural and the discipline
such that it would have broken the spirits of others than hard-bitten
sailormen. Orators howled and poets sang in aid of the poor Africans
torn from their native shore, but devil a word was said or sung for the
victims of the press. Had their dusky brothers, like the impressed
sailors, stood in the breach between them and their enemy, they would
have done their best to keep them there as long as the menace to their
smug comfort existed.
ERNEST H. PENTECOST.
SLAVE SHIPS AND SLAVING
CHAPTER I
THE GUINEA COAST
The slave coast of West Africa lies between the river Senegal, just
north of Cape Verde, and the Congo River country, six degrees south of
the equator. It is a low-lying coast, with many sandy beaches, though
much of it is bordered by delta-lands, covered with poisonous swamps,
through which wind the uncounted channels of small rivers that penetrate
the country. There are few harbors and the trader must find an anchorage
inside the bar at the mouth of some river or lay offshore, at safe
distance, while trade is carried on in canoes and boats that ride the
long rollers pounding on the beach. A country well populated by negroes,
it supplied for nearly four centuries the slave labor required by the
West Indies and the two Americas,—a trade inseparable from cruelty,
disease and death. Goree and Gambia,—the Gold Coast and the Tooth
Coast,—Whidah, Old Calabar and Bonny, are some of the names that have a
suggestive meaning in connection with the abhorrent trade in human
flesh.
Not long after the gulf of Guinea was discovered by Portuguese
navigators and at least two decades before Columbus sailed from Palos, a
slave market was set up at Lisbon at which negroes from the Guinea coast
were sold to any who would buy. It was the Moors who had told the
Portuguese of the black-skinned people living in great numbers to the
south of the great desert,—a race cursed of God and predestined as
slaves.
By 1502, the first shipload of Africans had been landed at Hispaniola,
to work in the mines, and the slave-bearing fleet plied to and from the
Guinea coast very nearly up to the time of the abolition of slavery in
Brazil, in 1888.
At first, the slave vessels bargained with the negroes in villages near
the coast for such slaves, gold or wax as they might be able to supply.
It usually followed that a ship must sail along the coast for some
distance, picking up a few negroes at one place and a little ivory or
gold at another. At some stops no slaves or ivory would be found and it
required a long time to pick up a decent cargo. The coast was
pestilential for the European and the trade with the treacherous negroes
was exceedingly dangerous. Soon the plan was adopted of planting small
settlements of Europeans at intervals along the slave coast, defended by
forts, sometimes of considerable size and strength. These were called
slave factories and it was the business of the factor or commander to
negotiate with the negroes and stimulate them to activity in organizing
slave-hunting expeditions. As the slaves were brought in from the back
country, they would be purchased by barter and then housed and guarded
in sheds or warehouses, known as barracoons, until the arrival of slave
ships.
Factories of this kind were planted by the English, French, Dutch and
Portuguese, all along the western coast, from Cape Verde to the Congo.
The location usually chosen was near the mouth of some river, so as to
tap easily the slave supply up country. Sometimes, however, a small
island, offshore, was selected on which to build a factory, because it
was cooler and a more healthful spot.
The walls of the larger forts enclosed a considerable space of ground,
on which were built barracks, storehouses for merchandise and sheds for
the slaves. The huts of the negroes employed in the service of the
factory, would be outside the walls of the fort, but under the
protection of its guns. The principal fort of the English was Cape Coast
Castle, on the Gold Coast, and not far away was St. George del Mina,
erected by the Portuguese, but later falling into the hands of the
Dutch. The French built Fort Louis at the mouth of the Senegal and also
a fort on Goree, an island near Cape Verde. Fort James was on the Gambia
and there were important forts at Anamaboe, Accra and Whidah. Most of
these forts mounted from fifty to sixty guns and were not only
impregnable to the negroes, but capable of standing a regular siege by a
European force.
[Illustration:
CAPE COAST CASTLE, THE PRINCIPAL ENGLISH SETTLEMENT ON THE GOLD COAST
From a colored aquatint by J. Hill, published in 1806, in the
Macpherson Collection
]
Under the command of the governor or commandant were soldiers employed
in the service of the company, and a number of clerks, mechanics and
junior factors, the latter in charge of the traffic with the interior
towns. These men would ascend the rivers in small sailing vessels or
armed boats and exchange European manufactures for slaves, gold dust and
ivory furnished by the negroes. Sometimes they would open a sort of shop
or trading post in a populous town and remain there for several months
at the pleasure of the local king or chief. Many of these men were
outcasts at home or destitute of means and therefore willing to engage
to go to the coast of Africa where they knew they could lead a life of
comparative indolence, with little or no restraint. There they might
indulge nearly every human passion with utter freedom, whether it be
confirmed drunkenness or unrestrained intercourse with negro girls. They
knew that the deadly climate was likely to claim them eventually, so it
was “a short life, and a merry one” for many an outcast free of home
ties.
The soldiers in the forts seldom were called upon for active duty and
spent their time in smoking, drinking palm wine and gaming. In fact,
much of the time they were physically unfit for any service and within
two years after their arrival on the Coast, they would be carried off by
fever or dissipation. A stranger, on visiting one of these African
forts, felt that there was something both horrible and ludicrous in the
appearance of its garrison, for the soldiers appeared ghastly,
debilitated and diseased, and their tattered and soiled uniforms,
resembling each other only in meanness and not in color, suggested the
thought that these men were a band of drunken deserters or starved and
maltreated prisoners of war.[1]
-----
Footnote 1:
John Howison, _European Colonies_, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1821.
-----
Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman to transport slaves from the
Guinea coast to America. This was in 1562, and his prosperous voyage
which “brought great profit to the adventurers,” led to other similar
ventures. In 1618, King James granted a charter to a stock company to
trade with Guinea, but private adventurers and interlopers broke in upon
the preserves of the company and forced the trade open.
In 1662, another exclusive company was chartered with the king’s
brother, the Duke of York, at its head, and this company undertook to
supply the English plantations with three thousand slaves annually. It
was known as the “Company of Royal Adventurers of England for Carrying
on a Trade to Africa,” and for a year or two traded successfully and
brought gold dust to England in such quantity that King Charles II
ordered the minting of a new gold coin, of the value of twenty-one
shillings, to be known as a _guinea_. These coins, made of the gold
imported by the African Company, had, in its honor, a small elephant
under the bust of the King, as a mark of distinction, done, it is said,
to encourage the importation of gold. In 1664, the Dutch admiral, De
Ruyter, captured the Guinea forts of the company, including Cormentyn
Castle, and a number of ships, so that its losses amounted to over
£200,000, which eventually forced the company to surrender its charter.
In 1672, the Royal African Company was chartered and for over a century
conducted a more or less successful trade with the Guinea coast. It
encouraged the English manufacture of several kinds of woolen and cotton
goods and opened up a considerable market for Sheffield wares. The
importations were elephant’s teeth, dye woods, wax and gold dust, the
latter reaching England in such quantity that forty or fifty thousand
guineas would be minted at a time. But the dominating feature of the
trading operations of the company was the advantageous purchase of
negroes in Guinea, to be carried to the American colonies and there sold
into slavery, the return cargo being muscovado sugar to supply the
expanding English market.
In 1790, the number of forts and factories established on the coast was
about forty; fourteen belonging to the English, fifteen to the Dutch,
three to the French, four to the Portuguese and four to the Danes; and
it has been estimated that the number of negroes sold or kidnapped into
slavery, annually, about that time, could not fall far short of one
hundred thousand, while an estimate of the total number carried away
into slavery, previous to the year 1800, shows that African mothers
provided about thirty million victims for the slave ships.
The ship trading on the slave coast discovered that the manner of trade
varied with the locality. On coming to anchor in the river Gambia,
opposite James Fort, a boat was sent ashore to announce the arrival to
the alkaide or chief of the town, who at once came aboard to receive the
anchorage money. This was ten gallons of liquor for the king, two iron
bars for the alkaide and perhaps a few bottles of wine, beer or cider
for presents. After a detention of four to seven days, the king would
send his people to receive his custom, amounting to the value of 140
iron bars in merchandise. Later, the ship was supplied with a first and
second linguist, two messengers and six or more butlers. The first
linguist served as interpreter between the broker, who sold the slaves
for the owner, and the factor, trader or master of the ship. The second
linguist acted as interpreter for an officer of the ship, either in the
tender, long-boat or factory on shore. The messengers were employed in
looking out for trade on shore,—slaves, ivory, gold, provisions, etc.
and for carrying letters to and from vessels, factories, etc. The
butlers were employed to row in boats, cut wood, water the ship, in
fact, were hired to preserve the health of the ship’s crew, by saving
them from exposure to the sun on board and the damps on shore.
Thus provided, the ship proceeded up river for about one hundred leagues
to Yanamaroo, in the kingdom of Yancy, where more liquor was supplied
for an anchorage and then the messengers were sent out to the principal
people, for twenty or thirty miles around, soliciting slaves and trade.
The tender or long-boat would also be dispatched farther up the river
with merchandise for trade. It was at this port that ships generally
began and finished their trading.
The slaves sold by these blacks were for the most part prisoners of war.
But not infrequently men would sell their own children or the children
of neighbors, that they had kidnapped,—stolen is perhaps a better word.
Some slaves were also brought from a distance but usually when offered
were in poor and weak condition.
The linguist would bring the slave broker on board or to the factory,
who would inquire what price the master of the ship was willing to pay
for a slave and the commission he was to receive and this was never
settled until the broker had visited all the factories and every ship in
port. Having no better offer, the broker would then bring on board the
owner of the slaves, who examined the merchandise offered, agreed upon
the articles and then sent for the slaves, who would be examined by the
ship’s surgeon. If approved, the owner would then be paid the
merchandise he had selected, less one bar of iron, duty for the king.
Men slaves would then be put in irons on the main deck; boys on the main
deck, not ironed; and women and girls, not ironed, on the quarter deck.
The broker was then given his commission, which completed the
transaction.[2]
-----
Footnote 2:
_Report to the House of Lords on the Abolition of the Slave Trade_, 2
vols., London, 1789.
-----
Much of the ivory obtained there had been picked up in the woods and
having laid out in the rain and wind for some time was for the most part
scurfy and hollow.
The northern coast of the gulf of Guinea is divided into particular
sections which, in order, have been named the “Grain Coast,” extending
from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas, a country producing much rice and maize
(Indian corn); the “Ivory or Tooth Coast,” extending from Cape Palmas to
the river Lagos, and formerly having a considerable trade in elephant
ivory; the “Gold Coast,” between Assinee and the river Volta, so named
for the large amounts of gold dust obtained there, which came from the
mountains and streams at the north; and lastly, the “Bight of Benin,”
lying between Cape St. Paul’s and Cape Formosa, which clasps within its
curve, the “Slave Coast” and the coast of Whidah and Lagos, in former
times much resorted to by slavers and pirates.
[Illustration:
THE GUINEA COAST ABOUT THE YEAR 1700
From the map in Churchill’s _Collection of Voyages_, engraved by R. W.
Seale
]
Cape Coast Castle, the principal English fort in slaving days, guarded a
part of the Gold Coast and behind it was the Fantee and Ashantee
country, which supplied great numbers of slaves for the American market.
The castle was built near the sea and not only was dominated by three
hills, not far behind it, but its location was only nine miles from the
Castle of St. George at Mina, belonging to the Dutch, and only a short
mile distant was Fredericksburg, a Danish fort. The only landing place
was a small sandy flat just under the castle, on which the blacks could
run their canoes without danger of splitting. The agent general of the
“Royal Company of Africa,”[3] who spent much time at Cape Coast Castle,
remarked upon the unhealthfulness of the place notwithstanding the rocky
shore and the surrounding high land. He wrote:
“Their fondness for their beloved liquor punch, is so great, even among
the officers and factors, that, whatever comes of it, there must be a
bowl upon all occasions, which causes the death of many of them.... I
have often represented to some of the principal men how to live more
regularly, viz., to abstain from the black women, whose natural hot and
lewd temper soon wastes their bodies, to drink moderately, especially of
brandy, rum, and punch; and to avoid sleeping in the open air at night,
as many, when heated with debauchery, do, having nothing on but a shirt,
thinking thus to keep cool, but, on the contrary, they murder
themselves; for nothing is more pernicious to the constitution of
Europeans, than to lie in the open air, as I have been sufficiently
convinced by experience. I always kept to my bed, as well as I could
well bear it, and both night and day wore a dressed hare’s skin next to
my bare stomach, for above two years together, which kept it in good
disposition and helped digestion very much; though I must say it was
sometimes, and especially in the excessive hot nights, very troublesome
and occasioned much sweating. The air, though not so cold, is much
thinner and more piercing than in England, and corrodes iron much
faster.
“The Castle has a lofty wall around it and had no fresh water except
what is saved in a very large cistern, during the rains, which supplies
both the garrison and shipping. In order to destroy Guinea worms, ship
masters are accustomed to put two or three spoonsful of quick lime into
each water cask filled from the cistern.”
-----
Footnote 3:
John Barbot, “Description of North and South Guinea,” in Churchill’s
_Collection of Voyages_, London, 1746.
-----
The inland negroes supplied the market with fruit, corn and palm wine,
the maize or Indian wheat being produced in such quantity that much was
sold to shipping and to blacks from other parts. The country was also
very rich in gold and slaves, many of the latter coming from a
considerable distance in the interior. The Fantees and Ashantees were
esteemed most highly and were more hardy than the inland blacks.
Anamaboe, an important roadstead, lies a few leagues to the east of Cape
Coast Castle. It was formerly a point at which slaves were to be had in
considerable number and the road was generally full of shipping. The
blacks were a clever and villainous people and frequently adulterated
their gold so the trader must narrowly watch all transactions. The town
was located on a sandy beach, strewn with rocks, close to the sea, the
surf being so heavy that ships’ boats could not land and all trade was
carried on in the canoes of the natives.
At Accra, further to the eastward, the coast is bolder, with a good
landing and plentiful supplies of provisions, and gold of the purest
refinement. This country usually was at war with neighboring nations and
accordingly had many prisoners to sell into slavery, so that sometimes a
ship happening on the coast at just the right time, could obtain a
lading of slaves in a fortnight and at a very low cost.
The use made by the natives of European manufactures obtained in trade
is interestingly described by John Barbot, in his account of Guinea.
“The broad linen serves to adorn themselves, and their dead men’s
sepulchers within; they also make clouts thereof. The narrow cloth to
press palm-oil; in old sheets they wrap themselves at night from head to
foot. The copper basins to wash and shave, the Scotch pans serve in lieu
of butcher’s tubs, when they kill hogs or sheep; from the iron bars the
smiths forge out all their weapons and country and household tools and
utensils. Of friezes and perpetuanas they make girts four fingers broad,
to wear about the waist, and hang their sword, dagger, knife, and purse
of money or gold, which they commonly thrust between the girdle and
their body. They break Venice coral into four or five parts, which
afterwards they mould into any form, on whetstones, and make strings or
necklaces, which yield a considerable profit. Of four or five ells of
English or Leyden serges they make a kind of cloth to wrap about their
shoulders and stomach. Of chintzes, perpetuanas, printed calicoes,
tapseils and nicanees, are made clouts to wear round their middles. The
wrought pewter, such as dishes, basons, porringers, &c. serve to eat
their victuals out of. Muskets, firelocks, and cutlaces they use in war.
Brandy is most commonly spent at their feasts. Knives to the same
purposes as we use them. With tallow they anoint their bodies from head
to toe, and even use it to shave their beards, instead of soap. Venice
bugles, glass beads and contacarbe serve all ages and sexes, to adorn
their heads, necks, arms and legs, and sarsaparilla is used by such as
are infected with the venereal disease.”
Lying to the eastward of the Gold Coast is a stretch of country known as
the Slave Coast, because the whole trade there was confined to slaves,
there being very little gold. It extends from the river Volta to Jackin.
The country is flat and low, rising gradually as it runs up inland, and
landing along the coast is difficult, not to say dangerous, because of
the terrible surf, which at nearly all times of the year cannot be
passed without great hazard. From April to July, which is the rainy
season, the waves run so high that whoever ventures to land should mind
the saying “he ought to have two lives who ventures.” The bar-canoes,
however well manned, were frequently overset with loss of goods and also
lives, for the waters swarm with monstrous sharks, sometimes thirty feet
long, that soon make way with any man who happens to fall near them.
These sharks usually swim in company and when a dead slave was thrown
overboard, one shark would bite off a leg, another an arm, while others
would sink down with the body; and all this happened in much less time
than it takes to describe the gruesome feast. Great numbers of sharks
always followed the course of slave ships, as if they knew that one or
more bodies would be thrown, daily, to their ravenous jaws.
As the slaves came down to the coast from Dahomey and the inland
country, they were put into a large shed, built for that purpose, near
the beach, and when brought out for sale, the ship’s surgeons would
carefully examine every bit of their anatomy down to the smallest
member, men and women alike being stark naked. Those found to be sound
would be set aside and soon after be branded, with a hot iron, on the
breast (later it was more customary to brand on the shoulder) with the
mark of the company or the individual trader, so as to prevent the
natives from substituting slaves in poorer condition. Care was usually
taken that the women should not be burned as deeply as the men. The
branded slaves would then be returned to the shed and sometimes it would
be two or more weeks before the surf would be low enough to make it safe
to send them off to the slave ships anchored in the roadstead. They were
always stripped of every rag of clothing before they entered the
bar-canoes and as they stepped into the canoe, a native priest standing
by would strew sand over their heads to exorcise the evil spirit and
preserve them from being overset in the passing through the rollers.
[Illustration:
CHRISTIANSBORG, THE DANISH SETTLEMENT ON THE GOLD COAST
From the engraving by J. Hill, published in 1806, in the Macpherson
Collection
]
To trade on the Slave Coast, particularly after the king of Dahomey had
subjugated the coast tribes, necessitated much ceremony and many
presents, to say nothing of the employment of numerous retainers and
servants. The king must be paid his customs at the outset. Then came the
hire of the factory house and the canoes and canoemen and it was
customary to hire a conductor to take care of the goods brought up from
the beach and also the slaves going down to the canoes. Two brokers or
interpreters were required; two boys for servants; a doorkeeper and a
boy, to serve at the tent on the beach; a messenger to carry to the king
the news of the ship’s arrival and the captain’s compliments; a gong
beater, to announce the opening of trade; a trunk keeper, to take care
of the slaves while on shore; six water rollers; a woman to bring water;
and a washer-woman.
Fees must also be paid to the viceroy, who came with his people to
receive the captain and conduct him to the fort,—usually a Spanish hat,
a piece of silk, a cask of flour and another of beef or pork. The
captain of the waterside, at the ship’s departure, was given a piece of
cloth and an anker of brandy; and there was a fee for putting up a tent
on the beach. Porters had to be hired and there were other expenses for
entertainment, so that the preliminary costs of lading a slave ship, on
this coast, about the year 1790, amounted to a value of about £368; and
about the same time slaves were costing five ounces of gold, or £10,
apiece.
This entire coast from the river Sherboro, just south of Sierre Leone,
to the river Benin, at New Calabar (which is the part of Africa with
which Europeans were best acquainted previous to the year 1800),—in all
this tract of at least fifteen hundred miles of seacoast, there is not
one navigable river, bay or harbor, into which a ship can enter; nor is
there one river or creek into which a sailing boat can go above ten
miles from the sea. Very few creeks will even admit a boat and not one
on the Gold Coast, except at Chama and Mines. The entire shoreline,
almost in every part, is difficult of access, because of the heavy surf
that breaks upon the beach and it is only possible to land in a light
canoe and even in that way it is frequently impracticable for many days
together. In many places near the shore there is scarcely water enough
for even a canoe and the waves break so fiercely and there is so wide a
stretch of broken water, that all communication between shipping and the
shore is frequently interrupted for weeks at a time, and seldom can a
landing be effected with safety. At the easterly end of the Bight of
Benin, the entire coast is inhospitable and very little frequented and
for the most part is drowned occasionally by the sea or the heavy rains
in August and September.[4]
-----
Footnote 4:
_New Sailing Directions for the Coast of Africa_, London, 1799.
-----
A very important part of the coast, in old slaving days, was Calabar,
Old and New, and the Bonny River. Ships of considerable burden could
anchor on the hard, sandy ground, in eight fathoms, in the river at New
Calabar and also at Bonny and as these towns tapped an extensive
back-country, they traded in slaves in large numbers. As New Calabar was
badly afflicted with mosquitoes, shipping usually lay at anchor near
Foko Point. The blacks living there, through frequent contact with
Europeans, were of a more civilized sort than elsewhere along the coast,
and half a dozen vessels would sometimes lie at anchor in the river at
one time. From 12,000 to 15,000 slaves were exported annually from this
locality, during a long period of years, the English, French and Dutch
participating in the trade. These slaves were brought down the rivers
from market towns, a hundred and more miles away, having originally come
from a considerable distance in the interior. Some of them undoubtedly
were prisoners of war, but many were kidnapped by raiding parties or
sold into slavery because of crime or the necessity of relatives, and
not infrequently in consequence of debt.
The black traders of Calabar and Bonny came down the rivers with slaves
about once a fortnight. There would be twenty or thirty canoes come down
at a time, and sometimes even more, and each canoe would carry twenty to
thirty slaves. The arms of some of the men would be tied with grass rope
and a man who happened to be stronger than common might also be pinioned
above the knee. In this condition the slaves would be thrown into the
bottom of the canoes, where they would lie, able to move but slightly,
sometimes in great pain and often almost covered with water. On landing,
they would be taken to the trader’s sheds, where they would be fed,
rubbed down with palm oil and made up for sale.
“Bonny River is a noble stream, spacious and deep and wider than the
Thames in Sea Reach. The land is low and covered with lofty cocoanut,
palm tree, pine, plantain and banana trees. On the north side is the
kingdom of Benin and on the south, Bonny, independent of each other. New
Calabar can be seen here at the distance to the northwest. Plenty of
palm wine is made (or rather got) here, for they have only to make an
incision in the top of a tree in the evening, hang a calabash under it,
and in the morning it will be full. It is of a whitish color and tastes
like cider.
“Our slaves had two meals a day, one in the morning consisting of boiled
yams and the other in the afternoon of boiled horse-beans and slabber
sauce poured over each. This sauce was made of chunks of old Irish beef
and rotten salt fish stewed to rags and well seasoned with cayenne
pepper. The negroes were so fond of it that they would pick out the
little bits and share them out; but they didn’t like the horse-beans.
“The brandy that we brought out for trade was very good but the darkies
thought it was not hot enough and didn’t bite—as they called it;
therefore, out of every puncheon we pumped out a third of the brandy,
put in half a bucketful of cayenne pepper, then filled it up with water
and in a few days it was hot enough for Old Nick, himself, and when they
came to taste it, thinking that it was from another cask, they would say
‘Ah, he bite.’”[5]
-----
Footnote 5:
William Richardson, _A Mariner of England_, London, 1908.
-----
In some of the following chapters will be found detailed accounts of
trading at Calabar and Bonny, the procuring of slaves and what happened
during the voyage to the West Indies.
About twenty-five leagues to the east of Bonny River is Old Calabar,
where ships formerly made fast to large trees on the river bank and
traded for provisions and slaves. The climate is very unhealthy and as
trade there went on very slowly in time it came to be a place to avoid.
About ten leagues farther to the eastward is the Rio del Rey, which
formerly supplied many slaves and some fine, large elephant’s tusks. But
the country has no fresh water except what the blacks collect from the
tops of their houses when it rains and the river has much thick, foggy
weather. An old English pilot wrote of this river:
“Here an European must look out for himself, for the inhabitants are so
subtly mischievous that you’ll be betrayed before you are aware; and
they are so barbarously cruel, that the parents sell their children, the
husband his wife, one brother and sister the other, and in decency and
order are scarce a degree above the beasts. This description was written
in the last century and we don’t find that the inhabitants are altered
in the least since that time.”[6]
-----
Footnote 6:
_New Sailing Directions for the Coast of Africa_, London, 1799.
-----
South of the Rio del Rey lies the country of the Cameroons, a tall,
lusty people, who carried on some trade with Europeans; the Gaboon
River, a good place for trade and also for cleaning and refitting
vessels; Loango, a rich and important kingdom, whose people worked in
metal and were more civilized than the nations to the north of them; and
lastly, the great region about the Congo River, its trade, in former
times, largely controlled by the Portuguese.
The slave trade was abolished by law by Great Britain in 1807; by
Denmark in 1812; by Holland in 1814; by France in 1818; and by Spain in
1820, after the receipt of a subsidy of £400,000 from Great Britain, but
the prohibition was a farce as far as the Spanish authorities were
concerned, and the trade in slaves from West Africa to Cuba and Porto
Rico was only checked by the vigilance of British and French cruisers.
The United States, in its southern part, was vitally interested in
slavery, but the slave trade with the African Coast was abolished in
1807. Portugal abolished the slave trade in 1830 and received therefor a
subsidy from Great Britain, but as a matter of fact, the export of
slaves from Portuguese Africa did not really come to an end until Brazil
abolished slavery in 1888.
To enforce the suppression of the African slave trade Great Britain sent
her war vessels to the West Coast and later, as treaties were entered
into with other countries, the activities of her blockading vessels did
much to lessen the number of negroes carried overseas.
In 1820, the United States sent three war vessels to the African coast
to aid in the suppression of the slave trade; but the appropriation of
$100,000 made by Congress in 1819, for enforcing the Act, was reduced to
$50,000 in 1823, and soon after was reduced to a few ineffective
thousands.
In 1842, by the Ashburton treaty with Great Britain, the United States
engaged to keep on the Coast of Africa a “sufficient and adequate” naval
force for the suppression of the slave trade, and after that a small
squadron was kept on the African station.
The blockading fleets had a long coastline to cover. One by one the
well-known slave factories were destroyed and one by one the slaving
fleet grew smaller. The gulf of Guinea, because of the character of its
coastline, was soon free of traders, and debarred from using the Spanish
settlements on or off the Cameroons coast, the slave traders of
nineteenth-century Cuba and Brazil established themselves on the Rio
Pongo, a no-man’s land northwest of Sierra Leone. There came the Fulah
traders from the Mandingo and upper Niger countries; the adjoining
rivers and islands of Portuguese Guinea also fed a similar slave trade,
and it was some time before the slave depots at Rio Pongo and Bobama
were broken up by the joint action of British and French gunboats.
The Cuban ships then found their way to the eastern side of the Sierra
Leone colony, to the Gallinas lagoon and the river Sulima,[7] along the
unclaimed “Grain Coast,” now Liberia, and from 1822 to 1839 an average
of five thousand slaves were shipped annually to Cuba, Porto Rico, South
Carolina, Georgia and Brazil, from this one locality alone. Pedro
Blanco, a native of Malaga, was the leading spirit of this slaving
factory and one of his principal lieutenants was Theodore Canot, a
French seaman.[8] Blanco lived near the Gallinas lagoon, with a large
harem, surrounded by every luxury that money could buy in Europe or
America. His drafts were as promptly cashed in Cuba, London or Paris as
on the West African coast. He employed large numbers of negroes as paid
watchers or spies, and from a hundred lookouts along the beach and on
the islands of the lagoon, they scanned the horizon for the approach of
British cruisers. By their signals they saved incoming or outgoing slave
ships from capture. In 1839, Blanco retired from the trade with a
fortune of nearly a million sterling and at last ended his days quite
pleasantly on the Italian Riviera.
-----
Footnote 7:
Johnston, _The Negro in the New World_, New York, 1910.
Footnote 8:
Mayer, _Captain Canot; or Twenty Years of an African Slaver_, New
York, 1854.
-----
The slave-trading factories on the coasts of Sierra Leone and Liberia
had all been destroyed by about 1847, but slave smuggling was carried on
from inland stations, by prearranged connections, for long years after,
although not on so large a scale as before. A lading of negroes, from
the interior, would be brought to the coast and concealed at a place
agreed upon. On a certain day or not long after, a vessel would appear
off the beach and display a recognized signal. Immediately the negroes
would be rushed to the shore and carried aboard in canoes and the ship’s
boats and four hours later a distant sail on the horizon was the only
visible reminder of another trade in human flesh.
[Illustration:
ELMINA, ON THE GOLD COAST, NEAR CAPE COAST CASTLE
From a colored aquatint published about 1830, in the Macpherson
Collection
]
Cruisers were active and so were the slave smugglers, for the profits
were enormous. In 1858, a citizen of Savannah, Georgia, proposed an
expedition to the coast of Africa, for “a cargo of African apprentices
to be bound for the term of their natural lives,” and estimated the
costs at $300,000 and the net profits at $480,000, which did not include
the value of the steamer, already paid for. It is a significant fact
that during the year 1859, only two years before the Civil War,
according to the annual report of the Secretary of the Navy, eleven
slavers were captured by United States war vessels.