All night and every night five hundred beings lay as close as herrings
in a cask upon the _Janet’s_ slave deck, under the _Janet’s_
grated hatches. Men were shackled, two together at the ankles. Women
and boys lay ungyved. Each and all had just enough space in which to
lie their length, or almost their length, and their breadth without
turning or spreading. Bodies touched and rubbed one another. Overhead
was scant, scant space. The hatches were kept uncovered, but still was
it suffocating down there--and fetid beyond believing. David Scott,
who knew an Edinburgh prison, yet had never dreamed of anything like
it. It steamed up through the gratings. He thought he saw it, one hot
night, as a cloud surrounding the ship. It was black in that sighing,
grunting place, black as the pit. Sounds came up all night long. Out of
five hundred always some were sleepless, always some in anguish of body
or mind, always some breaking out into wrath. They remonstrated with
each other, they seemed to curse God, or now and then to be praying.
Sometimes would come a wild and sudden cry. The watch on deck paid no
attention, unless the noise grew and a certain note came in. Then a
threat was cried down through the gratings.
In the morning, “an hour earlier than other ships”, the gratings were
lifted, and they poured up the short ladders to the light and air. The
deck became covered as a sugared board is with bees. They gasped, they
stretched themselves, some leaped up and down; they stared at sea and
sky and each other; their tongues were loosened. Water was given them
and a sufficient breakfast. Divided into companies, they sat and ate
from great platters of beans and rice. Now you might hear, out of one
group or another, a guffaw of laughter. There is something in the Negro
ineradicably cheerful. But there was never much or lasting laughter,
not even on the _Janet_ that was so “good” a ship!
The slaves stayed on deck all day long. Two hours before sunset they
had their second meal. The allowance of water was a pint and a half
in the twenty-four hours to a man, less to women and children. This
seemed great hardship and was miserably felt by these who at home drank
when they wished from a thousand springs and streams. But the Middle
Passage took long weeks, and tempest or dead calm might at any time
make it longer. Among the ghastliest stories were those of slavers
without water. The five hundred black folk were given sufficient for
some degree of health and no more. A little thirst spaced through the
voyage, said Bartram, was better than empty water barrels a hundred
leagues from land. Certainly he wished there were room for more barrels.
“If we carried fewer Negroes----”
“The Company thinks we should carry more.”
He had his rules for the day. All ships had pretty much the same. There
must be exercise, and it was best got by a kind of dancing. Fettered
men still could shuffle and sway, and the women and boys were free of
bonds. Dancing was good for the body and the spirit. Singing was good
too, so that it leaned to the jovial and not the melancholy. All were
encouraged to dance and sing. They might sprawl in the sun and sleep.
They might converse and tell stories. The surgeon came and looked them
over every morning when they emerged from the blackness, every evening
before they returned to it. If there were any truly and really ill they
were removed to a corner that was called their hospital. All wanted
as few as possible to die. A certain number might be expected to go
between Daga and the sight of Blue Mountain in Jamaica--half a dozen
out of a hundred perhaps, in a decent ship like the _Janet_. Much
more than that would mean some calamity. So soon as they were forth
in the morning, salt water enough was sluiced about the slave deck,
swabbing poles were used and it was dusted with purificatories. The
Middle Passage was a time of labor for all but the Negroes, and as for
risks and anxieties, slavers had them in abundance. A prime need always
was to keep the cargo well and reasonably content, or if not content,
submissive. Every interest led to kindness with firmness. Not only were
the owners served by carrying their goods undamaged, but to secure as
many lives as possible there had been devised head rights. Captain,
first and second officers and surgeon had each so many shillings or
pence out of the price of every able-bodied slave delivered to the
agents in the ship’s port. Every interest led to reasonable kindness
in Virginia. But there was Daniel Askew! And at Amory Hall, that meant
kindness and in a degree achieved it, I had not loved their kindness.
The _Janet_, to many slave ships, was as Amory Hall to Daniel
Askew. I will give her credit, and I will give Bartram credit, and
McNaughton and Colley and many more. I will give David Scott credit. We
were not demons. We were perplexed and erring men, calloused by this
work.
The first week we lost nine. The first week, they said, was usually the
worst. There was more despair, and there was the universal seasickness.
Two suddenly, at sunset, jumped overboard, and though sailors leaped
after them they were not rescued. One refused to eat and though
at last Bartram ordered the cat, and though the third day Colley
supervised the forcing open of his mouth and the pouring down of broth,
neither did any good. He determinedly died. A man and two women died
of some disease. Two children died. A boy died, apparently of mere
homesickness. The second week saw less mortality. It had its toll, as
had every week that followed, but we kept the fair side of calamity.
Time out of mind two things are most dreaded by slavers--plague and
outbreak. The _Janet_ was helpless before plague, except inasmuch
as she strove for what cleanliness was possible, and what order was
possible, and had drugs enough and a good surgeon. But as to outbreaks,
William Bartram kept the probability or the possibility of that as low
as might be. And he kept it so to an extent by being a good captain,
not a bad one.
The story was that he did not sleep on the Middle Passage. It is called
that because a ship’s original course is England to Africa--Africa to
America--America to England again. And so it is the Middle Voyage, the
Middle Passage. Bartram slept, of course, but he slept little. All
day he was wary; cool, just, according to canon, and wary. Throughout
the night, any hour, he might be found going about his ship with his
padding step, like a tawny, watching, desert lion. The watch had no
chance to grow drowsy, the man at the wheel, the mate on duty, found
him silently beside them one moment, then gone. He stood at a grating
and harkened to the sounds coming up, and gauged their importance;
he studied weather of whatever kind. Then he might go and sleep a
while and return again. A tall, robust man with tawny hair and beard,
big-nosed and keen-eyed. When he and McNaughton walked together, there
were two tall, red Scots; when David Scott was joined to them, there
were three.
He kept his seamen with his eye and his slow, full, reasonable voice,
and the character behind both. They did their work, they made or took
in sail, they sat aloft in the rigging or swabbed away the filth and
refuse of the slave ship, or stood as guards over those five hundred
prisoners; they toiled, watched, ate, slept and played, shouted, cursed
and laughed, were sick and well, grumblers more or grumblers less, as
seamen are; but they gave no fear of mutiny and the _Janet_ sailed
her way.
The _Janet_ sailed her way. It was the winter and the heat not as
it is in summer in the Middle Passage. But there was heat when the deep
wind failed and the sun stood overhead. Then the sails hung slack, the
sea became a hot blue floor which never might we cross; the ship seemed
to fester, to fester and to groan. Then the wind blew again, the sails
filled, and life revived.
Twice we met tempest, once bitter and prolonged, the greater part of
a week. A mast broke, the seas washed over the sides, the ship was
tilted and played with like a walnut in a boy’s hand. For three days
and nights the Negroes must be kept below hatches. That was frightful.
Eight were dead when the sun shone again and the waves stilled
themselves. We lost also two seamen, Jonathan West and Walter Bigger.
Barring this week of storm we had a fair and uneventful voyage, day
after day of good wind and bright, blue sky. We sighted two British
Guineamen, a Spaniard to whom we gave a wide berth, and a craft that
we could not make out. Africa now was far behind us and the great West
coming nearer, though still it, too, was far, far away.
In some sort a part of the Negroes grew reconciled. I saw brutalities
aboard the _Janet_. Pomeroy could be brutal, and Davis and certain
of the sailors. But the ship’s intention was not brutality, other than
the brutality of being there at all, a fetcher and carrier so, in the
eye of day. Harshnesses appeared; punishments and intimidations. It
is a problem of high difficulty, the ruling of five hundred barbarian
captives crowded for long weeks on a ship upon the sea. What harshness
Bartram exercised, or let the mates exercise, was always to him a
necessity, done to save from worse things. But the same plea would
be advanced by the captains of the _Sherwood Oak_ and the
_Fancy_, or by that McKenzie of evil name, men of less judgment
as to good and ill and necessity than the Captain of the _Janet_.
When it was thought to be needed the whip was used, or other punishment
such as deprivation of food and drink, detention under hatches by day
as by night, or chainings to the mast. Disobedience and turbulence were
the crimes. Some committed them, others did not, and Bartram strove
for justice. And when he could--or thought he could--he showed much
kindness. Only there was so little room for kindness on that slave deck!
Yet, as I had heard laughter in the Tolbooth--as I had known men to
laugh at Daniel Askew’s--so I heard laughter among the black men and
women on the _Janet_. For such is the human spirit. Laughter at
times, weeping at times.