Book Explores History of Slave Ships

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Book Explores History of Slave Ships

Sunday, October 21, 2007

PITTSBURGH -- Over more than three centuries, more than 12 million Africans

were loaded on ships, bound for the Americas to be slaves.

Aboard the slaver, or Guineaman, as the vessels were also known, the

kidnapped Africans frequently had to travel in living quarters as cramped as

coffins, and suffered savage beatings, outright torture and death to quell

uprisings and forced dancing to keep them fit.

While the plantation system and other aspects of slavery have been widely

studied, the history of the slave ship itself is largely unknown, says

historian Marcus Rediker, author of "The Slave Ship _ A Human History."

"What I'm basically interested in is how captains, ship captains, officers,

sailors and the slave interacted with the slave ship. What was the actual

reality? Of course, it was quite horrifying," said Rediker, a University of

Pittsburgh history professor. "In many respects, the development of the

Americas through slavery and the plantation system is unthinkable without

the slave ship."

For a couple hundred years, most people thought they knew what happened

during the Atlantic crossing, Rediker says. Abolitionists had produced

evidence of life aboard slave ships, but many scholars were suspicious of

what they'd gathered, thinking it propaganda.

Perhaps the most significant reason for lack of scholarship, he says, is an

assumption that "history happens on land, that the landed masses of the

world are the real places and that the seas in between are a kind of void."

Ira Berlin, a University of Maryland professor who has written about slavery

said Rediker's book addresses a difficult subject.

"And that is what happened to slaves and others in the middle passage. It

speaks with great authority and he's able to balance his knowledge with his

deep anger with what has transpired," Berlin said. "It has an edge of moral

outrage which gives it a certain kind of authenticity."

Rediker acknowledges a fascination with elements of the sea and seafaring,

the romance and adventure of pirates and explorers, but says, "We're

fascinated by all tall ships except the most important one, and that's the

slave ship. And that one we can hardly bear to look at."

Slave ships arrived on the west coast of Africa, where it took an average of

six months to gather the entire human cargo of slaves. The middle passage,

as the journey to the Americas was known, could take eight to 13 weeks.

Death was common. Some 1.5 million Africans died, either of sickness,

suicide or by murder-as-example. Crews also faced death, either by illness,

insurrection or sinking.

In one example in the book, an African man who refused to eat was tied up

and lashed with a horse whip until he was raw and bloody "from his neck to

his ankles."

After the beating, Captain Timothy Tucker ate his dinner, then returned to

inflict more punishment to prevent the man _ who had apparently decided to

end his life by self starvation _ from inspiring others to starve

themselves.

Tucker ordered a cabin boy to get his pistols. He pointed a pistol at the

man's head and told him he'd kill him if he refused to eat. The man replied

"Adomma" in his native tongue _ "so be it."

Tucker fired into the man's forehead. The man clapped his hand to his wound,

but did not die. Tucker placed the gun to the man's ear and fired again.

Again, he did not die. Tucker then ordered another sailor to shoot the man

through the heart, which finally killed him.

"Captains ruled this potentially rebellious mass of humanity by enacting

terrible examples, enacting violence and terror on one in an effort to cow

the rest," Rediker says.

Slaves, who far outnumbered the crew, also plotted rebellion.

"What's impressed me in doing this research, is even though the odds of

insurrection were low, enslaved people kept trying. They kept trying,"

Rediker says. "They refused to accept this reality and the captain and the

sailors assumed the enslaved would rise up and kill them given half a

chance, to escape this horrible reality of the ship and this slavery they

were being carried into."

A prevalent west African religious belief that when someone died, they would

return to homeland, also prompted suicides.

"They would jump overboard. Captains put netting around the rail to prevent

them from doing that. Some would actually try to cut their own throat with

their fingernails. This was a desperate business," Rediker notes.

Life was not much better aboard the slaver for common sailors, many of whom

were duped into signing up for duty. Men were often rounded up while

drinking in pubs or yanked from jails.

Once the kidnapped Africans were delivered to slave markets in Jamaica,

South Carolina and elsewhere, captains frequently forced sailors _ who,

after all, had to be paid _ off the ships, bilking them of their wages.

"You need a lot of sailors to guard the slaves on the middle passage, but

once you've sold the slaves, you need a much smaller crew to return to the

home port," the author says. "So these sailors become beggars, and many of

them close to death ... were nightmarish in appearance."

Rediker discovered that frequently, slaves took the sailors into their huts

and cared for them.

"This is a very powerful and hopeful commentary that people who suffered

tremendously on board these ships could have this compassion for other

people who were literally their prison guards, who were now suffering

because of their own experience aboard the ship," Rediker says. "It's just a

stunning thing."

Eventually, abolitionists focused on the horrors of the slave ship, which

help lead to the outlaw of the slave trade two centuries ago. "The slave

trade happened far beyond the shores of most people's experience. (The

public) really didn't know what happened on these ships," Rediker says.

A print of the slave ship Brooks, showing slaves packed sardinelike below

deck in the ship, which was published in England and America, was

particularly effective in the campaign against slavery. Rediker devotes a

chapter to the print.

"Once (the public) could see the physical layout of bodies, they were struck

with horror: What must that be like?"

The book also details the work of British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who

traveled to Liverpool and Bristol in 1787 to gather information about the

slave trade. While ship merchants and captains refused to talk with him, he

gathered evidence from sailors that fueled the abolitionist movement.

The slave trade was abolished in Britain in 1807 and in America in 1808.

Rediker also devotes a chapter to John Newton, the slave ship captain

perhaps best known for writing the hymn "Amazing Grace." Newton had a

Christian conversion while a slave captain, but did not immediately renounce

the trade and continued to serve as a captain until a stroke forced him to

retire.

He did not write "Amazing Grace" until well after his retirement.

"The dark side of our history is one we don't like to face, and yet, I

believe that progress depends on coming to grips with it," Rediker says.