Some aspects of work, however, were distinctive to the slaver. On a ship in which armed watch would be a matter of life and death, the gunner urgently checked and cleaned the small arms. He also tended to the blunderbusses and swivel cannon, while the sailors assembled ammunition, cartridges of shot. Sailors also knitted the netting, which would be used to prevent slaves from escaping the ship and unwelcome traders from coming aboard. Captain William Miller of the Black Prince noted in his journal in 1764, “The People Emp[loy]’d about netting and other necessarys.” Sailors also counted and bagged cowrie shells for trade.26
When a slave ship arrived on the coast of Africa, sailors soon became something more than sailors. They continued to do the work of the ship—dropping and raising anchor and setting sails to take the vessel here and there, especially if the captain had in mind a “coasting voyage” in which he would buy slaves at several locations, as was common on the Windward Coast. Seamen also maintained the ship—cleaning, mending sails, repairing rigging, and tending to stores. At the same time, they would, as James Field Stanfield explained, build a thatched or tarpaulin roof over a large portion of the ship’s deck, to provide shade against the tropical sun and to constrain the captives whom the captain would purchase. Once the actual buying and selling began, sailors would be redeployed to the yawl and longboat, rowing, sometimes great distances, back and forth from ship to shore and to other ships, hauling trade goods, people, and provisions (yams, corn, rice, water). As soon as the trade goods were people—that is, as soon as the captain began to buy slaves—the seamen’s social function changed: they suddenly became prison guards. They would remain so for the coming seven to ten months or more—five to seven months or more on the coast, two to three months in the Middle Passage—until the vessel arrived in its American port of delivery.
As soon as the enslaved came aboard the vessel, “keeping watch” acquired a new meaning. The captain mobilized a guard, to be present and vigilant on the main deck anytime the enslaved were there. Each member would be armed, some with pistols, some with muskets, and all, apparently, with a cutlass, the handle of which featured a lanyard, which the sailor wound around his wrist so that a rebelling slave might not take it away from him.27 The primary worries at this point in the voyage were escape and insurrection, both of which were encouraged by the proximity of the ship to the shore and the prospect of getting back to one’s native society (even though recapture and resale were likely as the runaway tried to make his or her way home over many miles inland). The primary purposes of the sailor’s work were now to keep a vigilant watch and to preserve the new human property of his captain and shipowner.
After about ten men slaves had been brought on board, all of them, and every man thereafter, would be manacled and shackled. Under the direction of the captain and mate as well as the armorer or gunner, the sailors would hammer the cuffs into place, linking the men by twos, the left wrist and ankle of one to the right wrist and ankle of the other. Thereafter, whenever the men came upon the main deck, the sailors would reeve a chain through their leg shackles and lock them in groups of ten to a ringbolt. Sailors were to check the men’s irons carefully and regularly, at least twice a day, morning and night.28 Women and child slaves were not normally constrained, unless rebellious. As soon as the house was dismantled, members of the crew manned the barricado and trained their muskets through “Loop Holes.” Two sailors took their stations at elevated four-pound cannon, “loaded with a Cannister of Musket Balls to rake the Main deck, if there should be any Occasion for it.”29
As the ship filled up, sailors oversaw the routines of the captives on both the lower and main decks. Belowdecks the sailor would assist in “stowing” the slaves—that is, the assignment of a particular space where each person was to lie or sit whenever belowdecks, while on the coast and during the Middle Passage. The chief mate and the boatswain, cat-o’-nine-tails in hand, supervised stowing the men; the second mate and gunner, the women. The sailors helped to pack the enslaved together tightly, “adjusting their arms and legs, and prescribing a fixed place for each.” Those who did not “get quickly into their places” were compelled by the cat. George Millar, who served on the Canterbury on a voyage to Old Calabar in 1767, recalled, “I was the person that had the care of the men Slaves, and when stowed, there was not room to put down the point of a stick between one and another.”30
When the enslaved were on the main deck during the daytime hours, a detachment of sailors went below to clean their apartments. Sometimes this work would be done by the enslaved themselves, but more commonly by the sailors, who frankly despised it. This work had several aspects, some daily, others more occasional. One constant task was emptying the necessary tubs of urine and excrement. Alexander Falconbridge wrote, “In each of the apartments are placed three or four large buckets, of a conical form, being near two feet in diameter at the bottom, and only one foot at the top, and in depth about twenty-eight inches; to which, when necessary, the negroes have recourse.” The seamen also scrubbed the deck and the beams, using sand and other abrasives to remove dried filth, vomit, and mucus. Once every week or two, the sailors would, after cleaning, fumigate the apartments, which was done in various ways. Captain William Littleton had them put a “a red hot loggerhead into vinegar,” confine the smoke, and let it suffuse the woodwork. Seaman Samuel Robinson wrote that on his ships the lower deck was kept “scrupulousley clean, washed and scrubbed with sand twice a week, dried with fire-pans, and fumigated with vinegar and tobacco smoke; while large tubs, with close covers, are placed at proper distances for necessary purposes.”31
Another detested piece of service among sailors was guard duty belowdecks among the men slaves overnight. Not all captains required this; some were content to lock the slaves below and tend to them again the following morning. But other ships did require the duty, and William Butterworth left a detailed record of what it entailed. In the aftermath of a failed insurrection, Captain Jenkin Evans of the Hudibras “deemed it necessary that a person should be stationed in the men’s apartment during the night.” When he heard the news, Butterworth was mortified. He thought, “Unenviable situation! uncoveted post!” But as the captain’s will (fate) would have it, he and another man were chosen for the duty. Wishing suddenly that the enslaved were “all in their native woods” and that he himself was “safe in my own native town,” Butterworth hid himself to try to avoid duty. To no avail: he was found out and made to go below for four hours. When he arrived at his post, he found the man he was replacing “on the top of the ladder” that led up from the lower deck, “with his hands [gripping] hold of the gratings, and tears in his eyes.” He was terrified, as was Butterworth, who fearfully went below and took a seat as far from the slaves as he could get, “keeping a most respectful distance.” Time passed slowly as he listened to the clanking irons of the Coromantee and Igbo ringleaders of the insurrection, who were chained together in groups of ten. To his horror he was soon forced to take a second four-hour watch, during which he used his cat-o’-nine-tails—which he called the “credential of authority below deck”—to drive back to his spot an “old offender,” already in strong fetters, who had approached him. Eventually Butterworth grew sleepy but feared that he would be ripped limb from limb if he dozed off. Slowly he began to talk to the enslaved Igbo men near the ladder, hoping to cultivate allies. By his watch the following day, he had decided that the policy was working to guarantee his safety. Little did he know that another uprising was being planned. Two of the men Butterworth was “guarding” were soon found to have large knives in their possession. He was apparently considered too insignificant a target.32
Another important task sailors carried out was to conduct a daily search among the captives for hard-edged tools or indeed anything that might be used as a weapon—against the crew in insurrection, against themselves in suicide, or against each other in the frequent quarrels that broke out amid the hot, crowded, miserable circumstances of the lower deck. On some ships this meant
clipping the fingernails of potential rebels. On almost all it meant keeping an eye on the more mobile women and child slaves, who sometimes passed tools through the gratings to the men below. Sailors were also dispatched to break up fights that flared up from conflicts over space, sickness, cleanliness, or cultural difference. Vaunting his own humanity (with no apparent sense of irony), the slave trader Robert Norris explained that such attention was necessary so that “the strong do not oppress the weak.”33
Every morning at around eight, when the weather was good, some sailors took their positions under arms while others brought the enslaved up from the lower deck, the men on the forward side of the barricado, the women and children aft. After chaining the men to the deck, seamen would assist in a morning washup of face and hands, then arrange the bodies as the surgeon made his rounds, listened to complaints, and looked for the telltale signs of illness. Around ten o’clock the sailors began to serve the morning meal, which usually consisted of African food according to the region of origin of the enslaved: rice for those from Senegambia and the Windward Coast, corn for those from the Gold Coast, yams for those from the Bights of Benin and Biafra. The sailors also served a pannikin of water. After the meal, sailors collected eating bowls (called “crews”) and spoons and made arrangements for a full wash. At noon the sailors began the activities for the afternoon. Of special importance was something called “dancing.”
Physicians and slave traders alike believed that exercise would help to maintain the health of the enslaved. Therefore each afternoon the Africans would be required to dance (and also to sing, on many ships). This could take many forms, from something more or less freely chosen, accompanied by African instruments (more common among the women), to the dreary, forced clanking of chains (more common among the men). Some refused to take part in the exercise altogether; others did so sullenly. These reactions brought the scourge of the cat, wielded by the mate or boatswain.
The same was frequently true of feeding: some people refused to eat, willfully or because they were sick or depressed. Violence would force them. The preferred instrument was the omnipresent cat, used by the officers. Numerous observers noted that it did not always work: many still refused to eat, which brought out other means of force, including hot coals and finally the speculum oris. Sailors would have assisted in these tortures but would not have taken the lead.
At some point in the afternoon, bread and sometimes a pipe of tobacco and a dram of brandy would be offered to the men and women. On some ships the women and girls would be given beads with which to make ornaments. The afternoon meal, served around four o’clock, usually consisted of European victuals—horsebeans and peas, with salt meat or fish. Many a cook made “dab-a-dab,” a concoction of rice, a little salt meat, pepper, and palm oil. At the end of the day, somewhere between 4:00 and 6:00 P.M., the men were taken and locked below. Women and children usually got to stay on deck longer, until they, too, were taken to their dark apartments for the next twelve to fourteen hours.34
“Dancing” and feeding revealed a larger truth about the slave ship: the officers reserved for themselves the primary means of violence. Only the captain and the surgeon, recalled Isaac Wilson, were allowed to chastise the slaves aboard his ship. Others agreed. Alexander Falconbridge said that only the captain, chief mate, and surgeon (himself) were permitted to use the cat-o’-nine-tails. Common sailors rarely wielded the cat, and then usually only in two situations: when they went below and in the brutal aftermath of a failed insurrection.35
The final phase of a sailor’s work consisted of preparing the enslaved for sale as the ship neared its port of delivery. This, as Emma Christopher has emphasized, was a kind of production in which the sailor transformed the African captive into a commodity for sale. It entailed taking the constraints off the wrists and ankles of the men about ten days before arrival, in order to let the chafing heal. It also included careful cleaning, shaving the men (beard and sometimes head), and using a lunar caustic to hide sores. Gray hair would be picked out or dyed black. Finally, sailors would rub down the African bodies with palm oil. The whole process was one of value creation and enhancement. Thanks to the sailor’s labor, a shipload of expensive commodities would soon be available for sale.36
Sailors, Slaves, and Violence
The Liverpool writer “Dicky Sam” described the violent reality of the slave ship this way: “the captain bullies the men, the men torture the slaves, the slaves’ hearts are breaking with despair.” The statement expresses an important truth. Violence cascaded downward, from captain and officers to sailors to the enslaved. Sailors, often beaten and abused themselves, took out their plight on the even more abject and powerless captives under their supervision and control. How this happened on any given ship would depend to a large extent on the captain, who had enormous latitude to run the ship as he wished. Even though captains and officers were the prime agents of disciplinary violence, sailors occupied the front line of social war on the ship. This must be emphasized, because James Field Stanfield, in his dramatic rendering of the slaving voyage, tended to blur the line between sailors and slaves.37
The least documented type of violence on the slave ship was probably the most pervasive—the rough, sometimes cruel treatment of daily life. Dr. Ecroyde Claxton, surgeon on the Young Hero, noted that Captain Molineux treated the enslaved well but the sailors did not. On one occasion, when a group of sick slaves were brought on deck and covered with a sail, it was soon smeared “with blood and mucus, which involuntarily issued from them.” The sailors, who had to clean the sail, flew into a rage and beat them “inhumanly.” This made the sick slaves so fearful that they thereafter “crept to the tub, and there sat straining and straining.” This, the physician noted, produced “prolapsus ani, which it was entirely impossible to cure.” This was one of thousands of instances of everyday terror.38
The greatest explosion of violence from a ship’s crew followed a failed slave insurrection. Ringleaders would be gruesomely punished by captains and mates on the main deck, in full view of all the enslaved. When the officers tired themselves by repeated lashing, they passed the cat to sailors, who continued the flaying. On other occasions sailors were known to torment defeated rebels by pricking their skin with the points of the cutlasses. In a few cases, the sailors’ work included actual execution, by horrific means. Sailors thus not only maintained captivity, they viciously punished those who tried to escape it.
Another extremity of violence enacted by the crew, showing that “work” sometimes included outright murder, was illustrated aboard the Zong in 1781. Captain Luke Collingwood sailed with his crew of seventeen and a “cargo” of 470 tight-packed slaves from West Africa to Jamaica. The ship soon grew sickly: sixty Africans and seven members of the crew perished. Fearful of “a broken voyage,” Collingwood called the crew together and told them that “if the slaves died a natural death, it would be the loss of the owners of the ship; but if they were thrown alive into the sea, it would be the loss of the underwriters” who had insured the voyage. Some members of the crew, including mate James Kelsal, objected, but Collingwood prevailed, and that evening the crew threw 54 slaves, hands bound, overboard. They threw another 42 over the side two days later, and 26 more soon after. Ten of the enslaved watched the hideous spectacle and jumped overboard of their own volition, committing suicide and bringing the number of deaths to 132. Collingwood later pretended a lack of water was the cause of his action, but neither crew nor captives had been put to short allowance, and indeed the ship still had 420 gallons when it docked. The case was tried in court when the insurer refused to pay the claim and the owners sued in response. The trial publicized the cruelty of the slave trade and proved to be a turning point as abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano and Granville Sharp built a nascent popular movement. It was perhaps the most spectacular atrocity in the four-hundred-year history of the slave trade. It depended on sailors accepting the orders to throw the living overboard.39
One of the most importa
nt aspects of violence visited by the crew upon the enslaved was addressed by the Reverend John Newton in his pamphlet Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, published in London, 1788. He painted a chilling picture:
When the women and girls are taken on board a ship, naked, trembling, terrified, perhaps almost exhausted with cold, fatigue, and hunger, they are often exposed to the wanton rudeness of white savages. The poor creatures cannot understand the language they hear, but the looks and manners of the speakers are sufficiently intelligible. In imagination, the prey is divided, upon the spot, and only reserved until opportunity offers. Where resistance or refusal would be utterly in vain, even the solicitation of consent is seldom thought of.
Then he stopped, declaring, “This is not a subject for declamation,” even though the “enormities” of what happened on slave ships were, at the time, “little known here.” Perhaps he and other abolitionists considered it too delicate a subject for public discussion, or perhaps they shied away because it conflicted with their desire to make the British sailor a victim of the slave trade and an object of popular sympathy. It would not do to depict him as a “white savage,” a sexual predator, a serial rapist. Yet that is what some slave-trade sailors were. It is entirely possible that some men signed on to slaving voyages in the first place precisely because they wanted unrestricted access to the bodies of African women. Thomas Boulton implied as much when he had the recruiting mate in The Sailor’s Farewell, or the Guinea Outfit speak to a potential sailor of the “soft African wench” who awaited him if he signed on. What would a real sailor think as he joined a Rhode Island slave ship named the Free Love, Captain Wanton?40
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