The Slave Trade

by Hugh Thomas

  Losses aboard slave ships were usually recorded, though most of the early “death books” for the Portuguese and Spanish deliveries of slaves during the first two centuries have long been lost. Fairly low figures, naturally, are recorded in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for Portuguese ships going direct to Lisbon: say, 5 percent maximum if the ship was coming from Arguin. But the average was far higher in the journey from São Tomé, in the unhealthy Bight of Benin: perhaps as high as 30 to 40 percent. Tomás de Mercado, in 1569, thought that the average mortality on a slave voyage was 20 percent. Brazilian historians have suggested losses of 15 to 20 percent in the sixteenth century for the trade to Brazil and 10 percent in the nineteenth. But there were sometimes much bigger losses. In 1625, for instance, five ships sent to Brazil by the governor of Angola, João Correa de Sousa, carried 1,211 “pieces” and lost 583; another sixty-eight slaves died soon after the disembarcation. That was a loss of over 50 percent.

  When the Northern Protestants entered the slave trade in the seventeenth century, figures of deaths were better recorded. The RAC is known to have lost 14,388 slaves (24 percent out of the sixty thousand or so shipped) on voyages carried out by 194 ships between 1680 and 1688. Early in the eighteenth century, that figure had diminished to 10 percent. By the 1780s, the death rates on English vessels had declined further to about 5.65 percent. The statistics between 1715 and 1775 in Nantes suggest that the highest loss was 32 percent in 1732, the smallest 5 percent in 1746 and 1774. Ships from Honfleur in the late eighteenth century lost 8.7 percent. William Wilberforce, however, in his speech in 1788 beginning the long series of parliamentary debates on the question of the slave trade, talked of 12.5 percent as normal, a figure which derived from an inquiry into the deaths on British ships examined by the British Privy Council. In 1791, the House of Lords estimated a loss of 8.7 percent in 1791 and 17 percent in 1792. But Thomas Tobin, a slave captain himself, giving evidence to a House of Commons committee many years later, thought that 3-percent mortality was the average on his own ten voyages in the 1790s. A rate of 9 percent may, however, be a reasonable estimate for the eighteenth century, with the Dutch having the lowest mortality among European slave traders.

  As is natural, ships making the longest journey (for example, from East Africa) had the highest rates. Thus the captain of the South Sea Company’s ship George, which lost all but ninety-eight of her 594 slaves in 1717, attributed the disaster to the “length of the voyage,” as well as to “the badness of the weather.”

  Many deaths on slave journeys across the Atlantic derived from violence, brawls, and, above all, rebellions. There was probably at least one insurrection every eight to ten journeys. On French ships, though, there seems to have been only about one every twenty-five voyages. Most such risings of slaves occurred when the ship was still off the coast of Africa or close to it, at the time of embarcation; or between embarcation and sailing. But there were still some in the open sea.

  Every trading nation experienced these attacks. Usually they were mastered by the crew without serious losses to themselves. There were few examples of successful slave risings. But there were some. For example, in 1532, on the Portuguese ship Misericordia, commanded by Captain Estevão Carreiro, with 109 slaves being shipped from São Tomé to Elmina, the slaves rose and murdered all the crew except for the pilot and two seamen. Those three survivors escaped in a longboat and reached Elmina, but the Misericordia was never heard of again. The slaves did not know how to sail and, as occurred in most such instances, the ship was almost certainly lost. In 1650, a ship sailing from Panama for Lima was wrecked off Cape San Francisco, in what is now Ecuador. The captives killed the surviving Spaniards, and their leader, a determined slave who had taken the name Alonso de Illescas, established himself as the lord of the Indians in the region of Esmeraldas. Then, in 1742, the galley Mary, with Captain Robert as master, belonging to Samuel Wragg of London and Charleston, was driven ashore, plundered, and destroyed in the river Gambia, by the local people. The slaves on board rose, murdered most of the crew, and kept the captain and mate prisoners in the cabin for twenty-seven days. They eventually escaped to the French fort on the river Sénégal.

  A rebellion with a curious ending occurred on the Marlborough of Bristol in 1752. This ship was owned by Walter Lougher and Co. The captain shipped about four hundred slaves, some from Bonny and some from the Gold Coast. About twenty-eight of the latter were on the deck. The sailors were below, washing the slave decks. The slaves seized some arms and shot most of the crew of thirty-five, except for the boatswain and seven others. These were ordered to sail the ship back to Bonny, which they did. There, the Bristol slaver Hawk tried to capture the ship, but failed, for the ex-captives were by then well able to use firearms. A fight broke out between the Gold Coasters and the men from Bonny. The former emerged on top, after a hundred captives had died. The Gold Coasters set off for Elmina, guided by the Bristol survivors. None was seen again. The remaining slaves from Bonny lived to tell the tale.

  But usually the rebellions were quelled, and brutally. Thus Willem Bosman recalled how, in the late seventeenth century, the anchor of an English ship was being carried onto his Dutch vessel and placed where the male slaves were kept. But the slaves “possessed themselves of a hammer; with which, in a short time, they broke all their fetters in pieces upon the anchor; after which, they came up on deck, and fell upon our men, some of whom they grievously wounded, and would certainly have mastered the ship if a French and English vessel had not very fortunately happened to lie by us; who, perceiving by our firing a distressed gun that something was in disorder aboard, immediately came to our assistance with chalopsIV and men, and drove the slaves below deck. . . . Some twenty of them were killed.”33

  There was also an important rebellion on the Robert of Bristol, Captain Harding in command. The ringleader of the slaves was that Tomba who may be remembered as having been harshly treated before setting out from Africa.V “Tomba . . . combined with three or four of the stoutest of his countrymen to kill the ship’s company, and attempt their escapes, while they had a shore to fly to, and had near effected it by means of a woman-slave who, being more at large, was to watch the proper opportunity. She brought him word one night that there were no more than five white men upon the deck, and they asleep, bringing him a hammer at the same time (all the weapons that she could find) to execute the treachery. He encouraged the accomplices what he could . . . but could now at the push engage only one more and the woman to follow him upon the deck. He found three sailors sleeping on the forecastle, two of whom he presently despatched, with single strokes upon the temples; the other rousing with the noise, his companions seized; Tomba coming soon to their assistance and murdering him in the same manner. Going aft to finish their work, they found, very luckily for the rest of the company, that the other two of the watch were, with the confusion, already made awake, and upon their guard; and their defence soon awakened their master underneath them who, running up and finding his men contending for their lives, took a hand-spike, the first thing he met with in the surprise, and redoubling his strokes home upon Tomba, laid him at length flat upon the deck, securing them all in Irons. . . .

  “Captain Harding, weighing the stoutness and worth of the two slaves, did, as in other countries they do to rogues of dignity, whipped and scarified them only; while three other, abettors, but not actors, nor of strength for it, he sentenced to cruel deaths; making them first eat the heart and liver of one of them killed. The woman he hoisted up by the thumbs, whipped and slashed her with knives, before the other slaves, till she died. . . .”34

  In 1727, William Smith described how one night, “the moon shining very bright . . . we heard . . . two or three Muskets fired aboard the [adjacent ship] Elizabeth. Upon that, I ordered all our boats manned and, having secured everything in our ship, to prevent our own slaves from mutinying, I went myself in our pinnace (the other boats following me) on board the Elizabeth. In our way, we saw two negroes swimming from he
r but, before we could reach them with our boats, some sharks rose from the bottom and tore them in pieces. We came presently along the side of the ship, where we found two men-negroes holding by a rope, their heads just above water; they were afraid, it seems, to swim from the ship’s side, having seen their companions devoured just before by the sharks. These two slaves we took into our boat, and then went into the ship where we found the negroes very quiet, all under deck; but the ship’s company was on deck, in a great confusion, saying that the cooper, who had been placed sentry at the forehatch-way, over the men-negroes, was, they believed, killed. . . . We found the cooper lying on his back quite dead, his skull being cleft asunder by a hatchet which lay by him.

  “At the sight of this I called for the linguist and bid him ask the negroes . . . Who had killed the white man? . . . One of the two men negroes we had taken up along the ship-side impeached his companion, and he readily confessed he had kill’d the cooper with no other view but that he and his countrymen might escape undiscovered, by swimming on shore. . . . We acquainted the negro that he was to die in an hour’s time for murdering the white man. He answered: he must confess it was a rash action in him to kill him, but he desired me to consider that, if I put him to death, I should lose all the money I [sic] had paid for him.

  “To this, I bid the interpreter reply that, though I knew it was customary in his country to commute for murder by a sum of money, yet it was not so with us; and he should find that I had no regard to my profit in this respect; for, as soon as an hour glass, just then turned, was run out, he should be put to death. . . . The hour glass being run out, the murderer was carried onto the ship’s forecastle, where he had a rope fastened under his arms, in order to be hoisted up to the foreyard arm, to be shot to death. . . . As soon as he was hoisted up, ten white men who were placed behind the barricado on the quarter deck fired their musquets and instantly killed him. This struck a damp upon our negro men who thought, on account of the profit, I would not have executed him. The body being cut down upon the deck, the head was cut off and thrown overboard . . . for many of the blacks believe that, if they are put to death and not dismembered, they shall return again to their own country after they are thrown overboard.”35

  An insurrection off Accra was experienced by Captain Peleg Clarke of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1776. That captain wrote to John Fletcher, the ship’s owner in London: “I am sorry that I have so disagreeable a story now to tell which is [that], about the 8th of last month, our slaves rose on board and a large number of them jumped overboard, out of which twenty-eight men and two women were drowned. Six men were taken up by the Moree town people which [sic] Mr Klark, the [Dutch] governor of the fort at that place, took out of their hands, and has them in his fort. I endeavoured to get them, but the townspeople ask eleven ounces [of gold] per head for taking them up, so I could not settle it with them, and, being obliged to return to Accra again in order to settle, I have begged the favour of Mr Mill [one of the famous mercantile family of Guinea and the West Indies] to settle it for me. . . .”36

  Slave rebellions were often reported in the press, once that medium took shape. The Newport Mercury reported in 1765: “By letters from Capt. [Esek] Hopkins in the brig Sally belonging to Providence [the ship belonged to Nicholas Brown & Co.] arrived here from Antigua from the coast of Africa, we learn that, soon after he left the coast, the number of his men being reduced by sickness, he was obliged to permit some of the slaves to come upon deck to assist the people: these slaves contrived to release the others, and the whole rose upon the people and endeavoured to get possession of the vessel; but was happily prevented by the captain, who killed, wounded, and forced overboard eighty of them which obliged the rest to submit.”37

  The most brutal punishment for a slave rising seems to have been the treatment meted out to the ringleader of a revolt on the Danish vessel Friedericius Quartus in 1709. This individual had his right hand cut off and shown to every slave. Next day, his left hand was cut off, and that, too, exhibited. On the third day, the man’s head was cut off, and the torso hoisted onto the mainsail yard, where it was displayed for two days. All the others who had taken part in the rebellion were whipped, and ashes, salt, and malaguetta pepper were rubbed into their wounds.38 Here is an account by one of the executioners on the Affriquain of Nantes, whose journey to numerous ports in Africa has been noted:VI “Yesterday, at eight o’clock, we tied up the most guilty blacks, that is the blacks who led the revolt, by their arms and feet and, lying them on their backs, we whipped them. As well as that, we put hot plasters on their wounds to make them feel their faults the more.” The captain left the slaves to die of their wounds.39 A Dutch captain suspended the Ashanti rebel Esserjee from a crossbar by his arms (his hands had been already cut off); here he was abused by the crew till he died. Captain John Newton recalled that, after rebellions, he had seen slaves sentenced to “unmerciful whippings, continued till the poor creatures have not had power to groan under their misery, and hardly a sign of life has remained. I have seen them agonising for hours, I believe for days together, under the torture of thumb screws.”40

  • • •

  Other perils for the slave ship came from storms, calms, and pirates.

  In the case of storms, slaves were often called on to help an overworked or exhausted crew. Thus we hear how, “in the midst of these distresses, the vessel, after being three weeks at sea, became so extremely leaky, as to require constant exertion at the pumps. It was found necessary, therefore, to take some of the ablest negroes out of the irons and employ them at this labour, in which they were often worked beyond their strength.”41

  The most disgraceful slave voyage was occasioned by a storm. In 1738, the Dutch vessel Leuden was stranded by weather on rocks off the Surinam coast, at the mouth of the river Marowijne (now the border between Surinam and French Guiana). The crew closed the hatches of the slave decks to avoid pandemonium and then escaped with fourteen slaves who had been helping them; 702 slaves were left to drown. Even more costly, though less shameful, was the case of the Danish Kron-Printzen, which was lost in 1706 in a storm with no fewer than 820 slaves on board.

  Whatever the outcome, a storm was, of course, always a much-feared eventuality. Off Mozambique, a Portuguese captain reported: “Suddenly, the weather closes in, and the sea rises so high and forcefully that the ships obey the waves without course or control, at the mercy of the winds. It is then that the din from the slaves, chained to one another, becomes horrible. The clanking of the irons, the moans, the weeping, the cries, the waves breaking over one side of the ship and then the other, the shouting of the sailors, the whistling of the winds, and the continuous roar of the waves . . . Some of the food supplies are pushed overboard. . . . Many slaves break their legs and their arms, while others die of suffocation. One ship will break apart from the fury of the storm and sink. . . . The other drifts on, dismasted, ruined by the force of the ocean . . . on the verge of capsizing.”42

  As for calms, the Capuchin friar Carli described being on a boat from Benin to Bahia in the late seventeenth century when the boat remained still for days. Everyone was afraid. The seamen prayed to Saint Anthony on their knees, having fixed his statue to the deck.

  There was also much evildoing by Europeans against Europeans, even while the slavers were still in Africa. For example, Matthew and John Stronge of Liverpool reported in 1752 how they sent their snow Clayton to the river Bonny, how it took on board 324 slaves, and how, two days after leaving, it was seized by “nine Englishmen, who had before robbed their own captain, and another ship; after cruelly wounding the said captain, they turned him adrift in their boat and ordered the mate . . . to steer the vessel to Pernambuco in Brazil. But soon after their arrival [there], he, getting on shore, discovered the matter to captain John de Costa Britto, commander of the Nazarone, a Portuguese man of war.”43 Captain Britto sold the slaves, now reduced to two hundred by sickness, and gave the money forthcoming to the Portuguese treasury. The brothers Stronge spent
many years trying unsuccessfully to be reimbursed by the king of Portugal.

  Captain John Jones, master of the John and Mary of Virginia, and bound there with a cargo of 175 slaves, was in 1724 at anchor about six miles off Cape Charles, at the end of Chesapeake Bay, when a “ship bearing British colours bore down on him, he [being] . . . not at all apprehensive of any pirate . . . did not offer to make sail, but was surprised to find himself attacked, with a command to strike his colours and come on board in his boat and, at the same time, to see about seventy small arms pointed at his ship, threatening to fire into her if he did not immediately do so.

  “At his going on board in his boat, he, with four of his men, [was] immediately secured, [and] was carried into the great cabin to a person called the Captain, who ordered about fourteen men, mostly Spanish, to take possession of the John and Mary, to get under sail and to follow him. . . . About eleven in the forenoon of the same day, they met the Brigantine Prudent Hannah, of Boston. . . . The Spanish ship gave chase to her and, coming up with her, commanded the Master, Captain Mounsell, to come on board. He came in his boat, with only his cabin boy, and his boat was immediately sent back with five Spaniards to take possession. . . . On the six of June, the Spaniard, with his prize standing off E.N.E. from the capes of Virginia about eight leagues, made a sail which proved to be the Godolphin of Topsham, bound for the Rappahannock River in Virginia.VII The Spaniards hoisted an English ensign, and put out a pendant and a Union Jack and stood off to intercept that ship and, under these colours, fired a great gun for the Godolphin to bring to, which she did, and the master (Theodore Bane) being commanded off in his boat, the Spaniards . . . took possession. . . .