# The Horrors of Middle Passage Journey

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 10 Oct 2026, 54 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75561054/the_horrors_of_middle_passage_journey_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3



## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: A slave ship. One eyewitness to the trade described the
[0:06] Speaker 1: ship's deck so covered with blood and mucus that it
[0:11] Speaker 1: resembled a slaughterhouse. Such ghastly scenes were common on the
[0:16] Speaker 1: transatlantic ships during the height of the slave trade. From
[0:20] Speaker 1: the 17th through the early 19th centuries, European and American
[0:26] Speaker 1: vessels criss-crossed the Atlantic with human cargo. forging the brutal
[0:31] Speaker 1: Middle Passage that carried Africans into the New World. Today,
[0:39] Speaker 1: we're going to take a look at the experience of
[0:41] Speaker 1: what the enslaved people went through aboard these ships, and
[0:46] Speaker 1: we're going to do it in unflinching detail. Where do
[0:51] Speaker 1: we get our information? First-hand narratives, trip logs, primary sources,
[0:58] Speaker 1: you'll hear it from the people themselves. Our scope is
[1:02] Speaker 1: broad and global. The captives came from many regions of Africa,
[1:07] Speaker 1: destined to plantations on Brazil, the Caribbean, North America and beyond.
[1:14] Speaker 1: But the one thing they have in common was that
[1:17] Speaker 1: the conditions they endured on the voyage were universally horrific.
[1:23] Speaker 1: And so, by grounding today's account in the primary sources,
[1:27] Speaker 1: and eyewitness testimony, we're going to reconstruct how horrifying this
[1:32] Speaker 1: journey was. One of unimaginable suffering. And if you were lucky, survival.
[1:42] Speaker 1: Let me welcome you to the channel. If you're a newcomer,
[1:46] Speaker 1: it's good to meet you. And those who have not
[1:50] Speaker 1: yet done so, I invite you to click the subscribe button,
[1:54] Speaker 1: which is conveniently right next to the like button. And
[1:59] Speaker 1: thank you for those supporting on the Patreon and the
[2:02] Speaker 1: merch store. Now with all that out of the way,
[2:06] Speaker 1: let's get nice and relaxed. And we may begin. It's
[2:10] Speaker 1: going to be a bit of an uncomfortable video, so
[2:14] Speaker 1: you may as well relax now. During the height of
[2:19] Speaker 1: the transatlantic slave trade, roughly the 1700s, slave ships became
[2:25] Speaker 1: a conveyor between continents. Over 12 million Africans were forced
[2:30] Speaker 1: onto about 35,000 slave voyages across the Atlantic. By the 1780s,
[2:36] Speaker 1: the peak of this traffic, tens of thousands of Africans
[2:40] Speaker 1: were sent across the ocean every year to meet the
[2:43] Speaker 1: insatiable demand for enslaved labor in the New World. These
[2:48] Speaker 1: voyages were all part of a profitable triangular network linking Europe, Africa,
[2:55] Speaker 1: and the Americas. Multiple European colonial powers were involved, including
[3:01] Speaker 1: the Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, and Dutch, and each dispatched
[3:06] Speaker 1: ships to western Central Africa to purchase slaves. Enslaved Africans
[3:12] Speaker 1: from diverse regions, such as Senegambia, the Gold Coast, the
[3:16] Speaker 1: Bight of Biafra, and West Central Africa, all found themselves
[3:21] Speaker 1: chained up, first in the markets, then in the holds
[3:25] Speaker 1: of the ships. Most would be taken to labor on sugar, coffee,
[3:31] Speaker 1: and cotton plantations in the Americas. Larger share were delivered
[3:35] Speaker 1: to Portuguese Brazil, millions more to British and French colonies
[3:40] Speaker 1: in the Caribbean, and a smaller number to North America.
[3:47] Speaker 1: For the captives, the Middle Passage was but one stage
[3:52] Speaker 1: of a much longer ordeal. Many had already survived violent capture,
[3:58] Speaker 1: coffles marching them to the coast, and imprisonment in slave
[4:02] Speaker 1: pens or forts, before they even saw any white man
[4:07] Speaker 1: from overseas or any ship come to purchase them. Historians
[4:11] Speaker 1: estimate that out of every 100 people seized in Africa,
[4:16] Speaker 1: only about 57 of them made it onto a slave ship,
[4:20] Speaker 1: and merely 48 survived to be sold in the Americas.
[4:25] Speaker 1: Now this means that over half of those captured perished
[4:29] Speaker 1: from the point of capture through to the transatlantic crossing.
[4:33] Speaker 1: Most of them didn't even get out of Africa. The
[4:36] Speaker 1: Middle Passage itself accounted for a million or more deaths.
[4:41] Speaker 1: Yet those who did survive the voyage, that didn't mean
[4:44] Speaker 1: the suffering was over. Far from it. It was time
[4:50] Speaker 1: to get to work. Primary accounts by formerly enslaved Africans
[4:57] Speaker 1: offer a rare insight into the moment they were forced
[5:00] Speaker 1: aboard a slave ship. One such account comes from Oluwada Equiano,
[5:06] Speaker 1: who was about eleven years old when he was kidnapped
[5:09] Speaker 1: from his Igbo community in today's Nigeria and sold to
[5:13] Speaker 1: European slavers around 1756. Equiano describes his first sight of
[5:20] Speaker 1: the Atlantic Ocean and the slave ship waiting for him
[5:23] Speaker 1: at anchor, filling him with terror. When he was brought
[5:28] Speaker 1: on deck, the crew immediately handled and tossed him to
[5:32] Speaker 1: inspect his fitness, much as one would examine livestock. He
[5:37] Speaker 1: recalls that the white man's complexions, hair, and language were
[5:40] Speaker 1: utterly alien to him, and he feared he encountered a
[5:44] Speaker 1: world of bad spirits who intended to kill and eat him.
[5:50] Speaker 1: This fear was not uncommon. Many African captives, having never
[5:55] Speaker 1: seen Europeans before, believed the slavers to be cannibals. Equiano
[6:01] Speaker 1: notes that when he saw a large cooking furnace on
[6:04] Speaker 1: deck and the chained Africans around him in despair, that
[6:08] Speaker 1: he no longer doubted his fate and fainted from horror.
[6:13] Speaker 1: Upon arrival, Equiano was so overwhelmed that he wished for
[6:17] Speaker 1: death rather than to know the terrors ahead. He was
[6:22] Speaker 1: soon forced down into the ship's hold. where a horrifying
[6:25] Speaker 1: new assault on his senses began. He writes, I was
[6:30] Speaker 1: soon put down under the decks, and there I received
[6:33] Speaker 1: such salutation in my nostrils as I have never experienced
[6:36] Speaker 1: in my life. The stench below deck was overpowering, a
[6:41] Speaker 1: foul mix of sweat, vomit, urine, and feces that nearly
[6:45] Speaker 1: suffocated him. Equiano became seasick. He refused to eat, until
[6:51] Speaker 1: the crew members intervened. He describes that when he initially
[6:56] Speaker 1: refused food, one man grabbed his hands, while another tried
[7:01] Speaker 1: to force-feed him, an ordeal that threw him into consternation.
[7:05] Speaker 1: This foreshadows a common experience. Enslaved people, who lost the
[7:13] Speaker 1: will to eat, were often forcibly fed by the crew,
[7:18] Speaker 1: sometimes using a vice, a device rather called the speculum auris,
[7:22] Speaker 1: to pry their mouths open Such was the captive's introduction
[7:28] Speaker 1: to life aboard the slave ship, one of fear, sensory torment,
[7:34] Speaker 1: and immediate violence to enforce compliance. Once the ship was
[7:41] Speaker 1: set sail with its cargo, those in the hold faced
[7:45] Speaker 1: an environment designed for profit, not for comfort. Slave ships
[7:50] Speaker 1: were typically overcrowded to a nightmarish extreme. Men were chained
[7:55] Speaker 1: together in pairs, and packed spoon-fashioned in rows beneath the decks,
[8:01] Speaker 1: with scarcely room to turn themselves. Women and children, though
[8:06] Speaker 1: sometimes given slightly more space and allowed on deck, were
[8:10] Speaker 1: also crowded into tight quarters. A schematic of the British
[8:14] Speaker 1: slave ship, Brooks, 1788, famously showed over 480 people arranged
[8:20] Speaker 1: in a hold, only about five feet high. illustrating the
[8:24] Speaker 1: practice of tight packing. Traders calculated that packing more people
[8:31] Speaker 1: could offset the high mortality rates. Others argued for looser packing,
[8:37] Speaker 1: in hopes that more captives would survive to sail. Either way,
[8:43] Speaker 1: conditions were unbearable. One ship's surgeon, Alexander Falconbridge, observed that
[8:49] Speaker 1: enslaved people were often packed so close that it was
[8:53] Speaker 1: impossible to sit or stand upright, and that they lay
[8:56] Speaker 1: in a tangled mess of bodies and filth. The air
[9:01] Speaker 1: quality below deck rapidly became pestilential once the ship was
[9:06] Speaker 1: fully loaded. Equiano noted that when all the captives were
[9:11] Speaker 1: combined together, the combined heat of the climate and the
[9:15] Speaker 1: crowded humanity almost suffocated them. with inadequate ventilation, the atmosphere
[9:23] Speaker 1: turned foul and poor of oxygen. The hold reeked of
[9:28] Speaker 1: human waste and decay. Equiano accounts that the loathsome smells
[9:33] Speaker 1: made the air unfit to breathe, and caused widespread sickness
[9:38] Speaker 1: among the slaves. The closeness and filth were aggravated by
[9:42] Speaker 1: the galling of chains, and the captive's limbs, the overflowing
[9:47] Speaker 1: of toilet-buckets. Children sometimes fell into these little buckets and
[9:53] Speaker 1: nearly suffocated in excrement. The combination of heat, lack of sanitation,
[9:59] Speaker 1: and stress created a breeding ground for disease. Deadly epidemics
[10:04] Speaker 1: of dysentery, smallpox, measles, and fevers swept through the packed ranks.
[10:11] Speaker 1: Captains like Thomas Phillips of the Hannibal tried to curb
[10:15] Speaker 1: dysentery by feeding captives fibre-rich food, cornmeal, palm oil, pepper,
[10:21] Speaker 1: and beans, and providing them citrus fruit, but such measures
[10:26] Speaker 1: were meager against rampant illness. On the 1693 voyage of Phillips,
[10:35] Speaker 1: 47% of the 700 enslaved Africans died despite all his efforts.
[10:43] Speaker 1: The living lay chained amidst the dying and dead. Equiano,
[10:48] Speaker 1: described how the shrieks of the women and the groans
[10:51] Speaker 1: of the dying filled the gloom, creating a scene of
[10:55] Speaker 1: horror almost inconceivable. Disease and despair claimed victims daily. Those
[11:03] Speaker 1: who expired from sickness or injuries were unshackled, dumped overboard
[11:08] Speaker 1: without ceremony. Sharks often trailed behind slave ships, well accustomed
[11:14] Speaker 1: to feeding on the corpses jettisoned at sea. Such macabre
[11:18] Speaker 1: details were noted by many observers. The odour of a
[11:22] Speaker 1: slave ship was said to carry for miles on the wind,
[11:26] Speaker 1: sometimes alerting other vessels, not by sight but by smell.
[11:32] Speaker 1: For week after miserable week, the captives were effectively lost
[11:36] Speaker 1: at sea, stranded in horrific conditions, not knowing where they were,
[11:43] Speaker 1: subject to a regime meant only to keep them alive
[11:48] Speaker 1: and subdued into a landfall, a stew of human misery
[11:54] Speaker 1: and terror. Life aboard a slave ship followed a strict
[12:02] Speaker 1: and brutal regimen, intended for maximum control over the captives,
[12:08] Speaker 1: and to keep them alive, just enough to sell at
[12:11] Speaker 1: the journey's end. Each day typically began with the crew
[12:15] Speaker 1: doling out meagre rations of food and water. Enslaved Africans
[12:20] Speaker 1: were usually fed twice a day, often some sort of
[12:23] Speaker 1: boiled beans or cornmeal, sometimes supplemented with rice, yams, or
[12:28] Speaker 1: a bit of dried meat. This was typically cooked in
[12:31] Speaker 1: a large copper pot on deck. Water was severely rationed.
[12:36] Speaker 1: An enslaved person might receive about one litre of water
[12:39] Speaker 1: a day. As Captain Phillips recorded, Even these sparse meals
[12:46] Speaker 1: could be life-saving. Slavers knew that starved captives would fetch
[12:50] Speaker 1: low prices or just not survive at all. However, many
[12:54] Speaker 1: captives were too sick or heart-sick to eat anyway. Refusal
[13:00] Speaker 1: to eat was common, whether at a protest or extreme despair.
[13:05] Speaker 1: A term for it was fixed melancholy. The crew responded
[13:12] Speaker 1: by whipping those who would not eat, or using instruments
[13:15] Speaker 1: previously described to force-feed them. One slave-ship captain admitted to
[13:20] Speaker 1: using the speculum auris to pry open the jaws of
[13:24] Speaker 1: captives who tried to starve themselves. It was a cruel practice,
[13:30] Speaker 1: aimed at preserving the captain's profit, even at the cost
[13:34] Speaker 1: of torturing people determined to die rather than live. After
[13:40] Speaker 1: the morning rations, the crew would undertake their version of
[13:43] Speaker 1: cleaning the hold, This often meant having enslaved people scrape
[13:47] Speaker 1: and swab the decks, while still in chains, to remove
[13:53] Speaker 1: some of the accumulated filth. Sand or vinegar might be
[13:57] Speaker 1: sprinkled and scrubbed across blood or waste-stained planks. Yet the
[14:04] Speaker 1: deep foundness could never truly be cleansed during the voyage.
[14:09] Speaker 1: The slave deck remained a hellish, filth-strewn place throughout, To
[14:15] Speaker 1: avoid the worst build-up, some captains forced captives to use
[14:18] Speaker 1: the necessary buckets on a schedule, and had crewmen empty
[14:22] Speaker 1: them frequently. But in rough weather, or at night, the
[14:27] Speaker 1: enslaved were sometimes not allowed above to relieve themselves at all,
[14:32] Speaker 1: causing them to soil the cramped space. One more of
[14:37] Speaker 1: the bizarre daily rituals on some ships was called Dancing
[14:42] Speaker 1: the Slaves, a euphemism for forced exercise. Captains believed that
[14:48] Speaker 1: making captives move would keep their muscles strong, and perhaps
[14:53] Speaker 1: lift their spirits enough to prevent mass death from despair.
[14:58] Speaker 1: As a 1729 slave-ship medical guide advised, the health of
[15:02] Speaker 1: the voyage depended on dealing kindly with Africans, and often
[15:07] Speaker 1: diverting them with the drum, dance, etc., in order to
[15:12] Speaker 1: dissipate the sorrowful thoughts of quitting their own country. In practice,
[15:18] Speaker 1: this dance was enforced by the whip. Each day, when
[15:23] Speaker 1: weather allowed, small groups of shackled men were brought up
[15:27] Speaker 1: to the main deck. Sailors armed with catenine tails, a
[15:32] Speaker 1: multi-lashed whip, or ropes would compel them to jump and
[15:36] Speaker 1: stomp in whatever space they had, sometimes to the rhythm
[15:40] Speaker 1: of a drum or fiddle. Those who refused to dance,
[15:44] Speaker 1: or were too weak, were often flogged until labour complied
[15:48] Speaker 1: or collapsed. Captors also encouraged the enslaved to sing during
[15:52] Speaker 1: these exercises, though if they grew irritated, if the Africans
[15:57] Speaker 1: sang mournful, defiant songs, the beatings would continue. They must
[16:05] Speaker 1: appear cheerful. Cruel punishments were a constant of the slave-ship regime,
[16:11] Speaker 1: and he perceived defiance, not eating, not exercising, attempting to arrest,
[16:18] Speaker 1: could result in a lashing or any other form of abuse.
[16:23] Speaker 1: Enslaved Africans were whipped with such frequency that many bore
[16:27] Speaker 1: scars by journey's end, and some were even beaten to death,
[16:32] Speaker 1: as an example to others. Discipline abhorred was maintained by terror.
[16:37] Speaker 1: The enslaved were usually kept in chains and watched by
[16:41] Speaker 1: armed guards at all times. Captains often had special manacles,
[16:47] Speaker 1: leg irons, collars and shackles made for the voyage. Men
[16:52] Speaker 1: were chained in pairs, wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle.
[16:57] Speaker 1: Women were typically left unshackled, but still confined below or
[17:01] Speaker 1: kept under surveillance on deck. At night, gratings over the
[17:07] Speaker 1: hatchways were locked to prevent anyone from coming up. Many
[17:11] Speaker 1: ships also strung netting along the deck rails to make
[17:14] Speaker 1: it harder for captives to leap into the sea. Some
[17:18] Speaker 1: vessels even repositioned cannons to command the slave deck. Phillips,
[17:26] Speaker 1: for instance, placed two of the Hannibal's guns pointing down
[17:29] Speaker 1: through the hatch, ready to blast grapeshot into the hold
[17:32] Speaker 1: in case of an uprising. The crew had a case
[17:36] Speaker 1: of weapons at hand. Muskets, pistols, cutlasses. sometimes even grenades.
[17:44] Speaker 1: Captains and sailors regarded the Africans as potential threats as
[17:48] Speaker 1: much as cargo. Indeed, as Phillips wrote, some captives were
[17:52] Speaker 1: experienced warriors capable of plotting to take over the ship.
[17:57] Speaker 1: The crew always remained alert and ruthless in pre-empting rebellion. Essentially,
[18:04] Speaker 1: it was a floating prison camp under martial law. Amid
[18:10] Speaker 1: this routine of controlled brutality, there were occasional attempts at
[18:14] Speaker 1: rudimentary care or pragmatism. Occasional, that is. If individuals felt
[18:21] Speaker 1: deathly ill, they might be brought on deck for fresh
[18:24] Speaker 1: air or segregated to prevent a contagion. For instance, smallpox
[18:29] Speaker 1: victims were sometimes quarantined in a makeshift infirmary area. Equiano,
[18:34] Speaker 1: being a child and gravely sick, was kept mostly on deck.
[18:39] Speaker 1: and spared constant chaining, which happily perhaps saved him from
[18:44] Speaker 1: the fate of the adults below. Ship surgeons applied basic treatments,
[18:50] Speaker 1: cleaning sores, bleeding, fevers, giving doses of lime juice to
[18:55] Speaker 1: prevent scurvy, many to protect the captain's investment. Any recovery
[19:01] Speaker 1: was counted a gain. Those who died were written off.
[19:06] Speaker 1: The crew's underlying attitude remained mercenary. As long as a
[19:10] Speaker 1: captive could survive to be sold, he or she would
[19:14] Speaker 1: be sustained, however minimally. The moment a captive was deemed
[19:19] Speaker 1: a lost cause, irrevocably ill or injured, they may be
[19:23] Speaker 1: summarily discarded to save food and space. Throughout the passage,
[19:31] Speaker 1: the captives themselves sought ways to cope with the trauma,
[19:35] Speaker 1: Some found strength in songs, prayers, or quiet solidarity. Officers'
[19:41] Speaker 1: journals occasionally noted the enslaved people singing at night, often
[19:46] Speaker 1: mournful lamentations that carried in the dark. Such songs likely
[19:52] Speaker 1: allowed them to mourn together and preserve a piece of
[19:56] Speaker 1: their cultural identity amid the chaos. When possible, those who
[20:00] Speaker 1: shared a language or region tried to console each other
[20:04] Speaker 1: and care for the more vulnerable. Mothers comforted children. Ship
[20:09] Speaker 1: logs mention African women assisting ailing shipmates. These human gestures persisted,
[20:17] Speaker 1: despite the dehumanized environment. Still, every act of camaraderie took
[20:23] Speaker 1: place under the watchful eyes of the guards, quick to
[20:25] Speaker 1: quash anything they feared might lead to collective action. While
[20:32] Speaker 1: the male captives endured the harshest physical constraints, women and
[20:37] Speaker 1: children aboard the ships faced their own set of horrors.
[20:41] Speaker 1: Women were typically not chained in the hold, and were
[20:44] Speaker 1: allowed a degree of mobility on deck compared to men.
[20:48] Speaker 1: Captains assumed women were less likely to foment rebellion. However,
[20:53] Speaker 1: this relative freedom made women extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
[20:59] Speaker 1: Contemporary witnesses, including ship surgeons and enslaved survivors, confirmed that
[21:06] Speaker 1: assault of African women by sailors was commonplace. Enslaved women
[21:13] Speaker 1: and girls seen as property had no recourse against the
[21:17] Speaker 1: advances of crewmen. Officers sometimes explicitly selected a woman as
[21:23] Speaker 1: a concubine for the voyage. One account by a ship's
[21:27] Speaker 1: doctor described how crew members would drag women screeching from
[21:32] Speaker 1: below at night. The victims of such assaults were left traumatized,
[21:38] Speaker 1: and if they resisted, they could be beaten or even
[21:42] Speaker 1: killed with impunity. There were no laws or ship rules
[21:47] Speaker 1: to protect them. They were treated simply as another spoil
[21:51] Speaker 1: of the trade. But despite these dangers, they could also
[21:56] Speaker 1: play their roles in resistance. We'll see it in the
[21:59] Speaker 1: next section. They sometimes used their relative freedom to communicate
[22:05] Speaker 1: between the groups of male captives, or to make small
[22:10] Speaker 1: makeshift weapons or tools that men could use in a revolt.
[22:16] Speaker 1: Women also had to maintain whatever care they could for
[22:19] Speaker 1: the children present. Children, of course, were generally not shackled,
[22:24] Speaker 1: and those old enough to walk might move around the
[22:28] Speaker 1: ship freely during the day. Crew members often viewed African
[22:33] Speaker 1: children with a mix of amusement and indifference. They were
[22:38] Speaker 1: less valuable cargo. Very young children might sell for lower prices,
[22:43] Speaker 1: but they also posed no threat. Older enslaved children sometimes
[22:48] Speaker 1: assisted the crew with minor tasks, perhaps to earn small
[22:52] Speaker 1: favours or food morsels. Younger children clung to their mothers
[22:57] Speaker 1: or other adults. Mothers did their best to soothe the
[23:00] Speaker 1: crying infants amid the foul conditions. Some women even risked
[23:04] Speaker 1: punishment to obtain a bit of extra food or water
[23:07] Speaker 1: for their little ones. And even tragically, some enslaved women
[23:13] Speaker 1: were forced to give birth during the voyage. In such instances,
[23:18] Speaker 1: both mother and newborn were in grave danger due to
[23:21] Speaker 1: lack of medical care and the unsanitary environment. One famous
[23:27] Speaker 1: formerly enslaved man, Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave
[23:32] Speaker 1: ship in 1729. His mother died soon after giving birth.
[23:38] Speaker 1: His father, in despair, chose to take his own life.
[23:43] Speaker 1: This was not an isolated case. Ship logs occasionally recorded
[23:47] Speaker 1: stillbirths or infants born at sea, who lived only a
[23:51] Speaker 1: short time. If a mother died in childbirth, the crew
[23:56] Speaker 1: might throw her infant overboard alive. rather than spare resources
[24:01] Speaker 1: on an infant unlikely to survive. Such cruel actions underscore
[24:07] Speaker 1: the utter commodification of those on board. The psychological torment
[24:13] Speaker 1: for women was acute. They had witnessed their villagers attacked,
[24:18] Speaker 1: their families torn apart. Now at sea, they endured both
[24:23] Speaker 1: the general misery of the hold and the personal terror
[24:27] Speaker 1: of exploitation. some women found ways to fight back. There
[24:34] Speaker 1: are accounts of enslaved women attacking predatory sailors, scratching, biting,
[24:39] Speaker 1: even stabbing them with utensils, though such resistance was usually
[24:44] Speaker 1: met with lethal retaliation from the crew. Yet it sometimes
[24:49] Speaker 1: took other forms that might encourage men to revolt or
[24:53] Speaker 1: conceal plans from the inquisitive crew. In a few recorded instances,
[24:59] Speaker 1: Women committed infanticide or took their own life as an
[25:03] Speaker 1: act of defiance. For example, mothers who smothered their infants
[25:07] Speaker 1: or jumped overboard with children rather than let them live
[25:11] Speaker 1: as slaves. Each woman's experience was unique, but collectively, enslaved
[25:17] Speaker 1: women had to endure a burdensome dual role. Victims of
[25:22] Speaker 1: the same brutal regime of the men, and the additional
[25:25] Speaker 1: victims of violence and family devastation. And so, faced with
[25:34] Speaker 1: relentless cruelty, the enslaved Africans did not uniformly submit. Many
[25:41] Speaker 1: resisted in whatever ways they could, ranging from quiet defiance
[25:46] Speaker 1: to all-out rebellion. Despair, however, was pervasive. Some captives sought
[25:52] Speaker 1: to simply take their own lives instead, and many did.
[25:57] Speaker 1: In the terminology of the time, Cruz reported individuals dying
[26:01] Speaker 1: of melancholy, essentially severe depression, leading to the loss of
[26:07] Speaker 1: will to live. Some captives simply refused to eat until
[26:12] Speaker 1: they wasted away, despite beatings and force-feeding attempts. Others attempted
[26:18] Speaker 1: more direct ends to their suffering. There were numerous cases
[26:23] Speaker 1: of Africans jumping overboard to drown. Equiano recounts how two
[26:28] Speaker 1: of his fellow captives chained together managed to slip through
[26:31] Speaker 1: the netting and leap into the sea. How they, quote,
[26:35] Speaker 1: preferred death to such a life of misery. A third man,
[26:40] Speaker 1: unshackled due to illness, followed them overboard. The crew sprang
[26:45] Speaker 1: into action, stopping the ship and launching a small boat.
[26:51] Speaker 1: But at least two of the three escapees drowned before
[26:53] Speaker 1: they could be recovered. Enslaved people understood that the ocean
[26:58] Speaker 1: offered an escape from torment Some even believed that their
[27:02] Speaker 1: souls would return to Africa if they died at sea.
[27:07] Speaker 1: To deter such incidences, crews put up nettings and barriers
[27:11] Speaker 1: and kept close watch. Yet the desperate captives still found
[27:15] Speaker 1: their opportunities where they could. On some voyages, multiple people
[27:19] Speaker 1: jumped to their deaths. In one notorious incident in 1776,
[27:24] Speaker 1: a group of enslaved men deliberately drowned themselves by leaping
[27:28] Speaker 1: from a ship off Jamaica. refusing to accept their fate
[27:32] Speaker 1: as slaves. Contemporaries noted that these attempts were thousands in
[27:37] Speaker 1: number over the centuries of the trade. Beyond individual acts,
[27:44] Speaker 1: enslaved Africans regularly plotted revolts aboard slave ships. Shipboard revolts
[27:50] Speaker 1: were especially common while the vessel was still near to
[27:54] Speaker 1: the African coast. As captives saw a chance to ally
[27:58] Speaker 1: with others, on shore or swim to land. Over time,
[28:03] Speaker 1: shipbuilders and captains modified vessels specifically to thwart rebellion, with
[28:08] Speaker 1: reinforced hatch gratings, barricades and weapons at the ready. The
[28:13] Speaker 1: crew were constantly on guard. Any hint of uprising would
[28:17] Speaker 1: prompt brutal, pre-emptive action. Still, history records dozens of slave
[28:23] Speaker 1: ship rebellions. A ship's journal from June of 1770, off
[28:28] Speaker 1: the coast of West Africa, documents a series of revolt
[28:32] Speaker 1: attempts within one month. It goes as follows. 6th of June, 1770.
[28:39] Speaker 1: The slaves made an insurrection, which was soon quelled, with
[28:43] Speaker 1: the loss of two women. 23rd of June. Died a
[28:49] Speaker 1: girl slave. Number 13. The slaves attempted an insurrection. lost
[28:54] Speaker 1: a man of Captain Montpenny's purchase, who jumped overboard and
[28:58] Speaker 1: was drowned, employed securing the men in chains, and gave
[29:03] Speaker 1: the women concerned twenty-four lashes each. 26th June A few
[29:10] Speaker 1: of them got off their handcuffs, but were detected in time.
[29:15] Speaker 1: 27th June The slaves attempted to force up the greetings
[29:20] Speaker 1: in the night, but were designed to murder the whites
[29:23] Speaker 1: or drown themselves. the women as well as the men
[29:26] Speaker 1: were determined, if disappointed, of cutting off the whites, to
[29:30] Speaker 1: jump overboard and burn the ship as a last resort.
[29:36] Speaker 1: Their obstinacy put me under the necessity of shooting the ringleader.
[29:44] Speaker 1: End of the log entries. Well, this all happened in
[29:48] Speaker 1: a single voyage. Definitely getting more than what they bargained for,
[29:53] Speaker 1: trying to keep them all below deck. It shows that
[29:57] Speaker 1: the captives persistently resisted and were willing to risk death
[30:00] Speaker 1: for a chance at freedom, or at least to get
[30:03] Speaker 1: their own back. So when a mutiny erupted, the crew
[30:08] Speaker 1: responded with overwhelming force. Sailors used swords, firearms, and whatever
[30:13] Speaker 1: means necessary to suppress rebellion. Those Africans who survived a
[30:18] Speaker 1: failed revolt faced savage punishment. It was common for ringleaders
[30:22] Speaker 1: to be executed on spot, for example by shooting or hanging.
[30:26] Speaker 1: with all the other captives being made to watch. Some
[30:30] Speaker 1: were thrown alive to the sharks as both punishment and
[30:33] Speaker 1: a terror tactic. Others might be tortured or mutilated. There
[30:38] Speaker 1: are accounts of crews cutting off the limbs of captured
[30:41] Speaker 1: rebel leaders, or forcing the remaining captives to watch as
[30:44] Speaker 1: their bodies were dragged behind the ship. These gruesome reprisals
[30:49] Speaker 1: were meant to crush any further thought of resistance. Now, ironically,
[30:56] Speaker 1: The financial loss from killing slaves in a revolt could
[31:01] Speaker 1: be mitigated by insurance. European insurers often covered losses from
[31:07] Speaker 1: insurrection or, quote, perils of the sea, effectively reimbursing slave
[31:14] Speaker 1: owners for dead captives. In one Dutch insurance policy of 1770,
[31:19] Speaker 1: a cause explicitly compensated owners for slaves lost to revolt
[31:23] Speaker 1: or thrown overboard. This practice only reinforced the view of
[31:28] Speaker 1: enslaved people as expendable. But perhaps the most infamous example
[31:34] Speaker 1: of cruelty in calculated murder at sea is the case
[31:37] Speaker 1: of the British slave ship Zong in 1781. The Zong
[31:43] Speaker 1: was overloaded with slaves, around 440 of them on board,
[31:47] Speaker 1: on a voyage from West Africa to Jamaica. Disease and
[31:51] Speaker 1: malnutrition began killing captives and crew alike, as the ship
[31:56] Speaker 1: entered the calm equatorial waters known as the doldrums. Facing
[32:00] Speaker 1: a shortage of portable water, Captain Luke Collingwood made a
[32:05] Speaker 1: horrific decision. He resolved to jettison some of the cargo
[32:11] Speaker 1: and safe supplies. And by cargo, he means the slaves.
[32:18] Speaker 1: Of course, he would then just claim insurance compensation for
[32:21] Speaker 1: the loss. Over several days, In late November 1781, the
[32:27] Speaker 1: crew disposed of 132 enslaved Africans, throwing them overboard. These
[32:37] Speaker 1: were people deemed too sick to survive, or just too
[32:42] Speaker 1: thin to fetch a good price. Another ten captives, in
[32:46] Speaker 1: a final act of defiance, jumped into the sea, rather
[32:49] Speaker 1: than be cast over. The captain later noted, quite cynically,
[32:54] Speaker 1: that it was a loss due to an act of
[32:56] Speaker 1: obstinacy on their part. In total, about 142 Africans were gone.
[33:04] Speaker 1: When the zone reached port in Black River, Jamaica, the
[33:08] Speaker 1: ship's owners filed an insurance claim for the value of
[33:11] Speaker 1: 132 slaves who had been thrown overboard. The subsequent legal
[33:16] Speaker 1: case in England, Gregson v. Gilbert, initially treated the matter
[33:21] Speaker 1: as a routine insurance dispute. essentially ruling that a captain
[33:26] Speaker 1: could lawfully dispose of cargo in emergencies. It was only
[33:30] Speaker 1: after the abolitionist Glanville Sharp publicised the case that the
[33:34] Speaker 1: British public began to grasp the inhumanity that it laid bare.
[33:39] Speaker 1: The Zong Massacre epitomises the utter devaluation of African life
[33:45] Speaker 1: in the slave trade. One later depiction of such an
[33:49] Speaker 1: atrocity appeared in an American abolitionist newspaper in 1832, showing
[33:55] Speaker 1: a captain on a Brazilian slaver having sick Africans thrown
[34:00] Speaker 1: overboard to avoid import duties, calmly treating people as disposable commodities.
[34:07] Speaker 1: As commentators noted, it was the profit motive taken to
[34:11] Speaker 1: a murderous extreme, an attitude that regarded enslaved people as
[34:17] Speaker 1: worth more dead via insurance or cost-saving than alive in
[34:22] Speaker 1: the most certain moments. This simultaneous objectification of people and
[34:28] Speaker 1: disdain for their lives allowed many crews to wantonly discard
[34:32] Speaker 1: human beings without a hint of remorse. And they did.
[34:42] Speaker 1: And so, after weeks, perhaps even months at sea, typically
[34:48] Speaker 1: a six to eight week crossing in the 18th century,
[34:52] Speaker 1: though sometimes much longer. The survivors of the Middle Passage
[34:56] Speaker 1: finally saw land on the horizon. For better or worse,
[35:01] Speaker 1: we don't really know. By the time a slave ship
[35:05] Speaker 1: approached the Americas, those still alive were often emaciated, dehydrated,
[35:12] Speaker 1: and ill-prepared. Their ordeal did not end on reaching port, however.
[35:18] Speaker 1: The captives would now be prepared for sail, just like
[35:22] Speaker 1: any other product arriving in a market. As soon as
[35:25] Speaker 1: the ship docked or anchored, the crew got busy bringing
[35:29] Speaker 1: the enslaved on deck, and began efforts to improve their appearance.
[35:37] Speaker 1: They were usually washed with buckets of seawater, or taken
[35:41] Speaker 1: to shore and bathed. After months in close confinement, many
[35:46] Speaker 1: had skin covered with grime, sores or salt from dried sweat.
[35:52] Speaker 1: The crew shaved the men's faces, sometimes their heads, to
[35:56] Speaker 1: make them look younger and healthier. Bodies were rubbed with
[36:00] Speaker 1: palm oil or grease to hide blemishes and give the
[36:04] Speaker 1: skin a sheen of vitality. If a person had wounds
[36:09] Speaker 1: or ulcers, These might be filled with hot tar as
[36:13] Speaker 1: a crude cosmetic treatment to cover raw flesh. In some cases,
[36:18] Speaker 1: dye was applied to hair to cover any greying, and ruptures,
[36:23] Speaker 1: being from hernias or from strain or injury, were trussed
[36:28] Speaker 1: up with bandages to prevent any obvious bulges. These preparations
[36:34] Speaker 1: were all aimed at fetching the highest possible price at auction.
[36:39] Speaker 1: the more marketable the product seemed, the more you could
[36:43] Speaker 1: sell it for that higher price. And of course, it
[36:47] Speaker 1: was all about getting the highest possible price. And so,
[36:52] Speaker 1: like that, all of the slaves, as best as they could,
[36:57] Speaker 1: were prepared. On shore, slave traders separated the captives by category. Now,
[37:05] Speaker 1: the categories were somewhat as follows. The prime slaves, typically
[37:10] Speaker 1: young adult males, who looked nice and healthy and strong,
[37:16] Speaker 1: were isolated for prominent auction display. Of course, these would
[37:20] Speaker 1: be the strongest workers. The slaves were there to do
[37:25] Speaker 1: the heavy lifting, so the stronger and taller someone would be,
[37:29] Speaker 1: the better slave they would be for the one who
[37:32] Speaker 1: purchases them. As for the women and the adolescent youths
[37:36] Speaker 1: they were grouped, and small children who appeared weak were
[37:40] Speaker 1: set aside. Sometimes a doctor or an assessor would examine
[37:45] Speaker 1: the captives, poking and prodding to judge their condition and
[37:50] Speaker 1: assigning them arbitrary values. Think about giving them classifications such
[37:55] Speaker 1: as first-class slaves and second-class slaves, this kind of thing.
[38:01] Speaker 1: And then came the sale itself, often a public auction
[38:05] Speaker 1: or a so-called scramble. At auctions, buyers scrutinized the Africans
[38:11] Speaker 1: as much as the crew had done back on the
[38:13] Speaker 1: coast of Africa, forcing mouths open to check teeth, filling limbs,
[38:20] Speaker 1: and making the enslaved walk or jump to assess their fitness,
[38:26] Speaker 1: sometimes making them lift heavy things, a kind of test
[38:30] Speaker 1: run of some of the work they would be doing
[38:32] Speaker 1: for the customer. Families that had managed to stay together
[38:36] Speaker 1: through the voyage were frequently torn apart at this stage,
[38:40] Speaker 1: as different buyers bid on individuals, and it was very
[38:43] Speaker 1: rare that they would purchase a whole family together. One
[38:48] Speaker 1: eyewitness in the Caribbean described children clinging to their mothers
[38:53] Speaker 1: when they realized they were about to be sold separately,
[38:57] Speaker 1: only to be dragged away by the new owners, amidst
[39:00] Speaker 1: heart-rending screams. Many newly arrived captives was so weakened that
[39:07] Speaker 1: they died soon after arrival. In fact, plantation societies like
[39:12] Speaker 1: Brazil and the Caribbean, a significant percentage of imported Africans,
[39:17] Speaker 1: perished in their first year, a period grimly referred to
[39:22] Speaker 1: as the Seasoning Time. They succumbed to new diseases, which
[39:28] Speaker 1: of course they had zealously immunity to, things like yellow
[39:33] Speaker 1: fever and all the rest, little surprises that the New
[39:37] Speaker 1: World had in store for them, or to the compounded
[39:41] Speaker 1: effects of malnutrition that the abusers suffered during the Middle Passage.
[39:47] Speaker 1: Plantation owners took this high early mortality for granted, viewing
[39:51] Speaker 1: the fresh imports as replaceable units that might not all
[39:55] Speaker 1: survive long. In North America, where conditions were somewhat less lethal,
[40:00] Speaker 1: newly arrived Africans still faced a tremendous adjustment, and often
[40:05] Speaker 1: carried lasting scars, physical and psychological, from the voyage. For
[40:11] Speaker 1: every individual, the transition from the nightmare at sea to
[40:16] Speaker 1: the harsh reality of slavery on land, was yet another
[40:20] Speaker 1: profound shock. The Middle Passage was over, but the long
[40:27] Speaker 1: journey into bondage continued, on foreign soil, in a foreign world.
[40:37] Speaker 1: Pretty horrifying, from start to finish. I'm sure you'll agree. Well,
[40:44] Speaker 1: to wrap all this up, The experience of the enslaved
[40:48] Speaker 1: people aboard the slave ship could be one of the
[40:52] Speaker 1: most horrific chapters in history. It's definitely up there. It
[40:58] Speaker 1: must be top five. The Middle Passage subjected millions to
[41:03] Speaker 1: extreme overcrowding, violence, disease, and don't forget the psychological terror. Why?
[41:12] Speaker 1: To make money That's all it was. They just wanted
[41:21] Speaker 1: to make money. Well, not good, not good at all.
[41:30] Speaker 1: We have heard in the words of those who endured
[41:32] Speaker 1: it that the holds of the slave ships became airless,
[41:37] Speaker 1: pestilential dungeons filled with loathsome filth and utter despair. We've
[41:44] Speaker 1: seen through shiplongs and accounts that how captains treated human
[41:48] Speaker 1: lives as units of profit, chaining, flogging, and even randomly
[41:53] Speaker 1: killing them with impunity. And yet, even in the depths
[41:58] Speaker 1: of this floating prison of depravity, enslaved people did their
[42:04] Speaker 1: best to resist and assert their humanity, whether through open
[42:09] Speaker 1: revolt or simple acts of singing a lament together in
[42:13] Speaker 1: the dark. By examining the Middle Passage through all the
[42:18] Speaker 1: sources in the first-hand testimony, we avoid sanitizing the past.
[42:24] Speaker 1: The facts speak plainly. The slave trade was a human
[42:28] Speaker 1: disaster on a vast scale, fueled by greed, maintained by terror.
[42:37] Speaker 1: Its broad geographical scope spanning Africa, the Americas, and Europe
[42:43] Speaker 1: meant that the legacy of this violence is global, Understanding
[42:48] Speaker 1: what enslaved people endured on the ships is essential to
[42:51] Speaker 1: understanding the history of what's going on with the diaspora
[42:56] Speaker 1: and the enduring impact of slavery. Well, unfortunately, there's still
[43:04] Speaker 1: plenty of slaves around. We might have banned the practice
[43:09] Speaker 1: in the civilized world, but it's still happening in other
[43:13] Speaker 1: parts of the world. Hopefully we can bring all that
[43:19] Speaker 1: to an end soon. It's largely thanks to the testimony
[43:23] Speaker 1: of survivors, though, like Equiano, and even the records of
[43:27] Speaker 1: the slave traders themselves that we can even talk about
[43:30] Speaker 1: this grim reality and reconstruct it so many years later.
[43:35] Speaker 1: I hope that I've presented a factual and unembellished narrative
[43:41] Speaker 1: of that experience. I'll let the brutal realities speak for themselves.
[43:48] Speaker 1: The emotional weight of the Middle Passage doesn't come from rhetoric,
[43:52] Speaker 1: but it comes from the real cries and sufferings recorded
[43:55] Speaker 1: in those historical sources, in bearing witness to their ordeal,
[44:00] Speaker 1: even at a remove of centuries. We have to acknowledge
[44:04] Speaker 1: the true human cost of the trade, ensure that the
[44:08] Speaker 1: victims' experiences are never forgotten. And with that, that's the
[44:14] Speaker 1: end of the video for today. Hmm, interesting, wasn't it?
[44:21] Speaker 1: Now I'm going to thank my top dear patrons and subscribers.
[44:25] Speaker 1: That's on YouTube and Patreon, by the way. Doug, Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Amber, Susan, Cameron, Legitmus, Carrie, Charlene, Lynn, Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edna, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuroner, Aaron, Jayden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[44:46] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Star Factory, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH,
[44:55] Speaker 1: Crystal and Tauvery. Thank you so much. Well, what did
[44:59] Speaker 1: you think about all this? I hope you enjoyed it.
[45:05] Speaker 1: I suppose you can use those words. I actually learned something.
[45:08] Speaker 1: Perhaps it was even more horrifying than you thought. But
[45:12] Speaker 1: tell me what you think. I can do a little
[45:14] Speaker 1: bit more slave history. What I will be doing is
[45:18] Speaker 1: a video about the African markets for slaves. Remember, they
[45:25] Speaker 1: were selling their own people. We will do some about that,
[45:32] Speaker 1: and we will do some video about the Islamic slave trade,
[45:35] Speaker 1: which was equally as brutal, and perhaps slavery in some
[45:39] Speaker 1: earlier times. We'll be talking a lot more about slavery.
[45:44] Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to say. But for now, we
[45:47] Speaker 1: won't be talking much because that is the end of
[45:49] Speaker 1: the video. And in a more casual fashion, I'm going
[45:53] Speaker 1: to thank you for watching. I'm going to wish you
[45:55] Speaker 1: all the best. And as always, lots of love to
[45:58] Speaker 1: you all. Stay safe, everybody. Be good to each other
[46:02] Speaker 1: out there. And good night.

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