African Americans In The 18th Century

During the 1700-1800s, slave ships were vile because of what happened before, during, and after the transport. In the fist place, slavers used to capture people of different villages in Africa to use them as slaves. Then, the traders took them to forts where they made the captives wait until the slave ships arrived. The captains normally fit between 500 and 800 slaves in the ships which were going to venture in long trips of several weeks. Once they got to their destination, traders and captains sold the slaves to different traders, to other countries, or to people who had a lot of money to offer for the slaves. First of all, Africans would have to be removed by force of their homes. Usually, slaves were captured in battles, kidnapped from
So, once the slave ships arrived, they were laden with trade goods and slaves who were taken to the New World in long journeys shackel to one another. The captains started taking around 300-400 slaves in each ship, and they ended up taking around 800-900. The fisrt journeys during the 17th century, took from 35 to 50 days, and a lot of the slaves died all along the trip. Although, during the 18th century, the ships were bigger and the journeys took around 30 days. The captains tried to make the trips as short as possible because they knew that more days at the sea, implicated more deaths among the cargo. Before leaving the coast where they laden all the slaves and goods, the crew offered gifts to the leaders at the coast and paid taxes for the right to trade. By the time the slave ship arrived, it was the moment to load the boats with slaves. There were two different ways of doing this work. One of them was called loose packing, where the captains transported fewer slaves than their ships could carry in order to reduce the posibilities of disease and death among them. The other system was called tight packing. It was the worst system because the captains
His story began when he saw the slave ship waiting for its cargo at the coast. He was terrified. He did not know what the 'white people' was going to do with him, he expected them to kill him. Then, the slavers took him and the other slaves under the decks, where he experienced the worst smells and conditions ever. Due to that, he got sick, so he did not want to eat, but the sailors whipped him and forced him to eat. Olaudah wanted to die, but he knew the slavers watched them closely trying to prevent that to happen. He saw how cruel the crew was with the slaves, and not just with them, but with other white people too. When the captain let the whole cargo go on deck for the fresh air, it soon became pestilential, and Olaudah could not stand that smell anymore. That situation got worse with the different noises people were making; galling of the chains, shrieks of the women, the groans of the dying, etc. It was just an inconceivable scene of horror which was not over for