The Crew Captain Chapter Summary
The first leg of the journey entailed leaving the home port and sailing to the African coast to pick up Africans who would be sold as slaves in the New World. The middle passage is the portion of the journey in which Africans were transported to the New World, particularly the Caribbean, “Hispaniola,” or the American South, the “barracoons of Florida.” The third part of the trip was the return to the home port.
The diary conveys the uneasiness, fear, and anxiety of the crew: “misfortune follows in our wake like sharks.” It also describes the ways in which captured Africans committed suicide to avoid enslavement: “some try to starve themselves[some] leaped with crazy laughter to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.” The sailor’s voice …show more content…
also questions why he and his crewmates are cursed—“Which one of us has killed an albatross?”
The voice of the court transcript contrasts a public account of the slave trade—“cargo of five hundred blacksstowed spoon-fashion”—with the previous private account of the middle passage.
The deposition describes the nature of the “plague among our blacks”—physical diseases, madness, and thirst arising from “sweltering” conditions—and a shipwreck. The lasciviousness and immorality of the “Crew and Captain” are indirectly introduced as a “curse” upon the captured Africans: “the negroes howling and their chains entangled with the flames,”
The horrible conditions of the Middle Passage are hard to overstate. Captive Africans were packed together in cargo areas with barely enough room to breathe, to the point that it was common for slaves to die from a lack of breathable air. Upon boarding the ships, slaves were regularly chained to their neighbors, left foot to right foot, on rough wooden floors. If the weather was good, the journey could take around six weeks, but if it wasn't favorable, this hellish journey could take much …show more content…
longer.
As bad as this was, it could conceivably be much worse. In 1781, the slave ship Zong was headed for Jamaica when disease broke out among the captives. The ships were unsanitary and disease spread through the air like dysentery, etc. People got smallpox and had to share out of bucket to eat food. It was 10 people at each bucket with unwashed hands touching the food that made it spread, more and more people got sick. People were exhausted, committed suicide, and lots of murders happened during that journey.
At least 2 million africans died during the middle passage. European men would force sex onto the African women and they didn’t want sexual intercorse witth them at all so they fought back. And sex drives where into play.
The separation of slaves made the women easier targets to have sex with, and African women worth half the price of an African man in the caribbean markets.
The middle passage usually took 7 weeks. “At last, when the ship we were in, had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel. ...The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome....The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died -- thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their
purchasers”.
when disease began to spread, the dying were sometimes thrown overboard. In November 1781, around 470 slaves were crammed aboard the slave ship Zong. During the voyage to Jamaica, many got sick. Seven crew and sixty Africans died. Captain Luke Collingwood ordered the sick enslaved Africans, 133 in total, thrown overboard (one survived). When the Zong arrived back in England, its owners claimed for the value of the slaves from their insurers. They argued that they had little water and the sick Africans posed a threat to the remaining cargo and crew. In 1783, the owners won their case. This case did much to show the horrors of the trade and sway public opinion against it.
The diary conveys the uneasiness, fear, and anxiety of the crew: “misfortune follows in our wake like sharks.” It also describes the ways in which captured Africans committed suicide to avoid enslavement: “some try to starve themselves[some] leaped with crazy laughter to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.” The sailor’s voice …show more content…
also questions why he and his crewmates are cursed—“Which one of us has killed an albatross?”
The voice of the court transcript contrasts a public account of the slave trade—“cargo of five hundred blacksstowed spoon-fashion”—with the previous private account of the middle passage.
The deposition describes the nature of the “plague among our blacks”—physical diseases, madness, and thirst arising from “sweltering” conditions—and a shipwreck. The lasciviousness and immorality of the “Crew and Captain” are indirectly introduced as a “curse” upon the captured Africans: “the negroes howling and their chains entangled with the flames,”
The horrible conditions of the Middle Passage are hard to overstate. Captive Africans were packed together in cargo areas with barely enough room to breathe, to the point that it was common for slaves to die from a lack of breathable air. Upon boarding the ships, slaves were regularly chained to their neighbors, left foot to right foot, on rough wooden floors. If the weather was good, the journey could take around six weeks, but if it wasn't favorable, this hellish journey could take much …show more content…
longer.
As bad as this was, it could conceivably be much worse. In 1781, the slave ship Zong was headed for Jamaica when disease broke out among the captives. The ships were unsanitary and disease spread through the air like dysentery, etc. People got smallpox and had to share out of bucket to eat food. It was 10 people at each bucket with unwashed hands touching the food that made it spread, more and more people got sick. People were exhausted, committed suicide, and lots of murders happened during that journey.
At least 2 million africans died during the middle passage. European men would force sex onto the African women and they didn’t want sexual intercorse witth them at all so they fought back. And sex drives where into play.
The separation of slaves made the women easier targets to have sex with, and African women worth half the price of an African man in the caribbean markets.
The middle passage usually took 7 weeks. “At last, when the ship we were in, had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel. ...The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome....The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died -- thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their
purchasers”.
when disease began to spread, the dying were sometimes thrown overboard. In November 1781, around 470 slaves were crammed aboard the slave ship Zong. During the voyage to Jamaica, many got sick. Seven crew and sixty Africans died. Captain Luke Collingwood ordered the sick enslaved Africans, 133 in total, thrown overboard (one survived). When the Zong arrived back in England, its owners claimed for the value of the slaves from their insurers. They argued that they had little water and the sick Africans posed a threat to the remaining cargo and crew. In 1783, the owners won their case. This case did much to show the horrors of the trade and sway public opinion against it.