NARRATOR: From
about 1525 to 1866,
12 and 1/2 million Africans
were taken from their homeland
and forcibly transported
across the Atlantic, a journey
that approximately 2 million
of them would not survive.
By the turn of the 18th
century, European merchants
were building vessels capable
of transporting hundreds
of enslaved people per journey.
These ships had extra
portholes for ventilation,
weapons mounted on deck
in case of rebellion,
and additional compartments
added below deck
to take on more human cargo.
Before boarding the ships
at African port cities,
enslaved people were
stripped of their clothing
and remaining
possessions, and had
their heads forcibly shaved.
During boarding, which could
take weeks or even months,
enslaved people lived
on the deck of the ship
in a temporary wooden house
constructed by the crew.
The crew also installed
netting around
the deck of the ship,
designed to catch
those enslaved who might opt
for death over forced servitude.
Once moved below
deck, enslaved people
would find themselves stuffed
into compartments with ceilings
as low as four and a half
feet, where they would
spend most of their voyage.
They were segregated
by gender and age.
Adult men were kept separately
and shackled in pairs,
women usually left unchanged in
their designated compartment,
and children often free
to move about the ship.
There were no sanitary
facilities of any kind.
Enslaved people were forced to
relieve themselves where they
sat, creating hellish
conditions when
combined with the heat and
lack of ventilation below deck.
Disease was rampant.
Dysentery, malaria,
yellow fever, smallpox,
measles, and influenza ravaged
the enslaved and crew members
alike.
The enslaved people generally
spent about eight hours a day
above deck, but were
still separated by gender
with a barricado, a reinforced
wall that could be used
to protect crew members
in case of a revolt.
Enslaved people were also
subject to forced exercise,
which sometimes included dance
and song for the entertainment
of the crew.
Enslaved captives deemed
disobedient were tortured
and beaten, usually whipped
with the especially cruel cat o'
nine tails, a tool designed
to inflict maximum pain.
Enslaved people who refused to
eat their typical meal of rice
and beans were forced
to do so, sometimes
with a speculum oris,
a medieval tool used
to force open a person's mouth.
Women, while usually
left unshackled,
were raped and sexually
abused by members of the crew,
sometimes arriving in the new
world carrying the children
of their attackers.
But it was the women, using
their miniscule freedoms,
who would often coordinate
mutinies against their captors.
But these rebellions
were rarely successful.
The true extent of the
horrors of the Middle Passage
came to light in a 1783 court
trial over the slave ship Zong.
The Zong left present day
Ghana in August of 1781
with 442 enslaved onboard.
After a two-month journey,
riddled with navigation errors,
62 enslaved people
and seven crew members
had perished without
reaching their destination.
Disease was spreading
throughout the ship,
and fresh water was
running dangerously low.
Captain Luke Collingwood was
afraid of the financial cost
of more deaths.
Enslaved people
that died of disease
were not covered by
the ship's insurance,
but the enslaved
who drowned were.
Collingwood ordered
approximately 130 enslaved
people thrown overboard.
He claimed it was
necessary to do so
to halt the spread of disease.
At the trial between
the Zong's owners
and their insurance
company, the owners
argued that because it was
legal to kill sick animals
for the health of a ship,
it was legal to treat
enslaved people the same.
The court agreed with
the ship's owners,
but the trial itself exposed
the horrors aboard the Zong,
and its story was republished
by British abolitionists
with the name of the
ship redacted, meant
to show that this tragedy
could happen on any ship
transporting enslaved people
across the Middle Passage.
24 years after the Zong
trial, the International Slave
Trade was outlawed in both Great
Britain and the United States.
It would take England
an additional 26 years,
and the US another 58
years plus a civil war
before the practice of slavery
was officially abolished.
