During this scarcity with the men, the captain, besides plenty of beer and wine, had a large tea-kettle full of water every morning, and another every evening, added to his allowance. I know there was no want in the cabin, for the third mate, who was my friend, frequently gave me a little out of his own portion.
The scarcity of water is a common case: it is owing to the vessel's being stowed so full of goods for the trade, that room for necessaries is made but a secondary consideration. The occasion of this conduct appears to me to be principally this: A certain number of slaves are to be carried to the West-Indies; but before that number can be landed there, the owners are well aware how many are likely to be marked on the dead list, for the purchase of which, there must be goods sent out, as well as for the probable number that speculation has fixed to come to market. For this reason every corner and cranny is crammed with articles of traffic; to this consideration is bent every exertion of labour and ingenuity; and the health and lives of the seamen, as of no value, have but little weight in the estimation.
Besides the inexpressible misery of wanting water in such a climate, there is another very material hardship attending this avaricious accumulation of cargo. The vessel is so crowded with goods, that the sailors have no room to sling their hammocks and bedding. Before they leave the cold latitudes they lie up and down, on chests and cables, but when they come nearer the influence of the potent sun, they sleep upon deck, exposed to all the malignity of the heavy and unwholesome dews.
The advocates for the Slave-Trade endeavour to advance, that the mortality of the seamen is entirely to be attributed to the nature of the climate—but this assertion, is founded neither in veracity nor experience. The climate comes in for its share in heightening the horrid scene, but it is the previously wretched situation of the poor victims that gives it that effect. I heard our doctor, an able intelligent man, declare, that if the trade, with the same concomitant circumstances, was carried on at the Canary Islands, the same mortality would be the consequence. And I am fully convinced, that if a commerce was carried on to the coast of Africa of any other kind than that of slaving, and the captains treated their people with as much humanity as they are treated in other employs, not one of the causes of the great mortality, I have been witness to, could exist.
Among the many causes of destruction, which originate from the trade, and not from the climate, the bulk-heads between the decks, excluding a salutary circulation of air, have been insisted upon as producing these effects. But there is another which has not claimed such notice, and which yet is a terrible assistant to African mortality. This is the fabricating of an house over the vessel for the security of slaves, while on the coast.
This enclosure helps the stagnation of air, and is, in that point of view, dreadful: but it is more fatal in the act of its preparation. I know nothing more destructive than the business of cutting wood and bamboe, for the purpose of erecting and thatching this structure. The process is generally by the riverside. The faces and bodies of the poor seamen are exposed to the fervour of a burning sun, for a covering would be insupportable. They are immersed up to the waist in mud and slime; pestered by snakes, worms, and venomous reptiles; tormented by muskitoes, and a thousand assailing insects; their feet slip from under them at every stroke, and their relentless officers do not allow a moment's intermission from the painful task. This employment, the cruelty of the officers, and the inconceivably shocking task of scraping the contagious blood and filth, at every opportunity, from the places where the slaves lie, are, in my opinion, the three greatest (though by no means the sole) causes of the destruction of seamen, which this country experiences by the prosecution of the trade in slaves.
LETTER IV.
As I wish to meet and to answer every possible question that may be asked about this simple enumeration of facts, I find two plausible interrogations that may with no great impropriety be stated in the present place.
“How is it possible that captains should be so inattentive to their own and their employer's interests, as to sacrifice the very men who are to assist them in the main business of the voyage—or, if headlong cruelty prompts them to such a hazard, by what means is the complicated laborious business ever finished?”
Again—“If by some extraneous means the traffic is completed, who are then to take care of the slaves, and how are the vessels navigated to the different Western Colonies, to which they are bound?” Of these two queries the latter I shall reserve to a future discussion, and confine myself, at present, to the former.