Just before we left the coast, and when the rooms were so crowded, that the slaves were packed together to a degree of pain, there came a boat-load of slaves along-side in the night, after all those on board had been put below. The new comers were also put down, to shift for themselves, and of course much noise ensued. In the womens' room, this was sadly increased by one of the strangers being so unfortunate as to throw down a certain tub. In the morning she was tied up to the captain's bed, with her face close to his, and a person was ordered to flog her. The idea of the sex operating on the unwilling executioner, she did not receive her punishment with all the severity that was expected. The executioner was himself immediately tied up, and for the lenity he had shewn, received a violent lashing. The woman was then flogged till her back was full of holes. I remember, that in healing them, they were so thick, that I was forced to cut two or three of them into one, to apply the dressings.
That the chief tortures are applied to the unhappy sufferers, on refusing the diet that is offered them, has been fully mentioned by others. We had our share of them; and the lash was often inflicted until the poor victims fainted away with pain. Two women, by many degrees the two finest slaves in the ship, felt a severity of this kind with such poignancy, that folding themselves in each others arms, they plunged over the poop of the vessel into the sea, and were drowned. We were obliged to put all the women immediately below, as they cried out in a most affecting manner, and many of them were preparing to follow their companions. These are the people whom the good trader's represent, as wanting every kind of sensibility!
Were I to transcribe a regular journal of the usage of the slaves on the middle passage, it would be but a repetition of acts similar to the above, and varied perhaps only by the circumstances that attended it. One instance more of brutality I would, however, willingly relate, as practiced by the captain on an unfortunate slave, of the age of eight or nine, but that I am obliged to withhold it; for though my heart bleeds at the recollection, though the act is too atrocious and bloody to be passed over in silence, yet as I cannot express it in any words that would not severely wound the feelings of the delicate reader, I must be content with suffering it to escape among those numerous hidden and unrevealed enormities, the offspring of barbarity and despotism, that are committed daily in the prosecution of this execrable trade.
Before I quit this subject of the Slaves, I must mention a circumstance that, I dare say very often occurs, though perhaps seldom with so advantageous a succedaneum. The doctor and his mate being both dead, the medicine chest was given into my charge and disposal: a knowledge of Latin, and a little medical reading, were all my qualifications. What a situation would it have been for an ignorant, an unfeeling, or an indolent man! Medicines or poisons to be dealt out promiscuously to such a number of persons, all afflicted with disease, during a passage through the tedious latitudes across the Atlantic. The only directions I had to go by, were a few remarks on the last stage of the flux, written in a minute or two, by a surgeon at St. Thomas's, on a bit of cartridge paper.
LETTER VII.
The principles of the Slave Trade, and the conduct of the officers on the voyage, are alike, in all the cases I have met with, whether from actual knowledge, or well-attested information. Publications therefore of this kind must grow tiresome, and be necessarily marked with an unfavourable degree of sameness; unfavorable, I mean, with regard to the patience of cold, dispassionate readers: for, taken in another point of view, it seems to give additional strength to the cause. Is it not a strong presumptive proof of the veracity of the circumstances that have been offered, that a number of men, unknown to each other, from different parts of the kingdom, dating their facts so long asunder, bringing their scenes of destruction from different places and vessels, without an invitation, without interest to serve, without any other purpose than that of supporting the cause of humanity, should concur in such a wonderful degree, that a warm reader would be almost led to imagine, that the observations were all made on one voyage, and the misery and murder the produce of the same vessel? And, yet, to a multitude of proofs is opposed the simple unsupported affirmation, that the practice is not general. I have again to declare, that though I made every possible inquiry, and had the very best opportunity for those inquiries, on the coast, in the West Indies, and in England, I never heard but of one Guinea vessel, in which the usage and conduct were in any degree of moderation. The lists were filled with famine, flogging, torture, and every horrid species of wanton barbarity and oppression.
I will not, Sir, press any farther upon your time. I hope you will excuse the inaccuracies to be found in these letters, and if I should have appeared either warm or earnest, let it be remembered how hard it is to be cold in such a cause; that these remarks have not been compiled from the patient and laborious stores of collected evidence; but come warm from a heart that has felt the miseries it describes, and from a recollection, that still smarts with the barbarities it has witnessed.
THE END.
Transcriber's note
The original orthography of the book has been preserved, even though some variants or systematic misspellings may be accidental. Among them, circumsance/circumstance, mein/mien (both rhyming with scene), bussines/business, the'. Contemporary texts have been consulted for parallel occurrences of dubious spellings like womens' room, anavoidable, which have been retained.