Shackled together "spoon-wise," as the phrase was, they suffered and sweltered through the long middle passage, dying by scores, so that often a fifth of the cargo perished during the voyage. The stories of those who took part in the effort to suppress the traffic give some idea of its frightful cruelty.
The Rev. Pascoa Grenfell Hill, a chaplain in the British navy, once made a short voyage on a slaver which his ship, the "Cleopatra," had captured. The vessel had a full cargo, and when the capture was effected, the negroes were all brought on deck for exercise and fresh air. The poor creatures quite understood the meaning of the sudden change in their masters, and kissed the hands and clothing of their deliverers. The ship was headed for the Cape of Good Hope, where the slaves were to be liberated; but a squall coming on, all were ordered below again. "The night," enters Mr. Hill in his journal, "being intensely hot, four hundred wretched beings thus crammed into a hold twelve yards in length, seven feet in breadth, and only three and one-half feet in height, speedily began to make an effort to reissue to the open air. Being thrust back and striving the more to get out, the afterhatch was forced down upon them. Over the other hatchway, in the fore part of the vessel, a wooden grating was fastened. To this, the sole inlet for the air, the suffocating heat of the hold and, perhaps, panic from the strangeness of their situation, made them flock, and thus a great part of the space below was rendered useless. They crowded to the grating and clinging to it for air, completely barred its entrance. They strove to force their way through apertures in length fourteen inches and barely six inches in breadth, and in some instances succeeded. The cries, the heat, I may say without exaggeration, the smoke of their torment which ascended can be compared to nothing earthly. One of the Spaniards gave warning that the consequences would be 'many deaths;' this prediction was fearfully verified, for the next morning 54 crushed and mangled corpses were brought to the gangway and thrown overboard. Some were emaciated from disease, many bruised and bloody. Antoine tells me that some were found strangled; their hands still grasping each others' throats."
It is of a Brazilian slaver that this awful tale is told, but the event itself was paralleled on more than one American ship. Occasionally we encounter stories of ships destroyed by an exploding magazine, and the slaves, chained to the deck, going down with the wreck. Once a slaver went ashore off Jamaica, and the officers and crew speedily got out the boats and made for the beach, leaving the human cargo to perish. When dawn broke it was seen that the slaves had rid themselves of their fetters and were busily making rafts on which the women and children were put, while the men, plunging into the sea, swam alongside, and guided the rafts toward the shore. Now mark what the white man, the supposed representative of civilization and Christianity, did. Fearing that the negroes would exhaust the store of provisions and water that had been landed, they resolved to destroy them while still in the water. As soon as the rafts came within range, those on shore opened fire with rifles and muskets with such deadly effect that between three hundred and four hundred blacks were murdered. Only thirty-four saved themselves—and for what? A few weeks later they were sold in the slave mart at Kingston.
In the early days of the trade, the captains dealt with recognized chiefs along the coast of Guinea, who conducted marauding expeditions into the interior to kidnap slaves. Rum was the purchase price, and by skillful dilution, a competent captain was able to double the purchasing value of his cargo. The trade was not one calculated to develop the highest qualities of honor, and to swindling the captains usually added theft and murder. Any negro who came near the ship to trade, or through motives of curiosity, was promptly seized and thrust below. Dealers who came on board with kidnapped negroes were themselves kidnapped after the bargain was made. Never was there any inquiry into the title of the seller. Any slave offered was bought, though the seller had no right—even under legalized slavery—to sell.
A picturesque story was told in testimony before the English House of Commons. To a certain slaver lying off the Windward coast a girl was brought in a canoe by a well-known black trader, who took his pay and paddled off. A few moments later another canoe with two blacks came alongside and inquired for the girl. They were permitted to see her and declared she had been kidnapped; but the slaver, not at all put out by that fact, refused to give her up. Thereupon the blacks paddled swiftly off after her seller, overtook, and captured him. Presently they brought him back to the deck of the ship—an article of merchandise, where he had shortly before been a merchant.
"You won't buy me," cried the captive. "I a grand trading man! I bring you slaves."