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What Life On a Slave Ship Was Like
Aug 19, 2025
The Atlantic Slave Trade saw millions of Africans removed from their homeland, shipped across an ocean, and forced to work in brutal conditions in the Americas. The trip itself, known as the Middle Passage, was a horrible, deadly, and inhumane experience. The conditions on slave ships were dirty, scary, and offered no amount of comfort to the enslaved passengers.
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The Atlantic slave trade saw millions of Africans
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taken from their homeland, shipped across the ocean, and forced to work in brutal conditions in the Americas
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The trip itself, known as the Middle Passage, was a horrible, deadly, and inhumane experience
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The conditions on slaving ships were dirty, scary, and offered no amount of comfort to the enslaved passengers
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So today, we're going to take a look at the brutal misery of life on slave ships
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Slavery was part of African society long before the arrival of European slave traders
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But the type of slavery practiced in the African tradition was very different. Captives, who could
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be debtors, prisoners of war, or political prisoners, were traded within the continent
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as a sign of wealth, but slaves were not considered chattel. With the influx of Islamic merchants
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slaves from Africa were transported to the Mediterranean and later to the Americas by
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European merchants. When Europeans arrived in Africa, they first tried to raid the area themselves
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Those raids weren't particularly successful. So Europeans changed strategies and began buying enslaved people from African slave traders
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in places like the Kingdom of the Congo. The influx of European money proved highly tempting
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and African traders started raiding nearby areas to acquire more people to sell to the Europeans
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Captives from throughout Africa were brought together in port cities to be transported
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across the Atlantic Ocean. As they moved around from place to place on their journey towards the
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coast, the enslaved Africans would be chained to one another in slave trains. The people in these
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trains came from completely different backgrounds, spoke different languages, and may never have even
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seen the ocean before. Another thing that's certain is that most had never been on a ship
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like the ones they were about to board. Once at the port city, slaves were marched onto ships
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and put below deck. After being freed, former slave Ola Dua Equiano
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who was active in the abolition movement in England in the 18th century, wrote about his experiences
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When it came to his journey on a slave ship, he described the initial confusion and shock he felt
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According to Equiano, he wasn't sure if the white men were going to kill him or eat him
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Once he was on board, he saw, in his own words, A multitude of black people of every description chained together every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow He was so terrified he fainted The chains used on the enslaved Africans
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would chafe and dig into their skin, making movement painful. With such a high death rate among the Middle Passage
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many of the captives would quickly find themselves tethered to the dead. Slave ships were designed to carry hundreds of people
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but in the interest of profit, they were usually severely overcrowded. Captives were often packed into the ship so tightly that
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they had no more than a few feet to move, sit, or sleep. Conditions were so cramped that the
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enslaved wouldn't even have been able to find a bucket to defecate or urinate in, thus forcing
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them to stay in their own waste. Engravings depicting the conditions on the infamous ship
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the Brooks, which were later a key exhibit in the argument against the slave trade
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showed how slaves were to be put below deck and carried onto slave ships
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Prior to the passage of the Regulation Act of 1788, the Brooks carried over 700 slaves
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After the law was passed, regulations restricted the number of captives aboard to about 450
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In his memoirs, Equiano also described what met him when he went below deck on the slave ship
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According to the man himself, the first thing he was hit by was an ungodly stench
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like he had never experienced in his life. It was so overpowering, he was unable to eat, and he wished for what he considered his last friend, death, to relieve him
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It is known that slaves were sometimes taken above deck and bathed, weather permitting, but it didn't make much of a difference
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The periodic washings were no match for the brutal conditions. The punishment for captives who didn't listen to the crew, tried to escape, didn't eat
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or showed any sign of defiance was usually a flogging. When he refused to eat, Equiano was
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punished by two men. One held him by the hands and tied his feet, while the other flogged him
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severely. According to another source, if slaves refused to participate in the daily exercises
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deemed necessary for the preservation of their health, or if they went about it reluctantly or did not move with agility
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they were also flogged. A cat-o'-9 tails would often be used to administer the punishment
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Branding and torture devices were also frequently employed to drive the enslaved into submission
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When insurrections did break out from time to time, those participating would be met with fierce punishment Many captives felt they had nothing to lose however and would rise up against the crew regardless of the risks They typically found themselves facing cannon fire muskets
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and more bloodshed. Captives were only allowed to go topside when the weather permitted
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Otherwise, they stayed in the heat and stench below deck. With hundreds of people bound together in such a small space
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Equiano said things became absolutely pestilential, and the conditions bred disease among the captives
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According to his writings, the overcrowded spaces, combined with the heat of the climate
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was literally suffocating. The conditions made everyone sweat profusely, and the air soon became unfit for respiration
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from a variety of loathsome smells. Many of the slaves became sick and died
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The inhumane conditions on slave ships encouraged the spread of disease, particularly dysentery
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also known at the time as the Flux. In his accounts from his time at sea
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slave merchant John Newton describes numerous captives dying due to the Flux
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and the fear of outbreaks sweeping over the ship. According to one former ship surgeon
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the floor of the rooms was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the Flux
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that it resembled a slaughterhouse. Other diseases, including scurvy, influenza, measles, malaria, and smallpox
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were also common, and the mortality rate on slave ships was as high as 15%
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Given the chance, many of the enslaved tried to end their own lives
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Their methods, however, would vary. According to John Newton, captives might refuse to eat
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but try to poison themselves. Others would try to jump overboard into the sea
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To prevent this, many ships were outfitted with suicide nets. Even if someone could get through the nets
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many ships would send boats out to bring them back. And it wasn't for altruistic reasons
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To the crew, any enslaved person lost along the way meant a reduction of profits
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Because they were deemed better for labor, the majority of captives were men. But women were enslaved too
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On the ships, men and women were kept apart from one another. Women and girls were often not kept in chains
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like their male counterparts. And on some slave ships, the captain slept in a hammock
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over the girls. But the women faced some dangers that were different from what the men faced
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Namely they could be sexually brutalized by the crew John Newton recorded a story about one of his crewmen assaulting a pregnant woman aboard his ship According to Newton a man named William Cooney seduced a woman slave down into the room
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and lay with her brute-like in view of the whole quarterdeck. As punishment for the offense
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which Newton believed was the first of its kind on his ship, he had Cooney placed in irons and
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swore, if anything happens to the woman, I shall impute it to him, for she was big with child
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For reasons of profitability, keeping the human cargo alive throughout the trip was essential
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Crew members did whatever it took to get them to eat. The slaves' diet included bread, beans, and salted meat
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If a person refused to eat, they were flogged, as much to punish them as to demonstrate to
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the other captives that resistance was not tolerated. Take the story of a slave who was transported on the Loyal George, a ship that crossed the
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Atlantic to Barbados in 1727. He refused to eat until he was reduced to mostly skin and bones
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and became sick. The captain of the ship, one Timothy Tucker, became outraged and began to fear
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that the slave's actions might inspire the other 200 captives he had on board
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So he had his cabin boy fetch a large horse whip to flog the slave with
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But in this case, it didn't work. Despite the captain threatening to kill the slave
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the man simply replied, Adoma, which in his own language essentially meant
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so be it. Crew members would also force feed the slaves. They used a special piece of equipment called the Speculum Oris, which was a long, thin mechanical contraption used to force open unwilling throats to receive gruel and hence sustenance
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After at least six to eight weeks aboard the ship, the enslaved people arrived at a port in the Americas, and they didn't know what would happen next
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According to Equiano, at first, the slaves believed that they were going to be eaten
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but the slavers brought some older slaves from land to pacify them. The older slaves told them they were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go
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on land, where they would see many from their own countries. Equiano recalled, this report eased us much, and sure enough, soon after we were landed
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we saw Africans of all languages. After that, they were immediately taken to a merchant's yard, where they were pent up
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together, like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age. At this point, the trip was
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over, but the nightmare of enslavement had just begun
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