Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Middle Passage: Below Decks on a Slave Ship
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot in previous episodes about the mechanics of the slave trade — the treaties, the ports, the auctions, the revolts. But I realised we've never actually gone below deck. So today I want to talk about the Middle Passage — the journey itself. Luna: I've read the numbers — something like 12 million people were taken across the Atlantic. But what was it actually like on those ships? Lucas: That's exactly what I want to get at. The slave ship was a factory — a purpose-built machine for transforming a free human being into a commodity. And the crossing, which could last anywhere from three weeks to three months depending on winds and currents, was the crucible. Lucas: We have some really vivid firsthand accounts. Olaudah Equiano, who we've talked about before, was kidnapped as a boy from what's now Nigeria and taken aboard a slave ship. He later wrote about the 'horrors of that abominable business' — the stench, the screaming, the chained bodies packed so tightly they could barely move. Luna: Packed — that word always gets me. How many people would they cram into a single ship? Lucas: It depended on the ship's size and the greed of the captain and investors. But there were two basic philosophies: 'tight packing' and 'loose packing.' Tight packing meant fitting as many enslaved people as possible into the hold, even if it meant higher death rates — the idea being that sheer volume would still yield a profit. Loose packing meant giving them a bit more space, hoping lower mortality would offset the smaller cargo. Lucas: The most famous illustration of this is the Brookes diagram — a plan of a slave ship that abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson used to shock the British public. It showed enslaved people arranged like sardines on shelves, with just enough room to lie on their sides. The Brookes was legally allowed to carry 454 people, but the diagram showed how even that was a torture chamber. Luna: I've seen that image — it's devastating. The bodies are drawn like cargo, not people. Lucas: Exactly. And the reality was worse than the diagram. Men were chained in pairs — usually right wrist to left ankle — and forced to lie in rows. They were often packed so tightly that if one person died during the night, the bodies would remain propped up until morning because there was no space to fall. Women and children were usually kept separate, sometimes in the same hold but not chained as heavily — though that often exposed them to sexual abuse from the crew. Lucas: Then there was the disease. Dysentery, smallpox, measles, ophthalmia — all spread like wildfire in those conditions. The slave ship surgeon was a key figure; he was supposed to keep the cargo healthy, but his real job was to maximise profit. Some surgeons kept meticulous journals — part medical, part commercial. Luna: What did those journals say? Did they show any compassion? Lucas: Mostly not. They recorded the number of 'refuse' — that's the term they used for bodies thrown overboard. They calculated mortality rates as a cost of doing business. One surgeon named Alexander Falconbridge, who later became an abolitionist, wrote that he saw enslaved people 'so dejected and melancholy that they would sometimes refuse to eat' — and the crew would force-feed them using a speculum oris, a metal device that pried the jaws open. Luna: God, that's horrific. And I imagine this is where the Zong massacre fits in — the case where the captain threw 133 enslaved people overboard to claim insurance. Lucas: Right. That was in 1781. The Zong's captain, Luke Collingwood, argued that his ship was running low on water — though that was later disputed — and that jettisoning the 'cargo' was necessary to save the rest. The insurance case, Gregson v Gilbert, basically treated the enslaved as property, and the court agreed that if it was a 'peril of the sea,' the insurers had to pay. It took Granville Sharp and the abolitionists to turn that atrocity into a rallying cry. Lucas: But the Zong wasn't an outlier — it was an extreme example of a daily logic. Enslaved people were seen as units with a price. If a ship was sickly, some captains would even 'wash the decks' by forcing the enslaved up top and hosing them down with seawater — not out of care, but to clean the filth and maybe revive a few for sale. Luna: And the enslaved themselves — they resisted, right? Even on those ships? Lucas: Absolutely. There were constant attempts at revolt. One of the most remarkable is the 1734 uprising on the Little George, a Rhode Island sloop. The enslaved Africans, taken from what's now Sierra Leone, managed to break their chains, kill three of the seven crew members, and take control of the ship. They tried to sail back to Africa but didn't know how to navigate, so they ended up in the Azores, where the Portuguese authorities eventually arrested them. Luna: So close to freedom. Did any succeed — actually sail back? Lucas: A few. There are records of ships being taken over and successfully returned, though they're rare. More common were individual acts of defiance — refusing food, jumping overboard, pretending to be sick to slow the ship down. Suicide was a constant fear for captains. Some enslaved people believed that if they died, they would return to Africa in spirit, so they would throw themselves into the ocean. Crews sometimes fitted nets around the deck to catch jumpers. Luna: You know, Lucas, listening to this — the sheer scale of dehumanisation, the systematic cruelty — it makes me think about what keeps a show like this going. It's not easy material, but it's so important. And I'm glad we have a space where we can talk about it without ad breaks or corporate sponsors. Lucas: Yeah, that's something I've been reflecting on too. For anyone coming with us through these conversations — about the Middle Passage, about the revolts, about the whole architecture of the slave trade — if you've found value in this deep dive, know that we keep this show ad-free entirely thanks to listeners who choose to support it. It's a small thing, but it means we can keep tackling these stories without any outside pressure. Luna: Exactly. And if anyone wants to help with that, they can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure — just if it feels right. Lucas: Okay, back to the ships. One thing I find particularly chilling is the roll — the way a slave ship would move in the waves when the enslaved were packed below. Many accounts describe a constant moaning from the hold, a low sound that would rise and fall with the ship's motion. Some captains even forced the enslaved to dance on deck — partly for exercise, partly to keep them alive for sale, but also because a silent ship was a suspicious one. Luna: They made them dance? Under those conditions? Lucas: Yes. It was called 'dancing the slaves.' The crew would bring them up on deck in groups, often still chained, and make them jump and move to the rhythm of a whip or a drum. If they refused, they were flogged. It was a grotesque parody of joy — designed to keep the cargo alive and tractable. Some captains even wrote about it in their logs as 'giving them the fresh air and exercise.' Lucas: And then, at the end of the journey, came the 'scrubbing' — cleaning the hold of blood, excrement, and the dead. The ship would be perfumed with vinegar or lime juice. Then the enslaved were oiled, their sores covered, their grey hair dyed black. They were made presentable for the auction block. Luna: So the entire crossing was a performance — a performance of order and health that masked absolute horror. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why the Middle Passage is so central to understanding the slave trade. It wasn't just a journey — it was the mechanism that turned a person into a thing. And the fact that it happened over and over, thousands of times, for centuries, is something we can't afford to forget.