Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Middle Passage: A Ship Surgeon's Grisly Logbook
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about the slave trade from the perspective of laws, rebellions, and the big political moves. But I want to get granular today — like, what was it actually like on board a slave ship during the Middle Passage, day by day. Luna: That's something I've always wondered — the reality beyond the numbers. Lucas: Right. And we're lucky — actually, 'lucky' is the wrong word — we have a remarkable document. In 1788, a British ship surgeon named Thomas Trotter kept a detailed logbook on the slave ship Brookes. That same Brookes that became the iconic diagram of the packed hold. Trotter wasn't an abolitionist at the time — he was a young doctor doing his job. His journal is clinical, almost cold, and that's what makes it so powerful. Luna: Wait, the Brookes diagram — that's the one that shows people packed like spoons, right? Lucas: Exactly. The Brookes was a ship from Liverpool, one of the biggest slaving ports. And Trotter's log gives us specifics. On that voyage, the Brookes carried 609 enslaved Africans. The hold was divided into shelves — platforms about two feet high. Men were chained in pairs, lying on their sides, each person having maybe 5 feet by 1.5 feet of space. Women and children were kept separate but similarly crammed. Lucas: Trotter writes about the heat, the lack of air — portholes were often sealed to prevent escape or mutiny. He said the stench was 'intolerable' even to the crew, who lived above deck. And he was a medical man, so he recorded diseases: dysentery, ophthalmia, fevers, and something called 'fixed melancholy' — what we'd call severe depression. Luna: Did he try to treat them? Lucas: He did, with the medicine of the time — bleeding, purges, mercury compounds, which probably made things worse. But what's striking is his tone. He writes about the enslaved people almost as specimens, but occasionally a human detail slips through. He describes a woman who refused to eat — went on a hunger strike. The crew tried force-feeding, but she kept vomiting. Eventually she died. Trotter notes it matter of factly, but you can sense his unease. Lucas: And then there's the water ration. Each person got a pint of water per day — that's about half a litre. Plus a small portion of rice or beans, sometimes a bit of horse beans. The Dolben Act of 1788, which came right after this voyage, tried to regulate that — it set minimum space per person and required ships to carry more surgeons. But it was still brutal. Luna: And if you're one of the listeners who's been coming along with us through these conversations, you know that making shows like this takes time and care. If you've gotten something out of them, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it really does make a difference — no ads, just listener support. So thanks to anyone who's done that. Now, back to the Brookes. Trotter also recorded what the crew did for fun. They'd sometimes bring captured Africans up on deck and force them to dance for exercise — 'dancing the slaves' they called it. It was meant to keep their muscles from atrophying, but it was also entertainment for the sailors. In one entry, Trotter mentions a crew member playing a fiddle while people in chains shuffled around. Luna: That's grotesque. Lucas: It is. But it shows how the system dehumanised everyone involved. And not just the enslaved — the crew suffered too. On that Brookes voyage, out of maybe 50 crew, about a third died or deserted before they reached the Caribbean. Disease, suicide, accidents. Trotter himself became seriously ill with fever. He survived, but many didn't. Luna: So Trotter — did he become an abolitionist later? Lucas: He did. After his time on the Brookes, he left the slave trade and became a physician in the Royal Navy. He wrote a medical treatise that was used by abolitionists to argue against the trade. His logbook was submitted to Parliament as evidence. So in a way, his clinical notes helped bring the whole thing down. There's also archaeological evidence from wrecks like the Henrietta Marie, a slave ship that sank off Florida in 1700. Excavations found shackles of different sizes — for adults and children — and beads that were used as trade goods. The material culture confirms the documents. Luna: So we have this convergence of written and physical evidence. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes the Middle Passage something we can reconstruct with real specificity. Not just 'millions died', but how they died, what they ate, how much space they had, what the surgeons saw. Trotter's log is a window into the machinery of it all. And the fact that he later turned against it — that's a redemption arc, but a small one. Because the system didn't change until much later, and only after immense struggle. Luna: It really makes you think about the people who went through that and what they carried with them afterwards. Lucas: Yeah. Survivors of the Middle Passage carried not just physical scars but the memory of that journey. And when you read accounts from formerly enslaved people like Olaudah Equiano — who we've mentioned before — you hear echoes of the same details: the stench, the chains, the despair. Trotter's log gives us the cold numbers, but Equiano gives us the soul. Lucas: In a way, that's what we're trying to do with these episodes — hold both the data and the humanity together. The Brookes diagram is an icon, but it's not an abstraction. It's 609 people, each with a name we'll never know. Luna: I'm glad we spent this time on the everyday reality of it. There's something about the small details that makes it hit harder than the big numbers. Lucas: Absolutely. Next time, we might look at the other side — the African ports where these ships loaded their cargo. The forts like Cape Coast and Elmina, and the African kingdoms that participated. But for now, I think we've got a good picture of what the Middle Passage actually was.