Life As A Slave Essay

Superior Essays
Life as a slave was never an easy life. Before they knew it, they were being captured, transported, sold, and forced to work until the day they died. The arrival of ships into Africa was new to some of the Africans. For the slave traders, seeing the ships meant more money in their pockets. From the point the slaves were captured, put onto the ship, and transported to a different location, they were to be treated as prisoners or goods rather than human beings. The voyage on the slave ships from Africa to the Western world was an extensive, horrendous, and deadly trip that millions of people were forced upon.

The slave ships were considered to be a prison as well as a factory for those aboard it. “It was also a factory and a prison,
…show more content…
No one was able to have their own living and sleeping space, for that, everyone shared. For this, the smell on the ships was horrible during the first couple nights. The sailors themselves were forced to hang hammocks under the longboats to protect themselves from elements while they slept. The sleeping quarters were strategically placed in case the enslaved would try to revolt against the crew or commit suicide throughout the night. Because the slaves were very confined throughout their stay aboard the ship, this caused many diseases and odor to develop and spread. Those who were sick, young, or dying were kept separate from the others who were …show more content…
The African slaves were forced to leave behind their homes in Africa to be brought to a new location and forced into slavery. Upon entering the ships, they were unsure what to expect. It was clear that the captain and crew needed to keep the slaves alive but they were unwilling to give them any sympathy or kindness for what they were forced into. They were stripped of their clothing, freedom, and humanity from the moment they stepped onto the ship. Unsure of what they would enter into as they got off of the ships, a majority of them were able to use their willpower to live through the voyage. The voyage on the slave ships from Africa to the Western world was an extensive, horrendous, and deadly trip that millions of African peoples were forced upon for years. Laws were created to eliminate the deaths and mistreatment of the slaves but some drew a blind-eye at it. Those that made it off the ships were in for a change of scenery than what they were used to at

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The narrative of he Slave trader description in the Atlantic passage make sense of our world by bringing order in the human experiences of the slave traders and slaves. Phillips first hand account has brought live as he journey through the…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The crew forced the slaves into tiny spaces where the slaves could barely move. Also, the crew did not offer any kind of healthcare to the slaves, so many of the slaves got sick and died. Lastly, the crew refused to tell the slaves any information about anything. Given these points, I believe the crew of the ship viewed the slaves as cargo rather than actual human…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The approved Africans would be tied up and remain under strict watch at all times. The bottom of the boats which transported the Africans were constantly filled with water. Africans were given a miniscule blanket that served as their only source of protection (“Slave”). Native Africans were treated in an unacceptable manner and caused the following generations to see the African race in a similar, negative…

    • 1257 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the poem was taken from the perspective of Robert Hayden we don’t know the emotions of other Africans but most can infer they were the same. Just as confused and sick as Hayden. The author describes the middle passage as a “voyage through death to life upon these shores”. The ships carrying the slaves according to Hayden were a “festering hold”. He knew it was just to keep slaves together to travel somewhere else.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Middle Passage Dbq

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Also, the ships were not clean at all and not well taken care of at all. For example “They suffered from heat, thirst and a lack of hygiene. Even the whites had difficulty with these things” (Portuguese Textbook 8-9-10). This means that both the slaves and whites had difficulty with the ship’s conditions. Therefore, the Middle Passage was a dangerous and difficult voyage considering the ship’s…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The big question is what did the Founding Fathers want for America? The answer is simple the Founding Fathers needed and wanted a natural American liberty. America had a lot of problems and it needed a lot of fixes. People are naturally unrestricted and happy. They are also inspired and creative.…

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There is a part in the passage where the narrator describes the Europeans as “white men with horrible looks”, this shows nothing but negative thoughts that the Europeans had created in the Africans due to their brutal and cruel actions that they performed on the ship. Also, in many parts of the story the narrator also mentions that amount of fear that he carried with him all the time, he even sometimes questioned his chances of surviving in there due to the mistreatment that he observed from the Europeans. Unfortunately, the perception that Europeans had towards the Africans is not very clear in the story since the point of view of the story comes from an African. But, there is a part in the story where the narrator mentions how one of the Europeans died from hitting a slave brutally hard. The narrator also mentions how astonished he was from watching the amount of anger that the European expressed towards this African.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slave trade came to be an important aspect that built the middle passage. Due to that from this passage African slaves came against their own will to be property of people. Once they arrived into the Americas they were seen as lesser than human beings and built only to serve. African slaves were stripped away from their rights and taken away from their homeland. While in the voyage from Africa to the Americas their treatment was inhumanly and not one of commodities.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Abuse, starvation, lice, dehydration, neglect. Cramped in a small room with others for months. The smells, the disease. You may think that a prison or even a slaughterhouse is being described, but no. These examples are common practice among slave ships travelling across the Middle Passage - that I witnessed while aboard - which transports not only goods but live human beings from the west coast of Africa.…

    • 1284 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Captain insisted on curing the slaves because they were worth his value. But eventually, majority of the people on the ship became blind. Because all the Negros have become blind, they were devalued and believed that keeping and supporting them, would be at cost them more. So in saving for their expense, they insisted on throwing all the blinded Negroes into the sea. The Europeans treated Africans as objects and were not looked at as value of life, but a value of their own benefit.…

    • 1353 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After capture, the slave captains wanted to break the slaves will to fight, for broken slaves had more value to future masters. Subsequently, more value on the auction block. Olaudah Equiano, a captured African slave, retells of his experiences aboard the slave ship by saying, “the shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole scene almost inconceivable” (Document e). Unable to comfort one another because of the shackles that bound them, the slaves sat in humiliation and discomfort, listening to the gut wrenching cries of their companions. Ottobah Cugoano, a slave, once stated, “death was more preferable than life…a plan was concerted among us that we might burn and blow up the ship…to perish together” (Document E).…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Black Loyalists

    • 1931 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The thought of what some of these slaves had to do for their freedom is terrifying. They ran the risk of being caught, tortured, and killed. The journey to freedom is not easy and most certainly not short.…

    • 1931 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But even after hearing this, Equiano preferred his past enslavement in Africa to the present situation on the foreign ship. He was rightfully fearful, as he was about to embark on the journey from Africa to the Americas, known as the “middle passage”. It estimated that nearly one-third of the slaves died during the “middle passage”, due to the terrible living conditions, unfair treatment, or suicide. Equiano was one of the few to survive this middle passage. Below deck, slaves were forced to live in their own filth.…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Underground Railroad is thought to of begun around the late 18th century. The Underground Railroad was actually not underground nor was it a railroad. It was a vast network of people helping convict slaves escape to the “promise land,” or Canada. Consisting of many individuals, some whites but predominately black, aided these slaves through the networks (history.com). George Washington, a slave owner, complained that one of his runaway slaves was helped by a “society of Quakers, formed for such purposes.”…

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Amistad Slavery

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages

    As the slave era began, the race for wealth emerged. One particular case for slave trafficking didn’t go as well for the staff of the Amistad Ship. The Amistad was a slave ship, traveling to Cuba at the time. On July 2, 1839, 53 captive Africans aboard the Amistad, had broken out of their chains three days into the journey, and boarded the main deck. With weapons that they had picked up, they had killed two of the crewmembers(captain and the cook), and disarmed the rest.…

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays