The Middle Passage: The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade, a four hundred year time span where Africans were kidnapped from their homelands and sold into a world of hard labor. A major part of this Slave Trade was the Middle Passage, the journey from Africa to the New World. Many of the stories that we hear about the Atlantic Slave trade are about the Middle Passage. The experiences were dreadful but the way the slaves were treated varied depending on the ships that carried them.
There were two types of slave ship captains: ones that favored tight packing, who preferred quantity over quality, and ones that favored loose packing, who preferred quality over quantity. From the moment that a slave was brought on a ship, their life would be desolate, their only shining moment was …show more content…
narrates is seen in the first episode of Alex Haley’s, Roots, where the slaves are only allowed on deck every few days to keep them just healthy enough to be sold for a good price once the ship reached the New World. They were taken on deck in small groups and were forced to dance (Roots). When they were not being forced to dance on deck, they were shackled below deck and left to lay in their own filth but had room to move around (Roots). They were fed food that was barely edible and usually made them throw up so they either chose to eat the food or starved to death …show more content…
If a slave had refused to eat, a crew member would place a hot coal on a shovel and burn the lips of the slave then threaten them to swallow it if they continued with their disobedience (Falconbridge). This was not the only mistreatment that the slaves aboard this ship were subject to. The ship that he was aboard was very prone to a disease that he called the flux because he slaves were always shackled below deck where there was a lack of fresh air and the temperatures were extremely hot coupled with the fact that they were laying in their own waste, blood, and mucus (Falconbridge). On another ship, the sick slaves were taken farther below deck to a place where they had to lie on the bare planks of the ship (Falconbridge). Due to the motion of the ship, the planks often rubbed off the skin on their shoulders, elbows, and hips to the point that their bones were showing (Falconbridge). They were also often packed to the point that they could lie down was if they were on their side (Falconbridge). The men were shackled two by two as soon as they were on the ship, whereas the women were not shackled