Introduction
Since the Portuguese first began to sell black slaves in the middle of the 15th century, it was not until 1807 that some countries in Europe and America banned the trans- Atlantic slave trade. Even if there is a law expressly prohibiting it, it still There are warships patrolling nearby, but there are still many slave traders who choose to take risks for super high profits and smuggle black slaves.
Tips: In 1441 AD, a Portuguese expedition led by Anto Gonçalves and Nuno Tristao looted 10 black Africans off the coast of Cape Brown, Africa. Bring back Lisbon for sale, it was the beginning of the black slave trade in Europe.
Some historians claim that in the long history of the black slave trade for more than 400 years, Africa has lost more than 100 million people because of this. This figure is equivalent to the total population of Africa in 1980. Of course This is not to say that 100 million Africans have reached the Americas. In fact, most of the people lost in Africa died in the slave wars that captured slaves, road transport and slave ships.
Transporting black slaves on the road
According to Harvard University Ph.D. Du Bois estimates, about every black slave shipped to the Americas, five blacks will die in the process of hunting and trafficking. . Therefore, even if the number of black slaves that arrived in the Americas in 400 years is underestimated to 10 million (the actual number is far more than this number), at least 50 million black slaves died in hunting and trafficking. In the process.
The black slaves who were unfortunately arrested had to take a hell-like journey on a slave ship during their journey from West Africa to the Americas. During these dozens of days of voyage, a large number of Of the black slaves will be thrown off the slave ship, and the dead will be just like common food.
slave trade advertisement
In fact, it was because the transatlantic slave trade was extremely dangerous that the insurance industry in the European countries at that time promoted the rapid development. Many investors or owners of slave ships will spend a large sum of money to purchase more than one insurance policy from insurance merchants before the ship goes to sea, because they know that although high insurance premiums will reduce their income, but the black slaves on the slave ships The mortality rate is too high. If they don't buy insurance, they can't worry about it and can't afford to lose property.
There are many reasons for the high mortality rate of black slaves on slave ships, such as despair, torture, and poor living conditions. There is some doubt about the high mortality rate on slave ships.
The narrow slave ship
In order to transport as many black slaves as possible at one time, Europeans had invented slave ships specializing in the sale of black slaves as early as the 17th century, these ships Some use the noble name as the name of the ship, and some use the rainbow as the name of the ship. But no matter how nice the names of these slave ships are, to black slaves, slave ships are floating hells.
Slave Boat
On the slave boat, there is a mezzanine (cargo compartment) used to "store" black slaves. Its length and width are generally the same as that of the ship, but the height is very low, generally high It was only about three feet and ten inches (about 1.16 meters), and the average black slave had only sixteen inches (about 40 cm) wide and 5.5 feet (about 167 cm) long. At this height and space, black slaves must lie down or sit, and don't even think about standing upright.
The dense black slaves on the slave ship
Although the height of the cargo hold of the slave ship can reach 1.6 meters, it is divided into two or even three floors with wooden boards, and it has become a bunk bed. Structure, each layer of which lay full of black slaves in shackles,In this way, the height that each black slave can get is less than 60 centimeters, let alone stand upright, don't even think about sitting upright.
The black slave sits on the lap of another black slave, with his legs next to his legs, just like people skiing on a sleigh
A slave boat, a small slave boat, or a black slave converted into a cargo ship On the smuggling ships, the black slaves could not even have this height, because the average height of the cabins of these slave ships was only 18 inches (approximately 45 cm).
When the transatlantic slave trade was declared illegal, most slave ships began to become smaller, most of them only had one deck, because the slave trade was illegal, so when they encountered a cruiser, the slave ships would pretend It is a ship that buys palm oil, but if the ship’s special deck for the slaves cannot be fooled, the slave traders will try to build the cabins for the black slaves so small that they cannot be seen from the outside, or for the sake of Dora the black slave simply threw the black slave and lay on the wooden barrel in the bottom compartment, and the province built a special cargo compartment.
The black slave is lying on the barrel in the bottom cabin
No matter what kind of ship the slave trader uses to transport the black slave, the space that the black slave can ultimately have is narrow and crowded. If there is room in the cabin At 90 centimeters or higher, the slaves could sit in rows, with one sitting on the lap of the other, with the legs next to the legs, just like people skiing on a sledge.
Slave ship structure
If the cabin height is too short, then in order to transport more black slaves, the slave trader will let the black slaves lie on their side like a spoon, in the popular words of the time, like a "spoon" , One by one the chest is against the back, or the head is on top of the foot, the foot is on top of the head. This situation made some white crew members on the slave boat sometimes blind to see, saying bluntly: "The slaves on the boat are densely packed together, and the space is so small that I have never seen it."
Black slaves on the slave boat
Slave traders never considered whether the black slaves were comfortable or not. The pigs on the livestock trucks now enjoy more space than the black slaves at the time.In the book "The History of Human Civilization", the author recorded the tragic scenes of black slaves at sea with detailed text, so that we can have a look:
"Once on board, the slaves were naked. , Tremblingly rushed into the suffocating prison, waiting for the beginning of the journey. The length and smoothness of the journey depend on the weather. Generally speaking, the journey will last 3 months. The space under the deck is low and close to The top of the head is only 1.5 meters, so there are two floors for the slaves to live in. The slaves are locked in pairs and bunches here with chains, like a British slave trader said, "Slaves are like The books are on the bookshelf.'”
The narrow cabin is divided into two floors
The bad life on the slave boat
For black slaves, the slave boat lives besides being crowded. The conditions are still extremely harsh. It is damp, gloomy, and bleak, full of sewage and the stench from the evaporation of rotting meat. The word hell can't be used to describe it best.
On the slave ships, the black slaves ate, drank and slept in a small chase (cabin), and the cargo holds of many slave ships did not have portholes, so the sun and air could only The open hatch on the open deck entered, which made the space for the black slaves airtight and unable to bask in the sun, even in the violent weather. In addition, the cabin of the slave ship would become extremely hot under the sun, making the cabin even more stuffy. Some black slaves were suffocated and died in the cabin due to lack of oxygen.
Slave ship structure
In bad weather, waves will rush into the cargo hold from the open deck, and once the cargo hold is wet, it is difficult to dry again. The dull dampness of , if it is Coupled with the scorching heat at noon and the stench emitted by the crowded hundreds of people, can imagine how strong the smell in the cabin where the black slaves stayed should be. It is said that the stagnant air on the surface smells like a stream of sewage.It takes a lot of effort to breathe , but this is where the black slaves live on the slave ship.
The cabin where black slaves are held
In addition to the black slaves who endure cramps and physical discomfort in the cargo hold of the slave ship, there is also a large amount of rubbish produced by black slaves. These rubbish cannot be cleaned up in time. It was piled up in the corner of the deck, smelly, and the black slaves themselves could not take a bath for a long time.
If there is a storm, the sailors on the slave ship will close the hatch on the open deck in order to prevent a large amount of seawater from being poured into the cabin. If the ship is equipped with a cesspool, they will also open the cesspool opening Closed to prevent the excrement from being splashed everywhere when the ship is shaking, but this operation will make the stench on the slave ship more intense.
Schematic diagram of black slaves placed on slave ships
Some naval officers and seamen who lived on the coast of the same age as slaves claimed that the slave ships were still far from the coast under extreme weather conditions. When they are far away, they can smell the special stench from the slave boats (with a tailwind, they can smell within five miles), and this distance is greater than the distance they would see the slave boats at night on a clear day. farther.
Although the above statement is a bit exaggerated, it can also reflect the strong stench on the slave ship. In addition to the unpleasant smell, the garbage accumulated on the ship will also become a variety of beetles, cockroaches and mice. "Heaven", it is easy to breed infectious diseases, but when the black slaves get sick, if it is not a minor injury or illness, their condition will quickly deteriorate and spread, and even form a plague, killing more than 30% of the people on board. People (such as the Black Death, yellow fever, etc.).
At that time, the medicine was unable to solve most common diseases, and there was no special medicine. At most, the sick black slaves were bleed to cure some minor problems. Otherwise, the more the treatment, the worse, so often the sick black slaves can only resign themselves to fate. The ultimate solution for the slave traders is to throw the sick black slaves into the sea to feed the sharks.So as not to infect more people, even if these unfortunate black slaves only suffered from scurvy, not an infectious disease, while still breathing.
In 1784, the slave ship "Ron" threw 132 sick black slaves into the sea. In 1819, the French slave ship "Nordoul" threw 39 black slaves who were blind while suffering from eye diseases on the way into the sea, and so on.
A slave ship captain named George Scott sailed from the coast of Africa to the Americas one month later, the black slaves on his ship began to get sick and decimated. In his diary:
"On May 8, 1740, we left Anomabu (a trading post). Most of the crew and slaves were sick. We bought a total of 129 Slaves, now I have lost twenty-nine...maybe all slaves... Among the dead slaves, one is more than 22 years old, and the others are over 14 years old."
In fact, Because slave ships will always die during the shipping process, some slave ships will always follow the sharks waiting for the opportunity to have a meal.
In addition to poor living conditions, the daily food of black slaves on slave ships is also terrible, which is also one of the reasons for their high mortality.
The ocean-going life in the great nautical era was very cruel. There was no good food on the ship . The black slaves had to spend the whole day with maggot biscuits, bacon, corrupted inferior alcoholic beverages, and death. Affected by the lack of food preservation technology in the great nautical era, two weeks after going out to sea, the food of black slaves usually consisted of stinking water, rotten meat, and dried salty fish, and it was covered with dense black-headed elephant trunks. The biscuit composition of insect maggots (in fact, the diet of ocean sailors at that time was also like this,Not much better).
This is not an exaggeration, because people did not realize the effect of bacteria on the corruption of fresh water, so as long as the ship drifts at sea for more than two weeks, the fresh water sealed in the barrel will gradually become corrupted. Smelly grows green moss, which makes it difficult to swallow and can also cause dysentery to drinkers. If seafarers do not add alcoholic beverages such as rum and wine to such "stinky water" every day, there is no way at all. Drink it.
In terms of food, the ocean-going ships at the time were equally inferior. Weevil and maggots love the main food of seamen-biscuits, black bread and salty meat. Want to grow. Cheese will be bitten by maggots, riddled with holes, or gnawed into residues, but even so, seafarers have to bite their teeth and eat these inferior foods in their stomachs, and if they are more particular, they will soak the food in water to wash off the maggots. , And most of the seamen’s operation is to open their mouths to swallow food, maggots, and maggot excrement together. It is really a bite of animal high protein. Some sailors also call the black-headed weevil taste bitter, not as good as The maggots can be regarded as having fun in hardship.
nautical biscuits
and the black slaves on the slave ship were worse in diet than the ordinary sailors on the ship, and in 1753, the British naval doctor James Lind announced that the fruit was bad. Before the news that the prevention and treatment of blood diseases had a miraculous effect, black slaves could not eat fruit on the boat. This is why black slaves at that time would suffer from scurvy in large numbers on slave ships.
Generally speaking, the diet of black slaves on slave ships is basically irrelevant to the word health, which causes black slaves to become weak, ill, and prone to dysentery. In 1780, on a British slave ship, because the black slaves drank drinking water that smelled so bad that green hair had grown for a long time, a dysentery broke out on the slave ship. 105 of the 380 black slaves on the ship died. .
but it’s such a poor diet,Sometimes there is no guarantee that every black slave on the ship will be allocated. Whenever there is insufficient food and fresh water on the slave ship, the captain will order the reduction of the drinking water quota of the black slaves, and many black slaves will die as a result. A slave trader named Philip Drake wrote in his book "What a Slave Smuggler Sees and Hears" that on a voyage, the slave boat he was on caused black people on board because of lack of drinking water. The tragedy of the mass deaths of slaves:
"Within two weeks of departure, someone found that the careless crew had forgotten to change the seawater. The seawater was originally put in a relatively short bucket as ballast, which should have been replaced with fresh water in Africa. …The horrible situation we were facing awoke Captain Ruiz. He immediately ordered the remaining precious fresh water to be lifted behind the main fence and asked me to calculate how long the remaining fresh water could last... In order to save the slaves, Captain It was decided to give the slaves semi-girth water every day, and the crew once a day to get the water, and then the slaves suffered more terrible torture than death. There were about 500 slaves in the closed dungeon-like cabin. They endured long periods of abuse, crew and driving. The soldiers were unwilling to give the semi-Jordan water to the slaves every day, and quarreled fiercely because of the water they received every day... Death came quickly, and it didn’t take long for at least a hundred slaves to be handcuffed to their dead companions."
threw the dying black slaves into the sea
Some slave captains were even more ruthless when they encountered a lack of fresh water and food. They would simply throw some black slaves into the sea to save the remaining lives at the expense of some slaves. The lives of the crew members.
On September 6, 1781, the slave ship "Zonge" lacked fresh water. The captain ordered 132 poor black slaves on board to be taken to the deck, and 122 of them were thrown into the sea. These The slaves then became shark delicacies that roamed around the ship.
In addition to housing and food that will cause large-scale deaths of black slaves on slave ships, the abuse of black slaves by white seamen is also one of the reasons for the high mortality rate. On a slave ship, the boring and dangerous daily work will make the sailors often in a state of emotional intense, prone to anger, and these crude white sailors often abuse the black slaves on the ship because of their beliefs or other reasons.Punching and kicking are commonplace. Their most commonly used "weapon" is a variety of whips. Many black slaves were beaten to death by sailors because of a little mistake.
flogging black slaves
and even slave traders or captains on slave ships will take the lead to abuse black slaves, even if it is his property, even if the number of black slaves is directly linked to their income is also like this. In the vast sea, the boring, day-to-day life on a slave ship can drive people who are not very determined to crazy. As long as you know the high mental illness rate of the Royal Navy's sailors at that time, I understand that what I said is true. From the letter of a slave trader named David Lindsay in the middle of the 18th century, we can take a look at the hardships of the sailing journey of that era:
"The voyage is very boring, almost driving people crazy. My deputy passed through four or five times. I got sick after the voyage, and I’m in a terrible condition now. Later, I called Mr. Taylor, and now Mr. Taylor feels a little uncomfortable. At least three crew members have been sick. James Jackson is also sick. What’s worse, The rope on the boat is worn out. I think I must buy a new rope because I thought of your request when I boarded the boat. If there is no rope support, the boat will rust. I hope you don’t blame me... the boat can no longer continue. Sailing, we can see the sunlight around the bow on the deck... During this journey, we encountered strong winds and continuous heavy rain for 22 days, and the sails were broken into pieces... I spit I’ve got some bile, and I’m a little scared about it.”
Storms, winds, violent sunlight, deadly weather, and various unfortunate incidents on the slave ship will turn the captain of the slave trader into A gunpowder keg that burns at one point, and if he takes the sailor to exhale, then the sailors may become pirates because of the riot. If he exhales the black slave, there will be no such dangerous situation. At most one will be killed. Just make some money.
Just throw the dead black slave into the sea to feed the sharks and destroy the body, and then wait for him to return home with the large sum of money earned from the black slave trade. Who can say that he is not a respectable gentleman? ? Moreover,Anyway, the slave ship also bought insurance. When the time comes to disguise the true cause of death of the black slave, you may be able to defraud the insurance merchant to obtain insurance compensation.
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