An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa

Preparations for the Voyage

On arriving at Bonny [present-day Bonny Island, southeastern Nigeria] and New Calabar [present-day Kalabari, Rivers State, Nigeria], ships follow a standard procedure: the crew unbends the sails, strikes the yards and topmasts, and begins constructing what they call a house. The process works as follows. The sailors first lash the booms and yards from mast to mast to create a ridge-pole. About ten feet above the deck, several spars equal in length to the ridge-pole are then lashed to the standing rigging, forming a wall-plate. Across both the ridge-pole and the wall-plate, additional spars or rafters are laid and lashed at roughly six-inch intervals. On top of these, further spars are laid lengthwise, matching the extent of the ridge-pole, creating a kind of lattice or network with six-inch-square gaps. The roof is then covered with loosely woven rush mats, fastened together with rope-yarn and arranged to overlap like roof tiles. The space between the deck and the wall-plate is similarly enclosed with a lattice of sticks lashed across one another, leaving gaps of about four inches square.

Near the mainmast, a partition of inch-thick deal boards is built running across the full width of the ship. This dividing wall is called a barricado. It stands about eight feet high and projects nearly two feet out over the sides of the ship. The barricado has a door where a sentinel is posted whenever the enslaved people are allowed on deck. It serves to keep the sexes separated, and since it contains small openings fitted with blunderbusses and sometimes a cannon, it proves highly effective for suppressing the uprisings that occasionally break out. A second door is cut into the lattice at the ladder used to board the ship, guarded by a sentinel during the day and locked at night. At the bow, a third door is provided for the sailors’ use, secured in the same way as the one at the gangway. The roof also features a large trapdoor through which trade goods, water casks, and other supplies are hoisted in or out.

The purpose of these temporary structures is to protect those on board from the intense sun of this latitude, as well as from the wind and rain, which can be extremely violent during certain seasons. They serve these purposes only poorly, however. The loosely woven mats let in both wind and rain whenever either grows severe, while at the same time trapping heat on the ship to a dangerous degree, particularly between decks. That trapped heat, combined with the smoke produced by burning green mangrove wood (the standard fuel on these vessels), creates genuinely hazardous conditions. Because there is no airflow to carry it away, the smoke accumulates in large quantities and spreads throughout every part of the ship. The smoke’s caustic quality also frequently causes severe eye inflammation, which sometimes ends in permanent blindness.

These temporary structures serve another purpose as well: preventing the enslaved people on board from throwing themselves overboard. The horrors of their situation drive them to attempt this repeatedly, and they sometimes succeed despite every precaution taken against it, forcing their way through the lattice work.

The slave ships generally anchor about a mile below the town in Bonny River, in seven or eight fathoms of water. At times, as many as fifteen vessels, English and French but mostly the former, gather there together. Shortly after dropping anchor, the captains go ashore to announce their arrival and assess the state of trade. They also invite the kings of Bonny to come on board, and before breaking bulk, they typically present them with gifts (known locally as dashes), which generally consist of cloth, cotton, chintz, silk handkerchiefs, and other Indian goods, along with brandy, wine, or beer.

When I visited Bonny a few years ago, it was home to two kings named Norfolk and Peppel [Pepple Town, near Bonny, Nigeria]. Their residences were barely distinguishable from the ordinary cottages and huts that made up the town, differing only in their somewhat larger size and in being surrounded by warehouses stocked with European goods intended for the purchase of slaves. These kings acquired their slaves in the same way the black traders did, and then sold them directly to the ships. For every enslaved person sold through the traders, the kings collected a duty that amounted to a considerable sum over the course of a year. This duty was collected by officers stationed on board the ships, who were known as officer boys, a title generally believed to have originated with the English.

The kings of Bonny held absolute power, though their position was elective rather than hereditary. They were assisted in governing by a small number of men of a certain rank, who called themselves parliament gentlemen, a title most of them held for life. Every ship arriving in port was expected to send these men a gift of a small quantity of bread and beef, and to entertain them whenever they came on board. When they made such visits, their approach to the ship was announced by blowing through a hollowed elephant’s tusk, which produced a sound much like that of a post-horn.

Once the kings had come on board and received their customary gifts, they granted permission for trade to begin with any of the black traders. When the royal guests departed from the ships, they were saluted with cannon fire.

From the time the ships arrived until their departure, which typically took close to three months, hardly a day passed without some enslaved people being purchased and brought on board, sometimes in small numbers and sometimes in larger groups. The total number taken on board depended heavily on circumstances. On one voyage I made, our stock of trade goods ran out after purchasing around 380 enslaved people, though we had expected to acquire 500. The number of English and French ships then anchored at Bonny had driven up the price so significantly that it accounted for the difference.

The opposite situation, and a happy opposite I think it fair to call it, was well known during the recent war. When I was last at Bonny, I frequently asked about this with one of the Black traders, whose information I believe I can rely on. He told me that only one ship had called there over a three-year stretch during that period: the Moseley-Hill, captained by Captain Ewing out of Liverpool, who made an unusually large purchase, having found enslaved people remarkably cheap due to the slowdown in trade. When I pressed my Black acquaintance further on what the collapse of their trade had meant for them, he shrugged his shoulders and replied that it had simply made the traders poorer and forced them to work for their own upkeep. When one of these Black merchants was told that a particular group of people, called Quakers, were pushing to abolish the trade, he said it was a very bad thing, since it would reduce them to the same condition they had endured during the war, when poverty had forced them to dig the ground and plant yams.

I was once on the coast of Angola when no slave ship had visited the river Ambris [present-day Ambriz, northern Angola] for five years before our arrival, despite it being a place many ships typically called on every year. As far as we could determine, the absence of trade during that period had produced only one effect: it had restored peace and trust among the local people. That peace was immediately shattered the moment any ships arrived, since the prospect of selling slaves gave the natives every incentive for conflict. Similarly, during the suspension of trade at Bonny mentioned earlier, none of the terrible events so confidently predicted as the natural consequence of ending the trade were actually observed. The lower price of enslaved people and the poverty of the Black traders appear to have been the only bad outcomes of the trade’s discontinuance; the good ones were, most probably, the return of peace and trust among the native population, and an end to kidnapping.

Once the ships had spent all their trade goods on the purchase of enslaved people and had taken on their supplies of wood, water, and yams, they prepared to sail by raising the yards and topmasts, threading the running rigging, bending on the sails, and dismantling the temporary shelter built on deck. They would then move down the river to wait for a favorable moment to cross the bar, a hazardous stretch formed by a series of sandbars lying across the mouth of the river, with navigable channels running between them. It was not unusual for ships to run aground on the bar, and some were lost there entirely.

Slave ships heading to the West Indies typically made their first stop at either the Island of St. Thomas [present-day São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe] or Princes Island [present-day Príncipe, São Tomé and Príncipe], where the crew would bring sick captives ashore to recover in the fresh air and take on fresh water. St. Thomas is nearly circular, roughly one hundred and twenty miles in circumference, and sits directly on the equator, about forty-five leagues off the African coast. The island is rich in timber and water, and produces Indian corn, rice, fruits, sugar, and some cinnamon. The climate tends to be hard on European constitutions, yet the Portuguese have settled it in considerable numbers. Princes Island, considerably smaller, lies at 1 deg. 30 min. north latitude, and similarly produces Indian corn along with a variety of fruits, root vegetables, and sugar cane. Black cattle, hogs, and goats are plentiful there, though the island is plagued by a particularly troublesome and dangerous species of monkey.

On one of my voyages, I was put ashore on St. Thomas along with nearly one hundred sick captives, who were housed in an old building rented specifically for that purpose. The stay did little good, however. Several of them died on the island, and the rest remained in much the same condition as when they had been brought ashore, despite our remaining there for roughly twelve days, even though the island is generally considered a healthy one.

When slave ships arrived in the West Indies, a date for selling their human cargo was set quickly. Sales were conducted in various ways, one of the most common being a method known as a “scramble,” which will be described in more detail when the sale of the captives is addressed directly.

Once the ships have sold their entire cargo, they are immediately prepared to set sail again. It is rare, however, for them to depart without delay, since they almost always struggle to find enough sailors to crew the vessel. This trade has rightly earned the reputation of being a graveyard for seamen. Though the crews leaving England typically number between forty and fifty men, scarcely three-quarters of them, and sometimes fewer than one-third, ever return to the port they sailed from, lost to death or desertion. I will address the causes of this in a later section.

The length of time a slave ship spends away from England varies depending on the destination and how many other ships it encounters along the coast. A voyage to Bonny, or to Old [present-day Calabar, southeastern Nigeria] and New Calabar, typically takes around ten months. Voyages to the Windward Coast [roughly present-day Sierra Leone through Liberia] and Gold Coast [present-day Ghana] are less predictable, but generally run somewhere between fifteen and eighteen months.

How the Enslaved Were Procured

After permission has been granted to begin trading (a process the traders call “breaking trade”), the ships’ captains go ashore periodically to inspect the enslaved people on offer and make their purchases. The people sold in this way are first acquired by Black traders at fairs held specifically for this purpose, more than two hundred miles inland from the coast, and these fairs are themselves supplied from even deeper in the interior. Many of the enslaved, when asked about their places of origin, have said they traveled for several months (reckoning time, as was their custom, by the cycles of the moon) before reaching the places where the Black traders bought them. At these fairs, which take place at irregular intervals but roughly every six weeks, several thousand people are frequently put up for sale at once, having been gathered from communities spread across a vast surrounding region. During one of my voyages, while I was stationed on the coast, Black traders arrived by canoe on separate occasions carrying between twelve and fifteen hundred enslaved people who had all been purchased at a single fair. The group consisted mostly of men and boys, with women rarely making up more than a third of the total. Individual Black traders typically purchase between forty and two hundred people at a time, depending on their means.

These groups span virtually every age, from infants of one month to men and women of sixty years and older. Scarcely any age or condition is considered grounds for exclusion, since the price simply adjusts accordingly. Among those purchased are sometimes women so far along in pregnancy that they give birth during the journey from the fairs to the coast; I have also frequently witnessed deliveries on board ship. The enslaved people acquired at these fairs are destined solely to supply the markets at Bonny and at Old and New Calabar.

There is every reason to believe that most of the enslaved Africans shipped from the coast were kidnapped. The Black traders took extraordinary precautions to prevent Europeans from learning anything about their methods; the enslaved people were brought from deep in the interior; and the language barrier, which the Black traders themselves often shared, made it nearly impossible to gather reliable information on the subject. Through occasional inquiries conducted via interpreters, however, I managed to piece together some intelligence on this point, and what I learned, I believe, settles the matter beyond any reasonable doubt.

From what I gathered, the following cases stand out as particularly striking. While I was serving aboard one of the slave ships, an enslaved man told me that he had been invited one evening to drink with some of the Black traders, and that when he tried to leave, they attempted to seize him. He was quick on his feet and managed to break free from their grip, but his escape was cut short by a large dog, which caught hold of him and forced him to submit. Many of the traders kept such animals specifically for this purpose, and having been trained to it, the dogs seemed to take to the work with disturbing enthusiasm.

I was also told by an enslaved woman that while she was walking home one evening from a neighbor’s house, where she had been visiting, she was kidnapped and, despite being heavily pregnant, sold into slavery. This had taken place far inland, and she had passed through the hands of several buyers before she ever reached the ship. A man and his son, by their own account, were seized by professional kidnappers while they were out planting yams, and sold as slaves. This too had happened deep in the interior, and after changing hands multiple times, they were eventually purchased for the ship on which I served.

It frequently happens that those who kidnap others are themselves, in turn, seized and sold. A Black man in the West Indies told me that after having spent time kidnapping others, he had experienced exactly this reversal of fortune. He assured me that it was a common occurrence among his countrymen.

This cycle breeds constant hostility among the people of Africa and destroys any possibility of ordinary social life between them. That would almost certainly not be the case if there were no ready market for selling one another.

During my time on the coast of Africa, I witnessed the following incident firsthand. A Black trader invited a man who lived a short distance inland to come and visit him. After the hospitality was over, the trader offered to show his guest one of the ships anchored in the river. The unsuspecting visitor agreed without hesitation and paddled out with the trader in a canoe to the side of the vessel, which he examined with wonder and delight. While he was absorbed in this, several Black traders on board, who were clearly in on the scheme, jumped down into the canoe, seized the man, dragged him onto the ship, and sold him on the spot.

Before I entered this line of work, I held a belief that many others share: that kings and powerful men breed enslaved people for sale the way we raise livestock. During my various stays in the region, I went to considerable lengths to verify this for myself. Despite making many inquiries, however, I could not find the slightest evidence that this was actually the case, which I almost certainly would have found if such a practice had been widespread. Everything I was able to learn confirms my conviction that the slave trade draws its primary sustenance from kidnapping and from alleged crimes, many of which are simply invented as a pretext.

This next example helps illustrate how that particular deception is commonly used. A group of Black traders, one of whom was a man of some standing who held authority roughly comparable to that of a magistrate, found themselves in need of certain goods but had no slave to offer in exchange. They solved this problem by accusing a fisherman at the river Ambris of overcharging for his fish. Since they had a personal stake in the outcome, they immediately declared the poor man guilty and sentenced him to be sold into slavery. He was subsequently purchased by the ship on which I served and brought on board.

As further evidence that kidnapping is not merely common but is very nearly the only way slaves are actually obtained, consider how the Black traders behave when selecting them: they consistently choose those who appear roughest and most physically hardened, explaining that the ones with smoother skin were once “gentlemen.” What they seem to mean by this is that only fraud or outright force could have brought such men down to the condition of slavery.

It is also worth noting, in order to challenge the assumption that African wars supply the bulk of the slave trade, that I never once observed a recently wounded slave among those brought on board. Had any significant number of them been captured in battle, wounds would have been visible on at least some of them. This is not a detail I could easily have missed, since examining newly purchased slaves fell specifically within my duties as a surgeon. To reinforce this point further: on the Gold and Windward Coasts, where slave fairs are not held, the number of slaves obtained at any one time tends to be very small.