Olaudah Equiano Middle Passage

What a horrid experience- one we can not dare to imagine. Some have actually called the horrific accounts of the Middle Passage the ¨African Holocaust¨. With nearly

10,000,000 deaths seen as mere ¨casualties¨, the Middle Passage slave trade route had one of the most death tolls of all time (listed as the 10th deadliest ever recorded in all of history).

For Olaudah Equiano, life was a game of bartering, cheats, and inhumane acts of the white men. Olaudah was one of the more fortunate slaves however, as he escaped, became free, and educated himself by the end of his life.

When Olaudah was only eleven-years-old, he was savagely captured and taken from his village in what was called Benin. He was actually a high-ranking African, as his

father

Rape was rarely a secret affair either, usually done in the depth of the boat where the slaves were or done where there were several men attacking one helpless girl.

The slaves were hardly given any food and allowed a mere 24 inches per person in the bough of the ship. The ¨merchants¨ would pack the slaves and allow them just a few buckets to use for their waste, but answer this: how are you supposed to get to the

2-3 buckets placed sporadically throughout the room if you are chained and bound so tightly to where you are? Most often the slaves would just use the bathroom where they

were. Olaudah, along with the rest of that particular ship, were rarely given food and were considered a ¨tight packed¨ ship- where the master packed so many slaves that the ship was about to burst rather than pack less to prevent deaths.

When Olaudah finally reached the Americas (Barbados was were Olaudah was taken), roughly a fourth of the original slaves aboard the ship Olaudah traveled on had died due to sickness, suffocation, or complete abuse and the amount of the

After working for his new master for only a few weeks, he was sold again to another master who took him to England only a short period after

Olaudah was bought.

After Olaudah arrived in England, he found a new life. Though still under his master, Olaudah learned how to read and how to write. Eventually, Pascal (Olaudah master) gave him almost as much freedom as a free man had in America at that time.

Olaudah traveled the world, became one of Pascal´s finest captains and recorder. After

Olaudah did this for awhile, he became a free man. He traveled around the world doing things that were unheard of for a man of color at that time. He explored with the English to find another passage throughout the Americas, and he actually wrote a book. He wrote so all could know of both the terrors of slavery, and the truth that men of color are humans and they can accomplish anything anyone else can.

By the end of his life (March 31, 1797), Olaudah had become an abolitionist, had become a spokesman for all of the enslaved people of his homeland, and written a book that was one of the most successful books of that time and of all American history. ¨Ten years after his death in 1797, the English slave trade was finally