The Amistad: The Victims Of The Middle Passage

In July 1839, fifty-four African captives boarded the Amistad and head to the Americas. During their journey, they were able to break free of their chains and take over the ship. Despite their best efforts to sail back to Africa, they were once again captured and put on trial in the United States. Due to the current progress of the abolishment of slave trafficking, all that were captured on the Amistad were set free. However, this was not the fortune of millions of slaves both before and after the Amistad. Thousands of slaves died before making it to the Americas. Due to the cruelty and sanitation issues of the ship, those who did survive the grueling journey had to do so in unlivable conditions. The victims of the Middle Passage suffered ruthless treatment throughout their journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Middle Passage started in the 1500s and lasted for more than three centuries. It brought millions of Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. This trip received the name, The Middle Passage, because it was the middle leg of the triangular trade. It started from Africa, then went from Africa to the Americas, and then finally from the Americas back to England. It is known to be the largest movement of people in history.

The Atlantic slave trade reached its peak in the 1700s. According to the African American Odyssey, “After 1713, English ships dominated the slave trade, carrying about twenty thousand slaves per year from Africa to the Americas. At the peak of the trade during the 1790s, they transported fifty thousand slaves per year.” In the end it was the Middle Passage itself that lead to the term African-American.
The Atlantic slave trade started as early as 1441, when a slave was first brought to Portugal as a gift to a Portuguese prince.

However, it was not the Portuguese, the Europeans, or even the Caucasians always responsible for enslaving the Africans. Most often it was the Africans themselves who would trade one another into slavery. This arrangement began formally in 1472.The Portuguese would distribute European goods to the Africans in return for slaves. Ottobah Cugoano disgracefully states, “’I must own to the shame of my country- men that I was first kidnapped and betrayed by [those of] my own complexion.’” Although Africans initially resisted selling one another to the outsiders, they did not at the time see the wrong in doing

so:
The white man did not introduce slavery to Africa . . . And by the fifteenth century, men with dark skin had become quite comfortable with the concept of man as property . . . Long before the arrival of Europeans on West Africa’s coast, the two continents shared a common acceptance of slavery as an unavoidable and necessary—perhaps even desirable—fact of existence.

However, by the eighteenth century, those who had fallen victim of the slave trade, started to stand together in solidarity, regardless of the initial tribe from which they came.
Each slave ship varied greatly in size and in the number of passengers it held. The ships capacity determined how many slaves could be carried based on the idea that for every ton there would be two slaves. For example, a four hundred pound ship would be able to carry a maximum of eight hundred slaves. However, many of the captains did not abide by this rule and would double their occupancy. Once the slaves were aboard the ship, they were chained together and packed underneath the deck in a space five feet high or less. To make matters worse, men and women were separated, with men lying shoulder to shoulder in the front and women and children in the back; this was done so to prevent a rebellion. One-observer states, “ The slaves were packed together like books upon a shelf…so close that the shelf would not easily contain one more.”
The Middle Passage typically took several weeks or more to complete; during this time those captured lacked general care and had little to no control over their own lives. The slavers often neglected the up keeping of where the slaves resided and took complete control of their daily liberties, such as where they slept, what they ate, and even when they would exercise. In fact, the African American Odyssey divulges, “During storms the crew often neglected to feed the slaves, empty the tubs used for excrement, take slaves on deck for exercise, tend to the sick, or remove the dead.” It was this lack of control and neglect that caused the slaves to commit suicide or die from the inhumane conditions they were forced to live in.
The conditions on a slave ship were unthinkable. Urine, vomit, and dreadful odors constantly filled the bottom of the deck, due to poor sanitation. Diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, measles, smallpox, scurvy, and others were relentlessly threatening the lives of both the slaves and the crew. During the twentieth century, no civilization understood disease. Many believed that human illnesses were a direct result of a poisonous atmosphere, and they would fail to treat the disease correctly. Another sanitation issue on the ships was that each ship had only three or four toilets that the enslaved could use. Therefore, those who were capable struggled to get to the toilet, and those who were too ill or too young to reach the lavatory areas, were forced to defecate where they were. During an epidemic on a ship, Alexander Falconbride reported, “’The deck that is, the floor of [the slaves’] rooms, was so covered with blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter house. It is not in the power of human imagination, to picture to itself a situation more dreadful or disgusting.’” The death rates on these ships were extremely high throughout the 1700s. It was through time that certain precautions started being taken in order to prevent such devastating mortality rates.
Although women were given more freedom then men, the Middle Passage still took a devastating toll on them. Unfortunately, because of their inability to defend themselves like the men, they were often caught more easily and quickly. Plus, they were treated just as badly as the men and children. Many of the African women were singled out on the ship as a whore, and during long voyages were forced to submit themselves to the crew and be repeatedly raped. These callous acts were rationalized on the bias that the women were less valuable, more vulnerable, and could be used to dispirit the men and decrease the risk of a rebellion. According to the Birmingham Pittsburgh Traveler,
The contention that the sexual coercion of women also functioned by targeting African men, who unavoidably suffered from their inability to protect the women and children, who were their own wives, daughters, sisters, and friends…the institutionalized pattern of rape, as it entered the framework of the slaver, provided the means to destroy the women's will to resist and, by corollary, to demoralize their men.

It was constant acts like these that were endlessly relieving the Africans of their own power, even the power over their own bodies.
As time went on the conditions of the slave ships drastically improved, in order to prevent high mortality rates. The ships became faster and had lower occupancy rates. Also, the ships surgeons became more familiar with hygiene and found that African treatments were very effective when treating the sick.
Some European governments, such as the British and French, introduced laws to control conditions on board. They reduced the numbers of people allowed on board and required a surgeon to be carried. The principal reason for taking action was concern for the crew and not the captives. The surgeons, though often unqualified, were paid head money to keep captives alive. By about 1800 records show that the number of Africans who died had declined to about one in eighteen.

Eventually the law deemed the transportation of slaves illegal due to its lack of morals. Although many defied the law and continued to transport slaves, the percentage of Africans being shipped to the Americas dropped significantly.
For over three centuries, the Atlantic slave trade brought misery to millions of Africans. For those who survived the trip, they were spilt from family and friends and forced to work on fields. Their treatment in the Americas was often worse than their treatment on the ships. If it were not for the courageous few who documented their time while on board, we would not even know the horrors that these people faced. It was the high spirits of the people that got them through not only that long weary journey but also through many trials that they would later face. Regardless of the misfortunes that the slaves faced while at sea, they still showed great strength and faith in the midst of animosity and brutality.