The exact number of blacks carried into slavery from Africa to America is unknown. It is estimated that 20, 000, 000 African men, women, and children were shipped to the New World over a period of 400 years or more. Nor is it known how many ships were involved. But between 1783 and 1793 alone, 878 slave ships left Liverpool, England, to transport over 300, 000 blacks from Africa, at a gross profit of $12, 294, 116. A typical slave ship measured 100 feet long by 25 feet 4 inches wide with as many as 450 frightened and naked captives crowded between its decks. Their drinking water was stagnant, their food scarce and unpalatable.
Men, women, and children were separated and forced to lie on their backs on a series of platforms for at least 15 hours a day, with each person’s right leg chained to the left leg of his neighbor. Their hands were tied as well. The hatches were closed, so there was little air below. Terrified and hot, blacks struggled to breathe. Some even leaped overboard in desperation and many others died from disease.
For those who survived, the journey lasted 10 weeks or more. After the slave trade was officially abolished by Great Britain and the United States in 1807, the slave ships were built for speed so that they could elude capture by the war sloops that guarded the African coast. The captains of these ships were known to have thrown as many as 500 blacks to the sharks in order to escape detection. In fact, the traffic in black slaves did not end until slavery itself was abolished.
The Essay on Latin America Black Slaves Urban
How Some Black Slaves were able to free themselves in Colonial America. The history of Blacks under the yoke of slavery is not a kind one. Colonial (A) Latin America was the first and perhaps the worst perpetrator in the crime of slavery. Brought from across the sea to work without wages and to suffer horrible treatment the African element of Latin American society lived a life of extreme ...
