INCIDENTS IN THE SLAVE TRADE
Stories of the Traffic in Human Merchandise
WE shall not here deal with the history and abolition of slavery, because every schoolboy knows all about that, and will doubtless be glad to have something more exciting. And of excitement there is abundance in the annals of slavery. The trade was always attended by risks, even before the days when it was illegal to ship slaves, for there was ever the danger of the negroes breaking loose and running amok on the ship; or, what was perhaps worse, the holds of the slavers were often little less than death-holes, with fever and cholera rampant. Altogether, it was a game with big profits—and mighty big risks, as the following story will show:
It was back in 1769 that the slaver Delight (Captain Millroy) was the scene of an uprising of negroes, which resulted in a rousing fight and fatal effects to a good many aboard.
About three o’clock one Sunday morning Surgeon Boulton and the men with him in the aft-cabin were awakened by a chorus of screams and shrieks overhead, a rushing of feet, a pandemonium of noise which told that something serious was afoot. Boulton slipped out of his bunk and dashed towards the captain’s cabin, half guessing what was taking place. He reached the cabin, and, entering, shook Millroy fiercely to awaken him. He had barely succeeded in rousing the captain when a billet of wood came hurtling through the air and caught him on the shoulder, and a cutlass pierced his neck. Turning, Boulton saw that a couple of negroes had, all unseen and unheard, crept below, intent on putting the captain hors de combat while he was asleep; and, finding the surgeon interfering with their plot, they attacked him in quick time. Millroy, now properly aroused, joined forces with Boulton, who forgot his own danger in the thought of what was happening above, and the pair chased the negroes on to the deck, Boulton carrying a pistol and the captain a cutlass.
When they reached deck they found themselves in a very inferno. Hundreds of negroes were swarming all over the place, some armed with wooden spars, others with cutlasses; and with these weapons they were hard at it taking vengeance on their captors. The herd of savages flung themselves upon the seamen, cutting off legs and arms, mutilating bodies dreadfully, their yells making the air ring. Boulton and the captain, realising that it was a case for prompt and vigorous action, hurled themselves into the heaving fight with a will. Down went one negro, killed by Millroy’s cutlass; then another; while Boulton did all he could. But the “all” of these two men was but little, and presently Millroy fell to the deck, overpowered by numbers, and literally hacked to pieces. Boulton, more fortunate, escaped injury, and made a dash for the rigging, up which he scrambled till he came to the maintop, where he discovered the cook and a boy had already taken refuge.
Perched on their lofty platform, the three looked down upon deck, watching as though fascinated the drama being enacted before their eyes, seeing the now maddened negroes wreaking vengeance on the men who were bearing them from freedom to slavery. The bloodlust was upon them, and they searched the ship to take their fill.
Suddenly the watchers saw two men come up from below and make a rush across the deck to the rigging. Like lightning the negroes dashed after them, and one man was brought to deck by a dozen billets flung at him, and his body was cut to pieces. The second man, more fortunate, managed to reach the rigging, and clambered up like a monkey.
The negroes, having satisfied themselves that they had accounted for all the crew with the exception of those in the maintop, whom they decided to deal with presently, ransacked the ship, seeking arms; and meanwhile Boulton, knowing that safety depended upon weapons, went on a tour of exploration. He wormed his way into the foretop to see what might be there, and luckily found a knife, with which he set out to return to the maintop. On the way the negroes saw him, and began to pelt him with billets of wood, all of which missed, however; so that Boulton reached his comrades safely. The one dread in the minds of the four survivors was that the negroes would find the arms-chest, in which case it seemed to them hopeless to expect to escape. While the slaves remained armed only with wooden spars and cutlasses, Boulton did not feel particularly anxious, knowing that he and his companions would be able to tackle any who dared to ascend the rigging to try and get them down. One thing that kept him hopeful was the fact that another slaver, the Apollo, was almost within hailing distance, and the Delight, unsteered and sails untrimmed, was rapidly drifting towards her, which would make the men on the Apollo aware that something had happened. But Boulton’s luck was out. The negroes found the arms-chest, and, breaking it open, armed themselves with muskets, and set to work in earnest to put the survivors out of action.
Shot after shot sang by the maintop, and one of the men there, fearing that he would be killed if he stayed, and might be saved if he trusted himself to the mercy of the negroes, like a madman descended to the deck. Barely had his foot touched it when a negro fell upon him with an axe and split his head in two; and a dozen pairs of hands seized him and pitched him overboard to the sharks which were following the ship, their appetites whetted by the feasts already given them by the negroes.
While this was going on, other slaves were still shooting away at the maintop, fruitlessly; and Boulton was calling madly on the Apollo, now not far away. Presently the captain of the other vessel, realising what was afoot, gave the word, and a broadside hurtled across the deck of the Delight, in the hope of frightening the slaves. They seemed to take little notice of this, however, and Boulton began to fear that all was over, especially as the negroes, seeing that they could not hit the men in the maintop, ceased fire, and a giant black, cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, sprang into the rigging, bent, apparently, on storming the position. Boulton waited calmly. He had no weapons but his knife and a quart bottle; but he felt that he was in a good position to meet an attack. Presently the negro’s head appeared above the platform, and then—whack! The bottle fell upon it with a sickening thud, the black lost his hold, and went hurtling into the sea.
Meanwhile, the Apollo was firing at the Delight, and the latter was returning the fire as well as it could, the negroes evidently knowing that to give in was to court disaster, and to lose what they had stood in a fair way to gaining. For four hours they fought the Apollo, and at the same time kept up their fusillade on the maintop.
Then came the end. Not because the negroes were not able to keep up any longer, but because a shot from the Apollo fell into a barrel of gunpowder and exploded it, with the result that the Delight took fire, and the slaves could not cope with the flames and their enemy at the same time. The revolt fizzled out as quickly as it had arisen. While the negroes rushed about seeking to put out the fire, Boulton, taking his life in his hands, descended to the deck, at the same time that a boat set out from the Apollo with a crew to tackle the flames and the negroes, who, filled with consternation, now stood quietly by watching the fire-fighters. They were absolutely cowed; they had made their bid for freedom, and had failed, and they knew it. They allowed themselves to be driven below and secured. The result of their revolt was that nine of the crew of the Delight were butchered, one man on the Apollo was killed, and eighteen of the negroes found death instead of liberty—perhaps death to them was better than freedom; certainly better than the lot of those poor human cattle they left behind them.
Such incidents as this were of frequent occurrence, and the recital of one must suffice.
After the Abolition Act had been passed, severe measures were brought into operation, giving the Navy a wide scope—so wide that, even although a vessel had no slaves on board, yet, if the naval officers had reason to suspect that slaving was her business, they could apprehend her. Special ships were fitted out and commissioned to deal with the traffic in the South Atlantic, both off Central America and the West Coast of Africa. So effective were the measures taken that the slavers resorted to all manner of disguises to turn suspicion away from their vessels, which had hitherto been of a distinctive kind—long, rakish craft with tall spars, the whole effect being one of beauty, and the idea being speed. The traders changed all this by having ships more after the fashion of the ordinary merchant vessel, so that the hunters had a more difficult task in front of them. But they worked energetically, and swept the seas month after month, on the look-out for the human cattle-ships, and, as all the world knows, succeeded in clearing them from the seas.
The subjoined account from the Sierra Leone Watchman for November 15, 1846, gives a striking picture of the conditions against which the Navy were doing such good work.
The vessel referred to is the Brazilian brigantine Paqueta de Rio, captured off Sherbro:
“The 547 human beings—besides the crew and passengers (as they styled themselves), twenty-eight in number—were stowed in a vessel of 74 tons. The slaves were all stowed together, perfectly naked, with nothing on which to rest but the surfaces of the water-casks. These were made level by filling in billets of wood, and formed the slave-deck. The slaves who were confined in the hold—it being utterly impossible for the whole of them to remain on deck at one time—were in a profuse perspiration, and panting like so many hounds for water. The smell on board was dreadful. I was informed that, on the officers of the Cygnet boarding the slaver, the greater part of the slaves were chained together with pieces of chain, which were passed through iron collars round their necks; iron shackles were also secured round their legs and arms. After the officers had boarded, and the slaves were made to understand they were free, their acclamations were long and loud. They set to work, and, with the billets of wood which had hitherto formed their bed, knocked off each other’s shackles, and threw most of them overboard. There were several left, which were shown to me. We will leave it to the imagination of your readers what must have been the feelings of these poor people when they found they were again free—free through the energy and activity of a British cruiser. On examining the poor creatures, who were principally of the Kosso nation, I found they belonged to, and were shipped to, different individuals; they were branded like sheep. Letters were burnt in the skin two inches in length. Many of them, from the recent period it had been done, were in a state of ulceration. Both males and females were marked as follows: On the right breast ‘J’; on the left arm, ‘P’; over women’s right and left breasts, ‘S’ and ‘A’; under the left shoulder, ‘P’; right breast, ‘R’ and ‘RJ’; on the right and left breasts, ‘SS’; and on the right and left shoulder, ‘SS.’ This is the same vessel that cleared out from here about three weeks previous to her capture for Rio de Janeiro. The slaves were all embarked from the slave factories at Gallinas, under the notorious Don Luiz, and the vessel under way in five hours; and had there been the slightest breeze she would have escaped. Among the slaves there were two men belonging to Sierra Leone—a man named Peter, once employed by Mr. Elliott, the pilot. He stated that he had been employed by a Mr. Smith, a Popohman, to go to Sherbro to purchase palm-oil, and that whilst pursuing that object he was seized and sold by a Sherbro chief named Sherry.”