'Inventory of
Negroes, Cattle,
Horses, etc on the
estate of Sir James
Lowther Bart in
Barbados taken this
31st day of
December 1766'
The Arrival of Europeans in Africa - 1795
The Portuguese, under the sponsorship of Prince Henry, had
landed in West Africa 350 years earlier.
This engraving, entitled An African man being inspected for
sale into slavery while a white man talks with African slave
traders, appeared in the detailed account of a former slave
ship captain and was published in 1854.
Middle Passage – passage across the Atlantic Ocean from
West Africa to the Americas the was the route of the African
American slave trade
The slave ship Brookes with 482 people packed onto the decks. The
drawing of the slave ship Brookes was distributed by the Abolitionist
Society in England as part of their campaign against the slave trade,
and dates from 1789.
Interior of a Slave Ship, a woodcut illustration from the
publication, A History of the Amistad Captives, reveals how
hundreds of slaves could be held within a slave ship. Tightly
packed and confined in an area with just barely enough
room to sit up, slaves were known to die from a lack of
breathable air.
• Africans were crowded and chained cruelly aboard
slave ships.
Frequently, slaves were permitted on deck in small groups
for brief periods, where the crew would encourage, and
many times force, captives to dance for exercise.
From an engraving entitled
The Africans of the slave bark
"Wildfire" brought into Key
West on April 30, 1860 which
appeared in Harpers Weekly
on 2 June 1860. The picture
shows a separation of sexes:
African men crowded onto a
lower deck, African women on
an upper deck at the back.
• Diseases, such as dysentery, malaria, and smallpox
killed thousands of Africans.
• From 13% - 20% of the Africans aboard slave ships
died during the Middle Passage.
• Between 1699 and
1845 there were 55
successful African
uprisings on slave
ships.
William Snelgrave,
from A New Account
of Some Parts of
Guinea, and the Slave
Trade
THIS is the Vessel that had the
Small-Pox on Board at the Time
of her Arrival the 31st of March
last: Every necessary Precaution
hath since been taken to cleanse
both Ship and Cargo thoroughly,
so that those who may be
inclined to purchase need not be
under the least Apprehension of
Danger from Infliction.
The NEGROES are allowed to be
the likeliest Parcel that have been
imported this Season.
The Door of No Return
by Fortuné Bandeira
(artist), Benin, Africa.
A Memorial to the Slave
Trade. It represents the
actual “door of no return,”
or the door to a slave
fortress, the African’s last
view of his homeland
before being taken aboard
a slave ship.
The Actual “Door of No Return” at
Goree Island, Senegal