Slave ship

Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast in West Africa.

[2] In the early 1600s, more than a century after the arrival of Europeans to the Americas,[3] demand for unpaid labor to work plantations made slave-trading a profitable business.

Unhygienic conditions, dehydration, dysentery, and scurvy led to a high mortality rate, on average 15%[5] and up to a third of captives.

The slaves were naked and shackled together with several different types of chains, stored on the floor beneath bunks with little to no room to move.

Diseases such as dysentery, diarrhea, ophthalmoparesis, malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, scurvy, measles, typhoid fever, hookworm, tapeworm, sleeping sickness, trypanosomiasis, yaws, syphilis, leprosy, elephantiasis, and melancholia resulted in the deaths of slaves on board slave ships.

[1] Olaudah Equiano was among the supporters of the act, but it was opposed by some abolitionists, such as William Wilberforce, who feared it would establish the idea that the slave trade simply needed reform and regulation, rather than complete abolition.

[12] Slave counts can also be estimated by deck area rather than registered tonnage, which results in a lower number of errors and only 6% deviation from reported figures.

[13] This limited reduction in the overcrowding on slave ships may have reduced the on-board death rate, but this is disputed by some historians.

[14] In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the sailors on slave ships were often poorly paid and subject to brutal discipline and treatment.

[15] Furthermore, a crew mortality rate of around 20% was expected during a voyage, with sailors dying as a result of disease, flogging, or slave uprisings.

A high crew mortality rate on the return voyage was in the captain's interests, as it reduced the number of sailors who had to be paid on reaching the home port.

A plan of the British slave ship Brookes , showing how 454 slaves were accommodated on board after the Slave Trade Act 1788 . This same ship had reportedly carried as many as 609 slaves and was 267 tons burden, making 2.3 slaves per ton. [ 1 ] Published by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade
A painting c.1830 by the German artist Johann Moritz Rugendas depicts a scene below deck of a slave ship headed to Brazil; Rugendas had been an eyewitness to the scene
The former slave ship HMS Black Joke (left) fires on the Spanish ship El Almirante before capturing her, January 1829 (painting by Nicholas Matthews Condy )