Scramble (slave auction)

Slave ship captains would go to great lengths to prepare their captives and set prices for these auctions.

[1] Once enslaved people were docked and brought onto land they would be herded into the designated area, surrounded by eager buyers who were often pushing and shoving to position themselves to the front of the pen's doors.

The scramble was started by signal, either a gunshot or a drum beat, and once this was heard, the buyers swarmed into the pen to collect as many individuals as they could.

Anna Maria was one of the first European women to publish an eyewitness account of her experiences in West Africa with her husband, a previous surgeon on a slave ship who later became an abolitionist.

She defended the slave trade in her own narrative called the Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during the Years 1791–1792–1793.

Specifically relating to the type of slave auction called the scramble, Christopher Fyfe, a Scottish historian who specializes in West African history, gives a description of it from Anna Maria Falconbridge's perspective.

[6] The captains, surgeons, or crew members would wash the enslaved men, women, and children, usually with sea water, and shave the adults to get rid of grey hair in hopes they would look younger.

One way crewmen were able to do this was to give enslaved people rum so their eyes would seem alive as well as slathering them in oil or animal fat to accentuate their muscles.

There are even reports of the "experts" and crewmen fixing up the enslaved wounds with gunpowder and/or iron rust, and their anuses would be closed to stop leakage with a makeshift cork.

[8] Palm oil, aside from gunpowder or iron rust, was also rubbed on the captives to cover up their bruises, sores, and cuts.

[7] Branding the enslaved peoples of which European nation and/or their respective owner was also common, men would be burned on the arms, and women on the breasts.

The seasoning of slaves was a period of adjustment where merchants and traders conditioned enslaved peoples so they could get used to their new life on plantations.

[10] The process of seasoning is seen as a way to break the African captives by taking away their identity, so they would be less likely to revolt and get their work done on or off the plantation.

[10] In order for the enslaved people to be conditioned correctly traders and merchants would "Creolize" (the act of changing the attitudes of an African-born captive into an American-born bondsperson) by shaving off all of their hair, washing them, oil them down, and then feed them very little.

[10] The last part of "Creolizing" an African captive dealt with sending enslaved peoples to the West Indies before being sold in the American South so they knew what it was like to work on plantations.

[10] During these processes women in particular were subjected to many harsh and unwanted sexual acts that were advanced by the white merchants, and sometimes captive African men.

[11] One young girl, sixteen to seventeen years of age, was forced to show off her limbs and teeth by smiling to prospective buyers.

Edwards' only job while she was enslaved was to nurse the white children, strongly suggesting that she and many other women who performed this task were constantly conceiving.

[4] Once on land they were rounded up like sheep in the merchant's yard where they stayed for a few days until the scramble auction started by a beat of a drum.

[14] John Tailyour, a ship captain that mostly sailed to Guinea, Africa, writes how he prepared for scramble slave auctions.

Tailyour conducted scramble auctions in the years of 1782–1784, 1789, and 1792–1793, and each time he employed the same factors to ensure he would receive the highest profits.

[15] Before going on land to the sale site Tailyour would separate his captives into two categories: "prime" and "refuse"; prime slaves were young men and women, ranging in the ages from the late teens to thirty, were in good health, and free of injuries, wounds, and sickness while "refuse" slaves were either very old or very young, sick, and/or covered with wounds.

[15] Tailyour created these separations because the "privilege slaves", whether male or female, were saved for his close friends and family, with the rest being put into the scramble.

John Tailyour's "refuse slaves" were also put into scrambles, but were specifically for plantation owners who could not afford to pay for the other categories.

[16] Falconbridge relates that at the agreed start hour the doors of the yard where the captives were held were thrown open and the buyers instantly ran in to gather enslaved people.

[16] Falconbridge calls the buyers "brutes" who had no form of sympathy for the captives; because of this, he recalls some of the enslaved being so frightened that they would jump over the walls to escape.

[16] On the ship Golden Age, Falconbridge records the selling of 503 captives in two days in December 1784 at Port Maria, Jamaica.