African Slave Trade

African captives, mostly the males, were shackled and chained, like sardines in a can, to gain maximum cargo capacity.  There was limited space to move or even to answer the call of nature, forcing the captives to urinate and defecate upon each other.  The stench was horrendous!  During hot weather, this alone was an unimaginable nightmare!  Try to think of yourself being restrained under such conditions for a two-month journey across the Atlantic Ocean!
Many African captives committed suicide by leaping into the ocean when they got the chance.  Other captives refused to eat the rotten gruel.  Their front teeth were knocked out and a funnel was inserted down their throat to force feed them.  A loaded slave ship ready to depart from Africa and begin the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.  This voyage was called the Middle Passage. Millions of Africans made this trip over the course of three Centuries.  Africans did not make this voyage seeking opportunities.  They did not make this voyage to find a better life. In fact, they were forced to make this voyage in order to live out their lives working, without pay for Europeans.  Most of these Africans would never set foot in Africa again, nor would most of their descendents ever see Africa.
The captives came from many cultures and few spoke the same language.  When they were bought by the Captains of the European ships, they looked wretched from months of deprivation in the dungeons of their holding prisons.  Europeans assumed that these Africans were sub-human because they could not speak the European language.  They thought that they were better off serving white men in America, than living like how they appeared when they were purchased.  In reality, the African captives were being transshipped from a relative life of plenty into a relative life of horrors, brutality, hunger and utter degradation!
The volume of the African Slave Trade grew rapidly in West Africa after the European Discovery of the New World and reached its peak in the eighteenth century.  Philip Curtin, a leading authority on the African slave trade, estimates that roughly 6.3 million slaves were shipped from West Africa to North America and South America, about 4.5 million of that number between 1701 and 1810.  Perhaps as high a number as 5,000 a year were shipped from the Slave Coast alone.
The demographic impact of the slave trade on West Africa was probably substantially greater than the number actually enslaved because a significant number of Africans perished during slaving raids or while in captivity awaiting transshipment.  Thousands of Africans died on the countless voyages that brought enslaved Africans to the Americas.  The slave ship Henrietta Marie perished off the Florida Keys in 1700.  She is the first and only shipwreck verified as a slave cargo ship.  The greenish lettering of her ship's bell, the remains of her cargo and still-intact iron shackles gave her away.  The physical evidence is there for us to touch.  The shackles are but one brutal detail of how African captives were treated on their forced immigration to the Americas.