Middle Passage

Question 1

Conditions on slave ships

Answer 1

the enslaved people mostly lay chained in rows on the floor of the hold or on shelves that ran around the inside of the ships’ hulls.

The shelves were under a metre high and often the enslaved Africans could not sit up. There could be up to more than six hundred enslaved people on each ship. Captives from different nations were mixed together, so it was more difficult for them to talk and plan rebellions. Women and children were held separately.

Question 2

Tight/Loose Packers

Answer 2

Tight packers: packed ship beyond capacity

“Loose” packers: packed ship to its capacity.
- 2 slaves per ton

Question 3

Diseases

Answer 3

The death rate on these slave ships was very high - reaching 25 percent in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and remaining around ten percent in the nineteenth century - as a result of malnutrition and such diseases as dysentery, measles, scurvy, and smallpox

Question 4

Zong Case 1781

Answer 4

On 29 November 1781, Captain Luke Collingwood of the British ship, Zong, ordered one-third of his cargo to be thrown overboard. That cargo was human – 133 African slaves bound for Jamaica. His motive – to collect the insurance. The case was brought to court – not for murder, but against the insurers who refused to pay up

Question 5

Travel time

Answer 5

Traveled for 40-60 days depending on weather