Chapter I: Preface

The infamous deeds of the pirates alone excepted, there is no blacker page in the story of the sea than that which records the voyages of the slave ships. Captivated in tribal wars and kidnapped in times of peace, uncounted millions of negroes were closely stowed in the holds of all kinds of sailing craft and carried to the West Indies and America to be sold as slaves to work the sugar plantations. The cruelty and horror of “the middle passage”—the voyage from the Guinea coast—can never be told in all its gruesome details. It is enough to recall that the ships were always trailed by man-eating sharks.

The slaving trade was also the grave of many of the seamen who engaged in it, for the African coast reeked with fevers and other fearful diseases and those who escaped the infection and ophthalmia of “the middle passage,” on reaching the West Indies frequently opened their own graves by unrestrained drinking of new rum. Many masters of slave ships were cruel and overbearing by nature; the trade exacted its toll; and cruelty inflicted upon slaves was easily transferred to equally helpless seamen.

The ships of America and the principal maritime nations of Europe were engaged in this trade for centuries and few voices were raised in protest until after the revolutions in the American colonies and in France, when a new conception of personal freedom began to gain ground. Even after the traffic in human flesh was prohibited by law, for many years, or until the market failed, slave ships surreptitiously collected their cargoes and ran the blockade of naval vessels keeping guard on eastern and western coasts.

This volume does not attempt to give a history of the African slave trade; it would require many volumes to do justice to the subject. It merely presents an account of the trade as conducted at different times and by different nations and is a piece of narrative and description and not a history of events. The Introduction has been written by Captain Pentecost, a British officer in the Naval Reserve, now retired after a long and varied service at sea, during which he gathered a knowledge of slaving from the lips of those formerly engaged in the trade. He also placed at our disposal certain printed and illustrative material which has been utilized in the preparation of this volume. Thanks are also due to Mr. A. G. H. Macpherson of London, England, from whose unrivaled collection of pictures and engravings relating to ships and the sea most of the plates in this volume have been reproduced.

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