Millions of Africans were torn from their homelands, herded into ships and sold in the New World for more than 300 years. Perhaps the cruelest part of the Atlantic slave trade was the weeks-long sea crossing, or the so-called Middle Passage–that leg of the Triangular Trade that brought the human cargo from West Africa to New World ports. Rather than provide healthful conditions on the sea crossing, slave traders sought to maximize profits with ‘tight packing’–cramming so many slaves onto the lower decks that those that survived would compensate for the certain losses. This deck plan of the British slave ship Brookes shows the ship carrying 454 slaves with 6′x 1′4′ of space allowed for each adult male, 5′10′ x 11′ for each woman and 5′ x 1′2′ for each boy. This clinical representation of human suffering during the Middle Passage was widely circulated by abolitionist groups.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to