Slave ship
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Slave ships were cargo boats specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves, especially "freshly caught" black African slaves. The most important routes of the slave ships led from the northern and middle coasts of Africa to South America and the south coast of what is today the USA.
Atlantic slave trade
In order to achieve high profits from the transports, the owners of the ships divided the hull into between decks, in order to transport as many slaves as possible. This led to indescribably unhygenic conditions, and consequently an enormously high mortality rate. Only the most resilient survived the transport. Often the ships transported a few hundred slaves, who were chained tightly to plank beds. For example, the slave ship "Henrietta Marie" carried up to 400 black slaves on a single passage, who were confined to two decks, and spent the week long passage chained to only one half square meter.Already following a few decades after the discovery of America, the Indian population was so strongly decimated that it was a profitable business to send slave ships into the Atlantic[[Citing sources citation needed]]. The peak time of slave ships to the Atlantic passage was between the 17th and 18th century when large plantations developed in the English colonies of North America.
List of slave ships
- Adelaide, French slave ship, sank 1714 near Cuba
- Braunfisch, a Brandenburgian slave ship, which went lost in 1688 in a revolt
- The Brookes, sailing in the 1780s
- Fredensborg, Danish slave ship, sank in 1768 off Tromøy in Norway, after a journey in the triangle trade. Leif Svalesen has written a book about the journey.
- Henrietta Marie
- Kron-Printzen, Danish slave ship, sank in 1706 with 820 slaves on board
- La Amistad
- Lord Ligonier
- Salamander, Brandenburgian slave ship
- Tecora
- Trouvadore, wrecked in Turks and Caicos 1841. 193 slaves survived. Project commenced in 2004 to locate the ship[Slave Ship Trouvadore Website]
- Wildfire, a barque, arrested off the Florida coast by the US Navy in 1860; carrying 450 slaves.Harper's Weekly, June 2, 1860, p344. [Online at The Slave Heritage Resource Center] accessed 3 July 2006.
See also
- Slave trade
- Slavery
- Slave Coast, Gorée ("Slave island")
Notes
External links
- [High resolution photos of a model of the French slave ship L' Aurore]
- [List of slaveships]
- [Unesco maps: The Slave Route] (PDF)
- [Yet another article about slaveships - hundreds of German slave ships are listed in the article] (PDF in German)
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