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Slave Ships: Worse Than Imagined

Book Review: The Slave Ship

by Donald R Barbera, October 30, 2012

Rating: Five Stars of Five

Among abominations, American slavery holds a particularly odious distinction among atrocities not only because of its brutality and cold-blooded barbarity, but also because of the ill-gotten gains that fueled the growth of one of the greatest nations in history.

As an African American, my interest in the subject has been lifelong. Even as a child, I wanted to know why and how it happened. Over the years, I have become somewhat of a scholar on the subject reading hundreds of articles and books, as well as looking at films and movies on the subject.

Nevertheless, I never ran into one source that captured the slave trade's inhumanity and ruthlessness in one place, until I read "The Slave Ship: A Human History" by Marcus Rediker. After I finished reading the George Washington Book Prize^{^[1]} winner, I fully understood why.

Not only is the book well-researched and written, it is a searing indictment of a system that helped make many men rich and powerful off the blood of fellow human beings. "The Slave Ship" reveals the horrors of human bondage starting from the moment of kidnapping of men and women in the prime of their lives to their sale at the auction block into back breaking uncompensated and often fatal labor.

Rediker characterizes slave ships as floating prisons or torture chambers for both whites and blacks. According to Rediker's research, white crewmembers were just as much captive as the Africans they helped remove from their homes and families. In many cases, the book makes it clear that the sailors charged with guarding against insurrection or mass suicide attempts had even less influence than the African captives because the seamen were considered expendable while slaves were valuable property.

Reading through the horrid details of floggings that could last until the whip-wielder wore out or the slave died are detailed in their brutality and malevolence. Tortures included severing limbs, burning and literally rubbing salts into wounds. Rape of girls as young as eight or nine-years-old was also common on slave ships. Slaves and sailors that died of torture or disease became fish food as sharks routinely followed slave ship and fed on the bodies thrown overboard including many still full of life.

Rediker also makes it clear that captive Africans were not passive, but resisted in every way possible including armed insurrection, mass suicides, hunger strikes and even cutting their own throats with pieces of wood. According to his research, captured Africans speaking different languages found ways to communicate and plan in creative ways such as song or drum beats.

The book details each step of the slave trade in vivid and gruesome detail and no review will be able to capture its scope or depth, but for those interested in knowing what the slave trade entailed, including its affects on the captives and the captors, this book is magnificently substantial. Even the capitalistic nature of the trade receives close examination with measure of costs, profits and losses. Anyone seeking to know the details of the slave trade from nearly every perspective possible will find "The Slave Ship" more than sufficient in filling in the blanks.

^{^[1]} The George Washington Book Prize was instituted in 2005 and is awarded annually to the best book on America's founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history. It is administered by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and sponsored by Washington College in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. (George Washington Book Prize, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Book_Prize)

Tags: Bondage, Ships, Slavery, South, Suffering, inhuman, kidnapping

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Comment by Steph S. on November 2, 2012 at 5:26pm: After reading the review I will have to buy this book.

Comment by Donald R Barbera on November 1, 2012 at 10:36am: Thanks Mike. That is good information to have. I always found it strange that in all the pages of the Bible none of the Trinity had a word negative to say about slavery. There was plenty of time according to the Bible timeline, but nobody said a thing. In fact, it created the official Christain rule book for slavery. Yet, not a word against it. The Bible was not against slavery.

Comment by Donald R Barbera on November 1, 2012 at 10:31am: Setient: I am a firm believer that "the powers that be" purposely don't teach this along with man other things becasue of the old axiom that an educated person can become a dangerous person in that they are not so easily fooled. Why don't we teach logic, reason and critical thought in grade school? For the same reason. A person that knows how to think will not another tell him or her what to think. It doesn't make for good worker bees.

Comment by Donald R Barbera on November 1, 2012 at 10:28am: Yes, for the most part Africans were sold by other Africans into slavery. They were often prisoners of war, but many were kidnapped for profits by African "Big Men" who traded with who ecer had the most to offer. The book goes into great detail telling how men, women and children ended up in the hands of slave traders.

Comment by jay H on November 1, 2012 at 8:23am: One interesting (in an evil sense) fact that people are not generally aware of: the slave traders did not go inland and capture people, in fact they seldom left the ships. There were raiding parties of Africans who captured people from other tribes and sold them to the slave traders. These people were betrayed all along the line.

Comment by Glen Rosenberg on October 31, 2012 at 10:06pm: Hey Mister Sentient Biped,

Do you really suppose we have evolved?

I know one thing, there is a greater chance for humans to be better when they are atheistic and anti-theistic. When we dont question things and we allow sanctimonious nonsentient bipeds to dictate morality we got no shot. We will repeat the historical atrocities and negative patterns forever.

Comment by Sentient Biped on October 31, 2012 at 9:52pm: Don, this book was a life changing experience for me. It makes me so angry. I listened on Audible, twice. Why is this history not taught? Add to this, "Inhuman Bondage: The rise and fall of slavery.... and Slavery by another name (post slavery wage-slavery, basically "legal" kidnapping of black people off the street by the police, using trumped up charges that amounted to "harvesting" them; selling them to mines and factories and working them to death), and you have a ~500 year era of such great evil it's hard to justify allowing humanity to survive. In numbers murdered either intentionally or by working to death & disease, the impact was as great for Africans as the Holocaust was for Jews (not an exaggeration, both horrible evils), and then add the numbers kidnapped, tortured, and dehumanized, and you have a crime of immeasurable magnitude.

The slave trade was not a "christian" situation, but christians were culpable as much as muslims were, and the nonAbrahamic Africans who participated. Race slavery was the "new twist" that made it especially evil. Since slavery and its descendant were in christian hands in the Americas, there is no letting christians off the hook for this crime.

It's hard to put ourselves in the shoes of earlier peoples - I suppose we have evolved. Maybe.

Comment by Michael Brice on October 31, 2012 at 8:49pm: Here is a link to a book published in 1851 in Kentucky, 'Bible defence of Slavery' , and that's exactly what it is, all 578 pages, dedicated to proving that it's o.k. to enslave black people 'cause the bible says so. Really, really, really scary stuff.

http://archive.org/stream/bibledefenceofsl00inprie#page/n1/mode/2up

Comment by Donald R Barbera on October 31, 2012 at 5:49pm: It is graphic in its descriptions. It's a train wreck that you can't turn away from.

Comment by Glen Rosenberg on October 31, 2012 at 5:39pm: Donald I should mention that the book by Blackmon was enlightening. When I am ready to throw up again I will try this selection.