The Slave Experience - Capture

Aim: Consider the experience of Africans who were captured and taken into slavery. Success Criteria: You will produce a short story or poem describing the main ways that slave were treated after their capture.

Trading For Slaves There were different ways that Africans ended up as slaves: The first slave traders, such as John Hawkins, went ashore to kidnap as many Africans as they could. Europeans traded with African chiefs for slaves using items such as cloth, iron, guns and alcohol. Chiefs sold criminals from their own tribes or people they had captured from enemy tribes. Slaves were gathered in slave factories.

WEST AFRICA supplied the majority of the slaves that went to work in the Caribbean and America. In the 18th century a long stretch of West African shoreline was called the Gold coast because of the precious metal that was found there. Other areas were given names to reflect the raw materials and resources they had. Many slaves came from areas on the west coast which are now the countries of Ghana, Togo and Benin, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Angola.

Slave factories was the name given to the forts along the West Coast of Africa. European ships could sail from one factory to another buying slaves. El Mina (in the country of Ghana) was controlled by the Dutch. Eighty-four Europeans and 184 Africans worked there. One thousands slaves could be kept in this factory.

Cape Coast Castle, in Ghana was the biggest slave factory. It was owned by the British and could hold 1,500 slaves. It is now a museum of slavery. Smaller slave factories were much more common. These would keep slaves to trade with the slave ships.

In Source A, William Bosman was a Dutch slave trader. He describes what happened when slaves were brought to a factory. When slaves are brought from the inland countries, they are put in prison together. When we buy them, they are all brought out together and thoroughly examined by our surgeons. Those which are approved as good are set on one side; in the meantime a burning iron, with the name of the company, lies in the fire. Our slaves are branded on the chest after we have agreed a price with the owners of the slaves.

Source B is from ‘The Shameful Trade’ by F.G. Kay published in It describes what happened when slaves arrived at a factory. The ships’ surgeons became expert in selecting strong slaves. They also had to make an accurate estimate of the slaves’ age. The African merchants shaved all the slaves’ hair, to disguise their age. Thirty five was the maximum age for a first-class slave. Those that appeared older, or had poor eyes, teeth or limbs were classed as second rate. The slaves passed as fit and healthy were then branded on the breast with the buying company’s mark. This was to prevent the African traders from swapping bought slaves for unfit ones.

Source C is taken from the autobiography of a slave called Olaudah Equiano. He was eventually sold in the West Indies but taught to read and write. He describes the end of his journey from the interior of Africa. We walked for many weeks in chains. Then we saw a great river with no bank at the far side. On it lay a strange ship. As we reached the coast of the sea, we were taken into a large fort. There our African owners washed us, shaved us and rubbed our skins with palm oil to make it shine. White men came in and looked at us. After a few days the black and white traders seemed to do a deal. We were branded with hot irons that burnt our skin. Then we were kept in the fort for several weeks more, chained and feed boilet beans, till another ship arrived.

For Europeans in the factories, life was not much better than that of the slaves. In Source D, Nicholas Owen wrote in his diary, a few months before he died of malaria or yellow fever. A man in this country can have little pleasure in his life, with all the inconveniences of the wilderness. These three months nothing remarkable has happened. I have no affection for this place or its people. We spend the best years of our life among Negroes, scraping the world for money, the god of all mankind, until death overtakes us.

In Source E, Bosman, a Dutchman, describes the English traders at Cape Coast Castle Miserable wretches, they excite my pity. They waste their strength in drinking and lusting after local women. As a result they fall easy victims to disease.