[Footnote 34:  Bosnian’s Guinea, in Pinkerton’s Voyages, XVI, 490.]

While the ship was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake of fresh air.  But on departure for the “middle passage,” as the trip to America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship’s triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant.  The negro men were usually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chances of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain’s fears gave place to confidence.  On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of poverty-stricken white emigrants.  Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by some of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768:  “Yet I never saw an instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years’ experience in that branch equal to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish....  Self interest prompted the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what condition they were landed."[36]

[Footnote 35:  E. g., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.]

[Footnote 36:  D.D.  Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens (New York, 1915), pp. 67, 68.  For the tragic sufferings of an English convict shipment in 1768 see Plantation and Frontier, I, 372-373]

William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he was accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be severely punished.  Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, “I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death itself.”  In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of an hour’s time.  “He answered, ’He must confess it was a rash action in him to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I should lose all the money I had paid for him.’” When the captain professed himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuring his fellows that his life was safe.[37]