The Middle Passage

  

Question: Describe the Middle Passage as extensively as possible, speaking of diseases, philosophies of packing, day-to-day maintenance of the ship, etc.  Then discuss the psychological ramifications of this historical moment on the construction of a distinctly African-American identity.

The term “Middle Passage” is an emotionally benign and sanitized term that relates to the transportation of millions upon millions of African captives across the Atlantic.  Termed thusly for the second leg of the journey for vile, European slave “traders” on their expeditions of carnage and psychic destruction across the seas, it was the middle portion of their triangular, transatlantic journey.  For the captive African, it was their passage to the very depths of hell and evil. In many ways, for the enslaved African, it signified not a middle passage but the beginning of the end.   An end to freedom, dignity, self-sufficiency and the cultural legacy of a rich and varied homeland and signified a passage to the “sacrifice of living Africans on the altar of capitalist accumulation.” (Munford, Black Ordeal, p. 274)  The ideological origin of the term Middle Passage is disrespectful to the Africans that died and those that amazingly survived. The Malevolent Voyage, as it should be more aptly termed to reflect the egregious, inhumane nature of that fateful passage not only of time and distance but also of life, was an indelible marker in the destruction of African peoples.

Facing towards the setting sun, emerging from the dungeons of carnage in West Africa, the captive Africans faced their sea-bound destinies guilty of absolutely no wrongdoing, save that of being born with beautiful, black skin.  Clarence J. Munford brilliantly articulates the essence of the impact of the Middle Passage on the captive African:

For its victims, the Middle Passage meant an end finally to the trauma

of initial capture and the nightmare of coffles, barracoons and the first, flesh-searing branding, only to embark anew on a journey beyond hope, a voyage of fiendish torture and death that enabled the sadist among the white seadogs to realize some of their most fevered yearnings. (Munford, The Black Ordeal of Slavery . . . , p.273) 

The true tales of horror and destruction of the Middle Passage will never be known.  One can only imagine, pieced together from the recounted tales of emotionally bereft and pathological European seamen, what the experience was truly like for the captive African.  This author’s contemporary mind cannot fathom the conditions under which Africans had to survive to ensure the perpetuation of generations of African people throughout the Diaspora.  Ripped from their families and homes, their movements restricted under heavy chains, subjected to physical abuse, rape and torture, captive Africans survived aboard those floating coffins amidst the smell of urine, feces, sweat, blood, vomit, and probably the most paralyzing, the smell of fear. 

French, Dutch, Portuguese, British and Spanish in origin, slave ships traveled to the shores of Africa to gather their human cargo for transportation to the “New World.” Traded, sold, and kidnapped into captivity, the enslaved African was branded with a hot iron and renamed a European name and logged onto the ship’s manifest like sundry, inanimate provisions for the trip.  Coasting, or the process whereby slave ships lay anchor off the African coast to collect captives for a most profitable journey, averaged four to eight months in duration.  Able to see their beloved homeland and unaware of their fate, chained Africans were held beneath the decks, growing more anxious and more sick with each passing hour-- minute.  It was there, within swimming distance of Africa, that mutiny was most likely to occur.  Once out at sea, the hope for salvation, for freedom, faded like the distant horizon of their beloved motherland.

The ships themselves ranged in size from fifty to two hundred tons.  Commonly, a ship of standard proportions held anywhere between four hundred and six hundred captives. Generally, crewmen would be proportioned one man to three tons, with higher ratios occurring when the fear of mutiny was greater.  The more greedy captains were known as “tight packers,” forcing as many Africans on board with complete disregard to even the most remote concept of humanity, in an effort to reach the Americas with sufficient Africans for which they could make private transactions.  The concept was rooted in the belief that the more Africans that were on board, the more Africans that would make it to the final destination, thus greater profits.  They would simply pile bodies on top on one another with no respect for the human beings that they kidnapped and traded like cattle.  “Loose packers” were the individuals that felt that fewer Africans per square foot meant less disease, rebellion and death among the captives.  It was not out of concern for their “passengers” that loose packers based their philosophy but simply an effort to decrease the mortality rate and potential danger to crewmembers and increase the profits for the surviving Africans that fostered their practices. 

The conditions onboard were the most deplorable and contemptible conditions conceivable.  As to the space allotted for captives, Munford describes the common dimensions, “A ship of common dimensions had a battery or a between-deck.  This was a space between the spare deck and the first bridge, about 5 feet 8 inches high.  A platform, 6 feet wide, ran the length of the ship.  The space between it and the upper bridge was two and a half feet.  Captives lay stretched on the bridge platform and between-decks,” (p.281).  That meant that captives lay chained arm to arm, leg to leg, for the duration of a trip that averaged five to nine weeks, in a space where they could barely lift their heads.  In order to relieve themselves, chained captives had to crawl over the dead and dying to reach a barrel for elimination.  Dragging with them their fellow cellmates, for it was certainly a prison of sorts, the effort was most often futile and resulted in captives eliminating where they lay.  Pools of excrement and waste dripped into the eyes, mouths and open sores of anyone lying beneath or around someone too weak or physically unable to make that degrading sojourn.  Many times, small children lost their lives, suffocated at the bottoms of the vats of filth.  The excrement pails were emptied once a day, if at all, and occasionally the decks would be washed down with seawater and vinegar. 

The age of the captives ranged from preteen to early twenties, with only the most healthy and the strongest Africans being “selected” to make the journey.  It seems rather peculiar that any human being could be deemed strong and/or healthy after being subjected to the atrocities of the enslavement process.  If one were reasonably healthy upon boarding the ship, the voyage most certainly ensured that they would not be healthy at the end of the trip.  Unconscionable conditions existed not only to eat away at the bodies of the captives but also to consume their very souls.  The list of ailments attributed to enslaved Africans reads like a medical school journal of fatal, if not surreal, diseases; flux, dysentery, scurvy, typhoid fever, small pox, yellow fever, tuberculosis, leprosy et al. were common occurrences aboard the slave ships.  Yaws, a venereal disease that would cause its victims to itch themselves into a state of insanity and opthamalia, a condition that caused temporary blindness, were just a few or the exotic maladies to which African captives were exposed.  Plagued with parasites and rodents, housed in quarters with insufficient ventilation, and unlikely to receive any medical attention, each and every captive aboard the slave ships was exposed to unthinkable infection.  The medical “treatment” for captives oft times amounted to nothing more than being throw overboard, inconsequential fodder for predatory sharks. 

Mortality rates going as high as an estimated twenty five percent, crewmen learned that physical activity lead to a greater chance of African survival.  Weather permitting, slaves were led on deck to “dance” in small groups.  Forced to move to the beat of a drum, the captives had the chance to stretch their limb and feel sunshine on their skin.  Africans were not allowed the dignity of choosing a watery grave over the indignation of enslavement and certain precautions were made to ensure that no one jumped overboard.  Nets on the sides of the boats were in place to ensure that voluntary drowning was not an option.  Mothers, however, would occasionally manage to fling their newborns African babies beyond the nets and send their children to death, their bodies far from the reaches of their pale-faced captors, their souls forever free. 

Nutrition, or more aptly the lack thereof, contributed greatly to the horrific conditions of the African captives.  More than lack of food, lack of water was responsible for deaths of innumerous enslaved Africans.  Subsisting on a diet not fit for even the most vile of beasts, captive Africans suffered from dehydration and starvation.  Many times, in an act of defiance, captured Africans would refuse to eat the slop given them as a suicidal act.  The crewmen would threaten the Africans with burning, hot coals about their lips and force them to swallow it as an example to others that might consider death by starvation.  A mixture of horse beans and flour was not much incentive to eat in addition to the fact that it might be crawling with maggots and vermin.  Provisions were made for each African to have one barrel of fresh water per voyage.  If inclement weather or extenuating circumstances led to a miscalculation of supplies, crewmembers apportioned whatever water was drinkable for themselves, leaving the captive Africans to die or throwing them overboard so as not to have to hear their incessant moans. During the Middle Passage, the strongest may not have been the ones to survive the voyage; it might simply have been a matter of the ones closest to the food being able to survive.

Exactly how many Africans died during the Middle Passage will never be known.  Estimates including those that survived, those lost at sea, and those that were slaughtered and died before ever reaching the slave ships range from fifteen to one hundred million. There was little, if any, incentive to keep accurate records of accurate counts of the ships’ human cargo, allotting for extra profit from private sales between captains and eager buyers. Perhaps an even more elusive figure is the amount of money made from the trade of African lives for currency.  It can be considered trade only under the superficial guise of trading a human being for money.  On those vessels where the “cargo” was ensured, a captain could conceivably claim that all of the Africans contracted a fatal disease and that he had to throw them overboard, thus receiving the money owed on the policy on their heads and the money received from their “illegal” sale.  Piracy accounted for much of the loss of captives within striking distance of the final destination.  Sea-faring thieves could come along after the most arduous portion of the journey and commandeer the captive Africans for their own ill-gotten gains. 

Mutiny aboard the slave ships was not uncommon.  Armed with nothing more than the sheer will to live and the determination of survival, captive Africans often organized rebellions without the benefit of a common language among them and no hope for escape other than death.  Even the stories of the mutinies that have survived the passage of time are flavored by the storytellers themselves, white crewmen who were able to cease and desist the efforts of the enraged and willful Africans.  Buried at sea are the stories of the Africans who overcame their captors only to slaughter them and remain unable to navigate their way back home.  Plentiful are the stories of Africans who allegedly sold their brethren off to the European slave traders, but rare is the story of how Africans patrolled the coast of Africa in small boats, liberating captives on ships docked at port.  Sea captains had good reason to not report accounts of uprisings because it would jeopardize their future expeditions, and future income. 

One of the only first-hand accounts of the Middle Passage from the vantage point of the captive African is illustrated in the book, The Interesting Narrative of Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African: an Authoritative Text/Written by Himself.  Written in the vernacular of the enslaver, Equiano speaks of his experiences of capture as a child of eleven years old.  He recounts the belief upon being brought upon the ship that he was going to be put in one of the large pots and eaten by the savagely brutal white men. He laments about the sensation of “death spirits” on the ship, and his desire for death as an escape to the abysmal conditions that surrounded him.  Tales of the captives’ experience written in the native tongues of Africa may not exist, and if they do, they have remained hidden or have been destroyed. 

The ramifications and psychological inheritance of the Middle Passage have never fully been examined.  S.E. Anderson suggests that the individuals that survived the Middle Passage possessed a different genetic makeup than those that remained on the shores of Africa.  For example, excessive sodium loss was common during transportation across the ocean.  He goes on to suggest that sodium-conserving descendents of Africans who were enslaved may be more susceptible to “salt-sensitive” hypertension than other people have a tendency to be (Anderson, Black Holocaust for Beginners, p. 101). Certainly, extensive physiological studies need to be conducted to ascertain the genetic damage to the immune systems of the African captives and their descendants and the role it plays on the health of African Americans.  Psychologically, the origins of distrust, self-hatred, and competitiveness all had some foundation in the experience of the Middle Passage. The forced competition for something as simple as fresh air among people that shared the same bonds but different ethnicities may very well be the origin of turf wars and gang allegiances that exist today. 

If one can speculate as to the origins of the breakdown of the Black male/female relationship in contemporary society, the genesis may very well lie in the bowels of the slave ships.  The ratio of men to women averaged two to one. Women and children frequently went unchained but were always housed separately from the male captives. Forced gender segregation, unhealthy ratios, and a barbarous, competitive climate certainly created a communication rift the likes of which may not have been transcended to this very day.  Certainly, it is in the interpretation of the instances of rape of the women aboard the ship that a misogynist slant lay. 

As Vincent Harding recounts in his work entitled, There is a River, “many Black women resisted the most personal of white invasions and instead, turned the situation to the purposes of their people’s fight for freedom (p. 12).  This sort of sentiment makes light of the psychological and emotional devastation of the act of rape and places the responsibility of resistance within the loins of captive African women. Harding speaks of the women who chose the struggle for black freedom over a privileged [emphasis added] bondage among white men, as if to say that repeated rape and defilement was in some way a meritorious benefit of those that did not slay their violators.  From such a statement, the assumption must certainly be made that the weak women submitted to such tortures to make things easy on themselves and because they were not committed to the act of revolution.  That is an absolutely absurd and insane presupposition that reduces women to a sexual object rather than human being and forms the foundation for the gold-digger stereotype commonly associated with Black women. 

Nowhere in his work does Harding mention the male victims of rape onboard the ship neither does he accuse the men of the being the benefactors of sex in exchange for comfort nor does he imply that they were responsible for mounting insurrections.  If the captive African male slaves believed as Harding does, that sex and rape are synonymous, that mindset essentially set the stage for the objectification of Black women and the concept of sex in exchange for goods and services that plagues the African-American community.  Perhaps, the African male captive simply died inside, seeing his sister, mother and wife, repeatedly abused, unable to protect her from such abuses.  Profoundly ashamed of the fact that he could not defend her, he turned his back on her, creating a chasm between Black men and women that has yet to be healed. Whatever the scenario, the blood that runs through the collective veins of Black people on this side of the Atlantic is the blood of those indefatigable spirits, those courageous women that somehow managed to survive repeated rape and degradation to live to see another day.  In essence, our existence is owed to the African women that did not stage rebellion and die at the bottom of the sea, but to those that internalized the pain and found a way to survive.

The end of the journey meant a new life of hell.  It was on reaching the New World that the captive Africans assumed their new title, that of slave.  John Hope Franklin discloses:

Perhaps not more than half the slaves shipped from Africa ever became effective workers in the New World.  Many of those that had not died of disease or committed suicide by jumping overboard were permanently disabled by the ravages of some dread disease or by maiming which often resulted from the struggle against the chains (Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 57).

The death and disfiguration toll of the Middle Passage is astronomical when multiplied by the hundreds of years that the transatlantic transportation of kidnapped Africans occurred.  There was no turning back, there was no going home. 

The Middle Passage was not an historical moment but rather an historical era of the most devastating dimensions.  It was the birthplace of disease, dysfunction, and destruction for Africans around the globe.  The Black Holocaust was nothing less than centuries of oppression and genocide perpetuated by Europeans on innocent, African victims that endured to live on in body and in spirit.  The Middle Passage is not over.  Dispersed Africans will forever be tethered and bound to the vessels of ruination, drowning in the sea of abandon, until the proper homage is paid to those that perished and those that dared to live on.  

Scottie Lowe 2003