John Newton, devout composer of the hymn ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds’, once wrote: ‘I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders’. So what was that dreadful business? For four years that pious man was captain of a Liverpool slave ship.

The great object with the captains of those slave vessels, he said, was to be full. The cargo of a vessel of about 100 tons was from 220 to 250 slaves. The space in which the slaves lay was about five feet high, and this space was divided in the middle, for the slaves lay in two rows, one above the other, close to each other like books on a shelf. ‘I have known them so close that the shelf could not easily contain one more’, said John Newton.

So how did the slaves get to the slave ship? Following their capture, they were marched to the coast in gangs, or ‘coffles’. They were fettered in pairs, and their necks were tied together by leather thongs; every day they had to march for twelve hours in the burning heat without food or drink. The track of every large coffle might be traced through the desert by the dead or dying left behind. One traveller tells of a journey he took of 26 miles, in the course of which he counted 107 skeletons.

As soon as the slaves were brought aboard the slave ship, they were immediately fastened together in pairs by handcuffs on their wrists and by iron fetters on their legs. They were sent down below decks, and were packed on the shelves so closely that they could neither rise nor turn. The rolling of the vessel caused the shackles to chafe and fret their naked flesh, which caused them excruciating pain. This appalling overcrowding was the source of all kinds of diseases, including dysentery, and the mortality was dreadful. One slave ship set off from Africa with 700 slaves on board, and arrived in the West Indies with less than half of them.

Any attempt by the slaves to rise against the ship’s crew was met with terrible revenge. ‘I have seen men sentenced to unmerciful whippings’, said John Newton, ‘continued till the poor creatures have not had power to groan under their misery, and hardly a sign of life has remained. I have seen men agonising for days under the torture of the thumb-screw’. In some vessels bloodhounds were trained to keep watch over the hatches and seize any who attempted to come up on deck. The slaves courted death in preference to their sufferings, and would refuse their food, trusting to die of starvation. The slaves left alive after their ghastly voyage then had to face the humiliation of being sold and drudgery on a plantation.

It was not until 1807 that William Wilberforce’s efforts brought about the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. But slavery itself remained – in Britain’s West Indian colonies 800,000 British subjects were inheriting the lash and the fetter. It fell to Thomas Fowell Buxton to campaign for the extinction of slavery in all British dominions. He, too, had to fight against determined opposition, and it was not until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act came into force. Throughout the colonies the churches and chapels were thrown open, and the slaves crowded in to await the solemn moment. When the chapel bells sounded they sprang up, and the glad sound of thanksgiving rang out, for the chains were broken and the slaves were free.

Comments (0)