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The Atlantic passage, or Middle Passage, usually to Brazil or an island in the Caribbean, was notorious for its brutality and for the overcrowded unsanitary conditions on slave ships, in which hundreds of Africans were packed tightly into tiers below decks for a voyage of about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) that could last from a few weeks to several months.
They were typically chained together, and usually the low ceilings did not permit them to sit upright. The heat was intolerable, and the oxygen levels became so low that candles would not burn. Because crews feared insurrection, the Africans were allowed to go outside on the upper decks for only a few hours each day. Historians estimate that between 15 and 25 percent of the enslaved Africans bound for the Americas died aboard slave ships. Death rates, which were directly proportional to the length of the voyage, declined as the time of the voyage was reduced significantly between the beginning of the 16th century and the end of the 19th century.The autobiographical account of the West African Olaudah Equiano, published in 1789, is particularly well known for its graphic descriptions of the suffering endured on the transatlantic voyages.
Atrocities and sexual abuse of the enslaved captives were widespread, although their monetary value as slaves perhaps mitigated such treatment. Ship captains could not ignore the health of their human cargo, because they were paid only for enslaved persons delivered alive. Moreover, the death rates among the European captains and crew engaged in the trade of enslaved people were at least as high as those among their captives on the Middle Passage. In an infamous incident on the slave ship Zong in 1781, when both Africans and crew members were dying of an infectious disease, Capt. Luke Collingwood, hoping to stop the disease, ordered that more than 130 Africans be thrown overboard. He then filed an insurance claim on the value of the murdered enslaved persons. Occasionally, the African captives successfully revolted and took over the ships. The most famous such incident occurred when in 1839 a slave named Joseph Cinqué led a mutiny of 53 illegally purchased enslaved people on the Spanish slave ship Amistad, killing the captain and two members of the crew. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ordered the Africans to be returned to their homes.
Banning the trade of enslaved people
At the time of the American Revolution (1775–83), there was widespread support in the Northern American colonies for prohibiting the importation of more enslaved people. However, after the Revolution, at the insistence of Southern states, Congress waited more than two decades before making the importation of enslaved people illegal. When Congress did so, in 1808, the law was enacted with little dissent, but Caribbean smugglers frequently violated the law until it was enforced by the Northern blockade of the South in 1861 during the American Civil War.
After Great Britain outlawed slavery throughout its empire in 1833, the British navy diligently opposed the trade of enslaved people in the Atlantic and used its ships to try to prevent slave-trading operations. Brazil outlawed the trade of enslaved people in 1850, but the smuggling of newly enslaved persons into Brazil did not end entirely until the country finally enacted emancipation in 1888.