Middle Passage

The Middle Passage was the leg of the Atlantic slave trade that transported African people from Africa to slave markets in North America, South America and the Caribbean (The Americas). It was called the Middle Passage because the slave trade was a form of Triangular trade; ships left Europe with goods for African markets, sailed to Africa where the goods were sold or traded for people in the African slave markets, then sailed to the Americas and Caribbean (West Indies) where the Africans were sold or traded for goods for European markets, and then returned to Europe.

The Middle Passage took anywhere from two to five months depending on weather conditions with wind conditions varying by time of year. The ships used were designed for the transport of goods rather than people since two of the legs of the triangular trade involved cargo such as casks of rum or molasses or crates of textiles and other goods or bales of cotton and tobacco. Due to this design, the conditions aboard ships running the Middle Passage with human cargo were poor with practically nonexistent sanitation facilities as the ships were not designed for the transport of several hundred people.

Warring Africans sold prisoners to Europeans who held several coastal ports, or, when there was a rare opportunity, the Europeans themselves kidnapped African people. The captives were usually force-marched to these ports along the western coast of Africa, where they were held for purchase to the European or American slave traders. The purchased Africans were usually packed into the ships transporting nearly 300 humans as cargo accompanied by approximately 35 crew. The male captives were normally chained together in pairs to save space — right leg to the next man's left leg — while the women and children may have had somewhat more room. The captives were fed very small portions of corn, yams, rice, and palm oil, normally just enough to sustain them. Sometimes captives were allowed to move around during the day, but many ships kept the shackles on throughout the journey.

With the outlawing of the Atlantic Slave trade by Great Britain and the United States in the first decade of the 1800s, the transport of captives from Africa to the Americas dwindled to a trickle and then disappeared by the middle of the century. Within the United States, several Southern slave states (primarily Virginia) provided slaves to other slave states especially the new states coming into existence as the United States expanded westward (see Northwest Ordinance). This slave trade internal to the United States ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, the American Civil War, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

About 18 million Africans were transported from Africa with 3 million dying during the journey. Disease and starvation due to the length of the passage were the main contributors to the death toll with amoebic dysentery and scurvy causing the majority of deaths. Additionally, outbreaks of smallpox, measles, and other diseases spread rapidly in the close-quarter compartments. The number of dead increased with the length of voyage, since the incidence of dysentery and of scurvy increased with longer stints at sea as the quality and amount of food and water diminished with every passing day.

External links

• More from The Africans in America Web site