Year 9 Assessment Task 1 – Source
Booklet
The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the crossing from Africa to the Americas, which the ships made carrying their ‘cargo’
of slaves. It was so-called because it was the middle section of the trade route taken by many of the ships. The
first section (the ‘Outward Passage’ ) was from Europe to Africa. Then came the Middle Passage, and the
‘Return Passage’ was the final journey from the Americas to Europe. The Middle Passage took the enslaved
Africans away from their homeland. They were from different countries and different ethnic (or cultural)
groups. They spoke different languages. Many had never seen the sea before, let alone been on a ship. They
had no knowledge of where they were going or what awaited them there.
The slaves were packed below the decks of the ship. The men were usually shackled together in pairs using leg
irons, or shackles. The men were considered dangerous, as they were mostly young and strong and likely to
turn on their captors if the opportunity arose. People were packed so close that they could not get to the toilet
buckets, and so lay in their own filth. Seasickness, heat and lack of air all contributed to the terrible smell.
These conditions also encouraged disease, particularly fever and the ‘bloody flux’ or gastroenteritis (a serious
stomach bug). The voyage usually took six to eight weeks, but bad weather could increase this to 13 weeks or
more. The engraving (a type of print) of the slave ship below, shows the slaves packed into the hold of the
ship. It shows room for 295 enslaved Africans, this was the legal number the ship could carry after a change in
the law. The Dolben Act of 1788 regulated the number of slaves according to the size of the ship. On previous
voyages, ships such as this had carried 609.
There are a very few accounts of the Middle Passage, written by enslaved Africans who had experienced
conditions on a slave ship at first-hand. This was because many Africans who made the crossing would not
have known how to write, or had the chance to learn later in life. One well known African writer who did
experience the crossing wrote, was Olaudah Equiano. He wrote, ‘The shrieks of the women and the groans of
the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable’, in his autobiography The Interesting
Narrative…, published in 1789. For many on the terrible crossing, death was preferable to the unknown fate
awaiting them. Ottobah Cuguano, an African man who was enslaved in about 1770, planned with his fellow
slaves to blow up the ship and all die together. Their plan failed.
A few ships crossed the Middle Passage without any deaths. Some ships lost most of their ‘cargo’. The average
losses were between 10 and 20%, through sickness, suicide and even murder at the hands of the slave crew and
captains. 10% means over 1,000,000 Africans died on board the ships, 20% represents over 2,000,000 deaths.
http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/from-africa-to-america/atlantic-crossing/middle-passage/
Port Cities - Bristol
Slavery in Brazil by Jean-Baptiste
Debret (1834–1839). A slave
owner punishes a slave in 19th
century Brazil.
Cross-section of a
slaver ship, from
Notices of Brazil in
1828 and 1829 by
Robert Walsh
This painting by Johann Moritz Rugendas depicts a scene below deck of a slave ship headed
to Brazil. Rugendas was an eyewitness to the scene.
The following excerpts are from Sarah Ford, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal
Writers' Project, 1936-1938 - US Library of Congress