The Horrors Of A Slave Ship : By Olaudah Equiano

“The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave” revolves around the life of Esteban Montejo: who once set his life is the Caribbean island of Cuba; in which this story provides readers with another distinctive approach to teaching the lives of slavery. As the narration progresses through this writing, readers consequently have many opportunities to annotate how the abolition of slavery played a great role in his personal life. Evidently, whether it is intentional or unintentional, the narrator frequently mentions the ending of slavery, as he substantially detailed “…till slavery left Cuba,” (Barnet 38); “… I got to know all these people better after slavery was abolished,” (Barnet 58); and “It was after Abolition that the term ‘effeminate’ came into

Heinrich Heine's poem the Slave ship reveals the inhumane and horrible experiences slaves had to go through while traveling on slave ships. At the beginning of the poem the captain Mynheer van Koek of the ship admires his work, for he obtained six hundred slaves "dirt cheap". More than likely, Koek bought the slaves from African leaders who had no problem in trading their own people. Often times African leaders would do this to punish their people, not knowing the lingering effect it would have on the world. Heine's describes how Koek swapped "brandy", "trinkets", and "beads" for the precious life of a slave. In stanza 7, the captain's moment of bliss has finally come to an end we he realizes that the slaves are dieing in substantial numbers,

“The Horrors of a Slave Ship,” describes in detail, the tragic experiences of Olaudah Equiano as a captive slave. Equiano suffered many sleepless nights; he was flogged and kidnapped multiple times. In the article, the author is trying to give the reader the feeling by giving details of the brutally floggings and desperation as many slaves suffocated to death as they were placed in an overcrowded deck. Overall, the author tries to give readers their point across of the difficulties in being a captive slave.

The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker is a great fiction novel that describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, seamen, and captains on their journey through the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage marked the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves provided a great economy for the European countries due to the fact that these African slaves provided free labor while cultivating sugar cane in the Caribbean and America. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). This tells us that African enslavement to the Americas causes a complete

According to Janelle Collins article titled, Passgae to Slavery, Passage to Freedom: Olaudah and the Sea “The slave narrative genre is generally recognized as a text that persuasively uses autobiography to argue against the inhumanity and injustice of the institution of slavery.” This explanation begs the question of what is a slave. Slaves were very common in early American history. Slavery is not something Americans celebrate though. It caused a lot of problems and even set war between brothers. People have for a long time struggled with the thought of why and how people were able to own other people and discern differences which made one better than the other. Slaves were not just any kind of people; slaves were men, women, and children who were not English or white by nature. Slaves were made of a large population of black Africans who were forced to come to America to work for other people. How did slaves come to America? To answer that question one would need to take a look into an autobiography titled, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. As described by Olaudah and proved by other evidence, the journey through the Middle Passage was one that forced, it was horrendously dirty, and only the beginning to life as a slave.

To really show the horrendous conditions that the slaves endured, the author includes a 1787 replication drawing of the slave ship Brooks. Built in 1781 with a lower deck intended to accommodate 294 slaves, giving each slave a space comparable to the size of a coffin. Adult males were allocated a space six feet long and fifteen inches wide and allowing even less space for adult women, boys, and girls. The height of the same area was just five feet, and did not include any toilet facilities for the slaves. In most cases, the captains would load double the number of slaves their ships were designed for leading to even worse conditions onboard with more mouths to feed but not enough provisions to compensate. Those slaves who died during the journey through the Middle Passage were simply thrown overboard, where their bodies were eaten by ravenous sharks.

The theme of terror reoccurs throughout Rediker’s book. The slave ship was a symbol of terror to the Africans that were kidnapped and sold into slavery. For example, Chapter 4 of The Slave Ship discusses the life of Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was filled “with astonishment which was soon converted into terror” (Rediker 108) when he was first laid eyes on the ship where he would spend the next few weeks of his life. These emotions that Equiano experience when he first laid eyes on the slave ship may have been the same emotions that many of the other African captives felt when first saw the slave ship. James Field Stanfield even witnessed the terror that was caused when captives were boarding the slave ship. Both Equiano and Stanfield wrote about the astonishment turned into terror when reaching the slave ship. Africans also viewed the slave ship as a bringer terror in the form of war. Wars in Africa “often commenced when a slave ship appeared on the coast” (Rediker 98). The slave ship would provide the local African traders the tools (weapons) that they needed to bring them their captives. These wars that broke out created terror in Africa and were seen as a “euphemism for the organized theft of human beings” (Rediker 99), which were ultimately caused by

Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano all have extremely interesting slave narratives. During their lives, they faced plenty of racist discrimination and troubling moments. They were all forced into slavery at an awfully young age and they all had to fight for their freedom. In 1797, Truth was born into slavery in New York with the name of Isabella Van Wagener. She was a slave for most of her life and eventually got emancipated. Truth was an immense women’s suffrage activist. She went on to preach about her religious life, become apart of the abolitionist movement, and give public speeches. Truth wrote a well-known personal experience called An Account of an Experience with Discrimination, and she gave a few famous

The article, The Horrors of a Slave Ship, is first person point of view account of the capturing of Olaudah Equiano. He tells the story of how he was captured from his home while his parents were away to be used as a slave. The article starts off with Olaudah and his sister being captured while their parents were away. They were taken into the woods, tied up, and forced to travel bound without food. After many days of traveling, Olaudah and his sister were separated. From that point he was passed around and finally landed in the hands of his first owner. His first owner was a smith and Olaudah worked in his shop. He was there for about a month

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the

I did not know what was going to happen when I boarded the large ship. I knew it was not good for I was a captive to these white people. My imagination did not even come close to how wretched a state we were all going to be a part of for the next sixty days.

Equiano conjured the horrors of slavery in ways that no one else would be able to. He had firsthand experience and was more educated on the occurrence. In the Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, it tells about his life and what he went through as a slave. A few things were trading between white slave owners, along with very harsh treatment. The people who transported the slaves ignored the fact that they were humans, too. The journey being labeled as horrific would be an understatement and would not give it justice.

Have you ever heard of a slave escaping slavery and trying to get his of life. In love story of jeffrey and dorcas it is say that jeffrey was a prime cotton hand and he is 23 year old. He was being sold for 1,310. Jeffrey was in love with a another slave name dorcas. They could not be marriage. So he begand his master if he would but dorcas. He said that he would if the price was not that high. Then she came out on stage but she was not along she had 4 other family with her. So his master told him that he could not buy her. That was it they both moved to different state and never to see each other again. In Wesley Harris: An account of Escaping Slavery it says that there was the 4 man that wanted to leave and they did they found this frame

The most crucial and painful stage of the slave transportation would be the time spent waiting on the African Coast. West Indies ships required at least 100 days to acquire slaves, free trader spent twice as long as West Indian Cargoes on African Coast.

J.M.W. Turner’s the paint of the slave ship is intended to show of inhuman treatment of the slave trade movement. His painting reveals just how cold hearted the slaves were, by showing what really happened out at sea.