aboard that about 15 of 100 captives died on the voyage. Often the death
rate was much higher. On one Dutch ship from Elmina on the Ghana coast
in 1731, at least 150 of 753 slaves died of scurvy. Slaves who fell ill and did
not recover from their ailments before the end of the voyage were worthless
as commercial goods and were often thrown to the sharks. When water ran
short, as it sometimes did when a ship was becalmed, the captain would
routinely “dispose” of the cargo. We know this primarily because some
captains tried to collect insurance. In 1781, for example, the slaving ship
Zongwas running low on water, so the captain ordered the crew to hand-
cuff 132 slaves and throw them into the sea. When he arrived in England,
he claimed 30 pounds each for them under his maritime insurance. The
underwriters took the case to court and lost: the jury held that “the case of
the slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.” If nothing
else could be done with the captives, they might be simply dropped ashore,
as Captain John Lovell did with “ninety-two pieces of Blacks, all old, and
very sick and thin.” Slaving was a brutalizing business.
It was also dangerous not only because of fevers but also because of the
captives. Captured Africans were a hazardous cargo and were treated as
such by the sailors. Many came from warlike societies, and those who were
not completely cowed or totally immobilized were sometimes driven to des-
perate acts. Despite having all odds against them, hundreds of captives
tried to overwhelm the crews. To actual or anticipated rebellions, the crews
responded with fury, whipping the ringleaders, hanging them, chopping
them to pieces with axes, or throwing them overboard. Yet, as David Eltis
has pointed out, “in the eighteenth century alone, resistance ensured that
half a million Africans avoided the plantations of the Americas....
Africans who died resisting the slave traders, as well as those who resisted
unsuccessfully but survived to work on the plantations of the Americas,
saved others from the middle passage.” Although the records are incom-
plete, 392 revolts by slaves on shipboard are now known.
Olaudah Equiano later wrote a record of his capture as a child and of
being taken aboard a slave ship. When he saw “a multitude of black people
of every description chained together, every one of their countenances
expressing dejection and sorrow,” he said, “I no longer doubted my fate;
and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the
166 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA