As soon as possible, the captives were sold to the captains of waiting
slave ships, as Robert Harms learned from the log of the French ship The
Diligent,at the port of Jakin. Often, ships could not collect a cargo quickly
enough to prevent epidemics.The Diligenttook three months to collect its
cargo, so both the prisoners and the crew began to die of fevers and dysen-
tery, and the prisoners of malnutrition and despair. Prisoners commonly
believed that they were to be eaten by white cannibals. During this time,
each prisoner was branded with a red-hot iron to indicate the ship on
which he was being placed and his owner. I find no authority for this, but I
suspect that branding was done not only for identification but also to ter-
rorize the captives, who were always thought to be planning a revolt.
Meanwhile, the ship’s carpenter was building a barricade to separate
The African Roots of American Blacks 97