Middle Passage
How is this account similar or different from the other documents Slave Ship Captain
Document B: Slave Ship Captain (Modified) Captain Thomas Phillips transported slaves from Africa to Barbados on the ship Hannibal in 1693. The ship left the African island of São Tomé on August 25th and arrived in Barbados on November 4th.The Royal African Company of London funded the trip. This is an excerpt from his journal about the voyage. There happened such sickening and mortality among my poor men and Negroes. Of the first we buried 14, and of the last 320, which was a great detriment to our voyage, the Royal African Company losing ten pounds by every slave that died. . . . The distemper which my men as well as the blacks mostly died of was the white flux. . . . The Negroes are so vulnerable to the small-pox that few ships that carry them escape without it, and sometimes it makes vast havoc and destruction among them. But though we had 100 at a time sick of it . . . we lost not above a dozen by it. . . . But what the smallpox spared, the flux swept off, to our great regret, after all our pains and care to give [the slaves] their messes, . . . keeping their lodgings as clean and sweet as possible, and enduring so much misery and stench so long among creatures nastier than swine, only to be defeated by their mortality. . . . No gold-finders can endure so much noisome slavery as they do who carry Negroes. . . . We endure twice the misery; and yet by their mortality our voyages are ruined. Source: Thomas Phillips, A Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1732. Vocabulary mortality: death, especially on a large scale distemper: disorder or disease white flux: intestinal infection that caused intense diarrhea messes: meals swine: pigs gold-finders: individuals seeking wealth noisome: unpleasant