“Equiano soon noticed the systematic use of terror aboard the slaver. The whites “looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty”
The quotation from the former slave Olaudah Equiano’s accounts attests to the savagery seen on the slave ships upon captives boarding them. Rediker as the narrator recognizes the level of terror that was inflicted on a regular basis with extreme brutality. At this point, Equiano is a new captive on the slave ship and ascertains his initial notion on the cruelty of white people. However admits to never seeing such barbarity ever before among any civilization. A testament to how the systematic use of terror on the ‘floating dungeon’ was beyond any comprehension in regards to human dignity.
“Riland also noted the chains to bind the men slaves aboard the Liberty, and here he touched upon another essential part of a prison ship; the hardware of bondage. These would have included manacles and shackles, neck irons, chains of various kinds, and perhaps a branding iron. Many slave ships carried thumbscrews, a medieval instrument of torture in which the thumbs of a rebellious slave would be inserted into a viselike contraption and slowly crushed, sometimes to force a confession.”
In this assertion, Rediker further narrates the accounts of a remorseful John Riland, which is significant as it is from the perspective of a white individual. Through this vantage point, Rediker expresses how the barbarity involved did not only shock the victims but also the folks on the other side of the inhumane practice. As the son of a slave owner, Riland begins having serious misgivings regarding the commerce of human slavery. Hence being on board and seeing the extent of cruelty exacted by torturous apparatuses solidifies his antislavery notions akin to the abolitionists.
“At the beginning of the voyage, captains hired on a motley crew of sailors, who would, on the coast of Africa, become "white men." At the beginning of the Middle Passage, captains loaded on board the vessel a multiethnic collection of Africans, who would, in the American port, become "black people" or a "negro race." The voyage thus transformed those who made it.”
The statement addresses how the negative construction of race was fostered on the slave ships. Despite the diverse ethnicity of the African captives the captain and crew rendered the populace as all ‘negro race’ hence this notion persistent into the New World. In the midst of Africans, the crew members were spontaneously held as ‘white’ creating a bridge in regards to skin color and subsequently manifesting the conception of racism. Rediker aims to express how the slave ship as another site of the institution of slavery fostered most of the negative ideas on race that still persist in modern civilization.
“Through these far-flung connections, merchants used the slave ship to create and coordinate a primary circuit of Atlantic capitalism, which was as lucrative for some as it was terror-filled and deadly for others.”
Rediker’s assertion alludes to how western capitalism was facilitated by slavery and that modern free enterprise was nurtured at the expense of human dignity and life. With the rise of industrialism in the New World, the British and American slave ships acted as vessels that aided the supply of ‘free labor’. Subsequently, the greed of global capitalism caused the savagery of the inhumane trade to surge for the transatlantic trade to flourish. Rediker’s novel intends to penitently express how a huge number of human populace had to suffer and die in order to benefit merchants and slave traders.
