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The legacy of an inhuman trade

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Damrow
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« on: December 12, 2009, 07:33:30 pm »

An observer in 1861 described the terrible scene when a slave ship landed at Rupert’s. “The whole deck, as I picked my way from end to end, in order to avoid treading on them, was thickly strewn with the dead, dying and starved bodies of what seemed to me a species of ape that I had never seen before. Yet these miserable, helpless objects being picked up from the deck and handed over the ship’s side, one by one, living, dying and dead alike, were really human beings. Their arms were worn down to about the size of a walking stick. Many died as they were passed from the ship to the boat, but there was no time to separate the living from the dead.”

The only consolation to those whose ancestors suffered such Belsen-like conditions is that most traders tried to keep the captives fed and fit enough to fetch good prices at the slave markets in America. The journey in sailing ships across the Atlantic took weeks, and if most had died there would have been little profit for the slavers.

The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron was based in St Helena and Ascension Island, settled by Britain in only 1815. It was an arduous and dangerous job catching the slavers, especially as warships rarely fired on the elusive traders for fear of killing the captives. There were too few warships to patrol an enormous stretch of coast, and most were slower than the fast American-built vessels used by the traders. Only when steam warships were used did the navy really gain a decisive advantage.

Dr Pearson said the analysis of the bones will be completed by next May and the findings published by the Council for British Archaeology.


http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6950288.ece
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