The Slave Ship: A Human History

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and suicide.

Chapter 9 explores the brutal conditions, acts of resistance, and complex social dynamics that developed among enslaved people during their forced journey across the Atlantic. The chapter opens with an incident aboard the Loyal George in 1727, where an enslaved man refused to eat despite brutal beatings and threats. His hunger strike culminated in an “uncommon murder” at the hands of the ship’s captain (264), sparking a collective rebellion among the other captives. This rebellion was suppressed through lethal force, leading to mass suicides as a final act of defiance. Such instances exemplify the recurring dialectic of oppression and resistance aboard slave ships. Captains used extreme violence to maintain control, while enslaved individuals employed methods like hunger strikes, suicides, and uprisings to assert their humanity and oppose their captors. The enslaved forged “new forms of life—new language, new means of expression, new resistance, and a new sense of community” (265).

Upon boarding slave ships, captives faced systematic dehumanization aimed at stripping them of their identities. They were subjected to medical inspections, branding, and numbering, transforming them into mere commodities. This stripping of identity extended to the removal of clothing, names, and cultural markers.