“The historian Marcus Rediker opens ‘
The Slave Ship: A Human History‘ with a harrowing reconstruction of the journey, for a captive, from shore to ship:
The ship grew larger and more terrifying with every vigorous stroke of the paddles. The smells grew stronger and the sounds louder — crying and wailing from one quarter and low, plaintive singing from another; the anarchic noise of children given an underbeat by hands drumming on wood; the odd comprehensible word or two wafting through: someone asking for menney
, water, another laying a curse, appealing to myabecca
, spirits. An estimated 12.5 million people endured some version of this journey, captured and shipped mainly from the western coast of Africa to the Western Hemisphere during the four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Of that number, about 10.7 million survived to reach the shores of the so-called New World. ...”
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