AP AF AM #15 - 2.4 African Resistance on Slave Ships and the Antislavery Movement

Resistance Aboard Slave Ships

Enslaved people resisted individually and collectively, despite overcrowding, disease, violence, forced displacement, and the prospect of lifelong enslavement. Resistance was often most likely while ships were still near the African coast, though escape could be difficult because nearby communities might return escapees to enslavement.

Captives from different ethnic and linguistic groups were sometimes placed together to make communication and organizing mutinies harder. Even so, people found ways to cooperate. Women and children could sometimes move more freely and helped by passing tools or weapons.

Examples of resistance included:

• The Little George (1730): Captives removed their shackles, seized the ship, and sailed back toward Africa. Survivors and crew abandoned it near Sierra Leone.
• The New Britain (1773): Captives set fire to gunpowder, an act of mass suicide that killed most of the people aboard. The lecture presents this as a refusal to accept enslavement.
• Hunger strikes and attempts to jump overboard: These were individual ways to exert control or escape captivity.
• The Amistad (1839): Led by Mende captive Sengbe Piye, also known as Joseph Cinqué, captives killed the captain and forced the crew to sail toward the United States. After the ship was intercepted, the captives were tried in court. The Supreme Court ultimately granted them freedom, and 35 survivors returned to Africa. Former President John Quincy Adams defended them, and the case drew public attention to the illegal slave trade that continued after international bans.

Suppression and Consequences

Resistance made voyages more dangerous and costly. Captains added crew members to control captives, reducing profits; they might also carry more people to compensate, increasing overcrowding. Rebellions could delay voyages and consume supplies, while captains used resistance to justify harsher treatment.

Captives who refused food could be force-fed with a metal instrument. Those who took part in uprisings faced punishment, which varied according to captors’ judgments of their perceived value.

Ship designs and routines were altered to deter resistance:

• Nets were placed along the sides to prevent people from jumping overboard.
• Barricades separated sleeping areas from the deck, and fenced areas restricted captives when they were brought above deck.
• Crew members used weapons to suppress mutinies.
• Rebellions were especially likely during the daily period when captives were brought on deck for exercise.

Slave Ship Design and Conditions

Many slave ships were older vessels converted to carry captives. Later, ports such as Liverpool built ships specifically to maximize the number transported. Ship diagrams showed the systematic arrangement of captives, including bunks and divided holds, but often represented fewer people than ships actually carried.

The Brooks was designed for 454 captives but was often loaded with more than 600. Its hold had two levels, leaving captives with only about 20–30 inches of headroom.

A British law passed in 1787 limited the number of captives relative to a ship’s tonnage. The lecture gives a limit of 167 people for a 100-ton vessel, with a stricter ratio for vessels over 200 tons. Actual numbers often exceeded legal limits.

Conditions included bare wooden sleeping planks, cramped spaces, abrasions from the ship’s motion, and open buckets as the only sanitary facilities. These conditions promoted disease, disability, and death. The lecture cites a 1781 voyage from Liverpool with a 40% mortality rate. Voyages typically lasted around 60 days, and sometimes as long as 90.

Abolition and Artistic Legacies

Abolitionists circulated ship diagrams to make the overcrowding and dehumanization of the trade visible to the public. The Brooks diagram became especially well known in pamphlets, posters, and books. Advocacy using such images helped secure limits on the number of captives carried and contributed to Britain’s and the United States’ abolition of the international slave trade in 1807 and 1808, respectively.

After slavery, Black artists reworked slave-ship imagery to address historical trauma and honor ancestors’ endurance. The lecture names Kara Walker and Romare Bearden as artists whose work engages with the lasting legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.

Speakers and Sources Mentioned

• Speaker: One lecture narrator; no other speakers are heard in the subtitles.
• Historical people and cases: Sengbe Piye (Joseph Cinqué), John Quincy Adams, the Little George mutiny, the New Britain mutiny, and the Amistad case.
• Ships and visual materials: The Brooks ship diagram and other slave-ship diagrams.
• Artists: Kara Walker and Romare Bearden.