Of the numerous accounts on the atrocities committed in the treatment of slaves in An Interesting Narrative, Alexander Falconbridge’s description of the conditions in which Africans were transported was perhaps the most disturbing. Surgeons have always been a necessary position on a ship to preserve the health of sailors at sea for long periods of time. Even sailors themselves were often ravaged by illness due to lack of necessary provisions and nutrition, and required medical care. The environments that slaves were placed into were exceptionally more inhospitable, to the extent that they were entirely dehumanized.
After being partitioned and shackled below decks in confined cabins, equivalent to those meant to hold cargo on trading vessels. The exceedingly overcrowded cabins did not “permit them the indulgence of an erect posture”, and they were forced to lay on shelves. Combined with the sorting system, whereby men, women, and children were separated, the Africans were commoditized to the point that they were viewed as nothing more than alternative wares.
They were kept at bare subsistence levels of food and sanitation to minimize the cost of their transportation for maximum profits. “The diet of negroes, while on board, consists chiefly of horse-beans, boiled to the consistence of a pulp”, and they are provided with “three or four large buckets” to excrete in. Falconbridge likens the cabins to a slaughter-house, “so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them”. In such conditions, it is no wonder that they often became malnourished, and due to their confines were required to “ease themselves as they lie. This becomes a fresh source of broils and disturbances, and tends to render the condition of the poor captive wretches still more uncomfortable”. They were left to rot in their own filth in excessive heat, pushing them to prefer death to continued suffering. Women were raped, all were beaten and threatened with torture with “such brutal excess, as disgrace human nature”. Perhaps it was out of necessity that the crews transporting the slaves degraded them to the level of animals and commodities. By doing so they were able to alleviate any sense of compassion for the individuals that were forced to endure in “a situation more dreadful and disgusting” than comprehension allows.
