Breeana Schmidt
Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History The slave ships were sickening and unjustifiable, a stain on human history. However, is it the ship itself, or those onboard that caused the horrors? While the slave ship may be a symbol of cruelty it is people that had the real effect. Once referred to as the “‘most magnificent drama’” (4) the true story is found among the accounts of individuals rather than the floating piece of wood that acts as the setting. From the captain’s tyrannical rule over his ship to the slaves referred to only by numbers, each group’s interactions between itself and other groups provide a greater understanding of the slave trade (268). Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History shows the people …show more content…
This loathsome behavior gave them the nickname “greedy robber” (37) as they ate anything they could find. The sharks were a terrifying thing for sailors traveling between the ship and the coast in small canoes. The sharks would do everything in their power to tip the boat (36). It became even worse as sailors and slaves began to die. There was no place to put the corpses besides the ocean, where it would quickly be gruesomely devoured by the sharks (38). Sailors attempted to prevent the sharks from eating the dead by hiding them in cloth when they were dropped into the water and their body was weighted down with a cannonball to help it sink (38). This rarely worked though, and most of the corpses met a grisly end right in front of the men who already had to watch their fellow sailor die (38). Slave corpses had even less respect as there was no attempt to shield their body from the sharks (38). On the contrary, it became a sort of “public spectacle” (39) to watch the shark’s feeding frenzy. This would have been especially disturbing considering a common belief along West Africa was that people went back to their native land after their death (301). As the slaves believed that they would return home in the same body, watching the sharks tear apart the corpses would have been especially traumatic