“Hades’ County, the River Styx, and the Rubicon all rolled into one.”
The Middle Passage was the sea journey in the holds of ships that slaves were transported in to the Americas from the Atlantic and Indian Ocean African coasts. This was a horrific journey that delivered broken human beings.
Between ten to fifteen million slaves passed through the Middle Passage. Most of the slaves went to South America and to the Caribbean. 5 percent to Central America, and 5 percent to North America. A few ended up in Europe. 30 percent of the slaves were women, and 25 percent were children.
For the slaves embarking into the Middle Passage millions were fated to take their very last breaths on these ships. Their survival was on the knees of the gods. On average about ten to twenty percent of the slaves died during the Middle Passage.
The selection by white slavers of only slaves who could survive the Middle Passage meant that only the fittest specimen of Africa, the people in mint condition were taken. These were usually in the reproductive age between 15 to 30 years old. The sick, unfit, or old were left behind or killed. The removal of thirty million of the fittest Africans made the foundation of the whole continent shift. Many of these slaves at that age were probably married with children, so the social disruption alone was incalculable and catastrophic.
For these chosen ones, the ideal body weight was around 140 pounds (65 kg). Adult slaves with a body weight less than 140 pounds had slim chances of survival. The slavers overcame this by trying to fatten the slaves before departure. If this was not possible, they would pack excess slaves to increase the landed number of survivors for sale in their New World. Then just before boarding, the slaves would be stripped naked and given a cloth to cover themselves with for the rest of the journey to hell. Some slaves would be entirely naked. To prevent lice, the slavers would shave the slaves completely. The slaves were thus systematically and thoroughly degraded as human beings. With a sense of twisted humour, the first woman slave to be brought on board British slave ships was usually given the name of Eve and the first man slave, you guessed right, Adam. En route to the Americas, the slaves could be killed at the drop of a pen if they were in any way deemed to pose a threat to the profitability of the enterprise
To make a profit, the slavers had to keep as many slaves as possible alive during the Middle Passage. So, the slaves had to eat and drink enough water. An average adult needs about 2 to 3 litres of water a day. Water is required for chemical reactions in the body, for the body to wash out toxins through the urine, and to replace what is lost through sweating and through breathing.
If water intake is not enough, the body reduces the urine output. If this is not remedied, it can lead to kidney failure. Many slaves in the first days suffered from seasickness, and therefore, in addition to urination, many slaves were losing water through vomiting. In the holds of these ships, with hundreds of people breathing out heat, especially in the tropics, the atmosphere was like that of a foetid, unhealthy hot room, every day for weeks and weeks on end. Water is also lost through the breath, therefore in this atmosphere, the slaves lost a considerable amount of water. Sweating is an automatic mechanism that cools the body by taking the heat from it as the sweat evaporates. So, the amount of water lost through sweat must have been much higher than average. Anyone with a fever also sweats more. This is in an effort by the body to reduce the temperature. The evaporation of sweat needs energy, and through this mechanism, the body cools down. Sweat contains minerals, lactate, and urea. The minerals are mostly sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. There are also some trace elements. Vomiting, diarrhoea, and sweating led to the loss of minerals and electrolytes, besides the water loss. All this made the poorly nourished slaves susceptible to many medical problems, including sudden death because of electrolyte imbalance. Sodium is replaced through salt intake. Slaves not getting enough salt were likely not to make it through the Middle Passage. The acute symptoms of lack of water and food were muscle cramps, weakness, delirium, apathy, and loss of appetite. With low sodium, fits and coma were common. Worms like hookworm and others were prevalent in the slaves, and the weeks of semi-starvation by their hosts made these worms restless and caused problems like diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and abdominal swelling. If indeed the average mortality was only 10-20 percent on the ships, then the slavers must have been aware of some of this physiology. Assuming that the slave traders were not from another planet or indeed another species of Homo sapiens, then they too must have suffered from some of the same physiological stresses as the slaves. Therefore, they knew that what was good for the white goose was also good for the black gander.
The slaves also had severe vitamin deficiencies, especially of vitamin A, C, and D, plus deficiencies of thiamine and riboflavin if the Middle Passage voyage took too long. These deficiencies led to scurvy, pellagra, beriberi, and night blindness during the Middle Passage as well as in the ensuing weeks after landfall.
An infectious disease called yaws, which was spread by direct close contact in the holds, would manifest after landing in the Americas. This caused skin, joint, and bone lesions and would lead to severe disfigurement. Slaves in the holds died from various causes, including fevers, diarrhoea, self-starvation, dehydration, suicides – by whatever available means – and murders of slave-upon-slave.
The death rates on the ships had a U shape. The death rates were high at the start of the voyage and early into the Middle Passage. The deaths would taper off after some weeks then increase again towards the end of the voyage. The high rates at the beginning of the sea journey were because of seasickness, psychological shock, and depression, adding on to malnutrition and acute illnesses. The high death rates towards the end of the Atlantic crossing were because of the cumulative effects of mineral, electrolyte and vitamin deficiencies, calorie malnutrition on top of worm infestations, and the effects of other diseases completing their incubation periods. There was also amoebic dysentery, which was activated in the slaves after several weeks of semi-starvation aboard the ships.
