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The paged version of this document contained the following header content in the margin: This Usage peculiar to or springing out of the very Nature of the Trade in Slaves.
ment was so bad, that their lives were miserable on board—beaten and half starved.—There were various other instances which escape his memory. Mr. Simpson says, however, that he has never heard any complaints from West Indiamen, or other merchant ships;—on the contrary, they wished to avoid a man of war; whereas, if the captain of the Adventure had listened to all the complaints made to him from sailors of slave-ships, and removed them, he must have greatly distressed the African trade.
Captain Hall, of the navy, speaking on the same subject, asserts, that as to peculiar modes of punishment adopted in Guineamen, he once saw a man chained by the neck in the main top of a slave-ship, when passing under the stern of his Majesty's ship Crescent, in Kingston-Bay, St. Vincent's; and was told by part of the crew, taken out of the ship, at their own request, that the man had been there one hundred and twenty days. He says he has great reason to believe, that in no trade are seamen so badly treated as in the slave-trade, from their flying to men of war for redress, and whenever they come within reach; whereas men from West Indian or other trades seldom apply to a ship of war.[1]
The last evidence, whom perhaps it will appear necessary to cite on this occasion, is the Rev. Mr. Newton, This gentleman agrees in the [2] ill usage of the seamen
- ↑ The circumstance of seamen in the Slave-trade being desirous of leaving their ships, and of those in other trades staying by them, when in sight of men of war, is confirmed also by Captains Smith and Wilson, of the navy.
- ↑ It will be proper to mention here, that several specifick facts of the ill treatment of seamen in the Slave-trade have been omitted in these accounts, as well as that this ill usage is confirmed by more of the witnesses, viz. Trotter, Dove, Parker, Storey, and Forster; on the other hand, about seven captains may be traced, three of whose names only are mentioned, (viz. Butler, Smith, and Frazer) who have had the merit of going against the current of bad example in the abuse of seamen in this trade. If it should be asked how it happens that seamen enter for slave-vessels, when such general ill usage there can hardly fail of being known, the reply must be taken from the evidence, "that whereas some of them enter voluntarily, the greater part of them are trepanned, for that it is the business of certain landlords to make them intoxicated, and get them into debt, after which their only alternative is a Guineaman or a gaol."
alluded
