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Updated: June 2, 2025
These between-decks were holystoned regularly, and kept in the most perfect order; the carpenter's bench and tools being in one part, the sailmaker's in another, and boatswain's locker, with the spare rigging, in a third. A part of the crew slept here, in hammocks swung fore and aft from the beams, and triced up every morning.
A number of Irish lads occupy the between-decks: they have a fiddle amongst them, and "welt the flure" on the forecastle, every night, with a perseverance that is most amusing. Thursday, April 2nd. Since the 28th ult., light west and south-westerly winds, with warm balmy days.
In the after part of the ship was a handsome cabin, a dining-room, and a trade-room, fitted out with shelves and furnished with all sorts of goods. Between these and the forecastle was the "between-decks," as high as the gun deck of a frigate; being six feet and a half, under the beams.
I had seen the mad wasting of human labor; here I saw in direst shape the want that waste had bred. From the black doorways and windows of the rookeries on every side came gusts of fetid air. The streets and alleys reeked with the effluvia of a slave ship's between-decks.
The between-decks were high enough to allow of jumping, and being clear, and white, from holystoning, made a good dancing-hall. Some of the Pilgrim's crew were in the forecastle, and they all turned-to and had a regular sailor's shuffle till eight bells.
Once more, as the boats were seen approaching the galley for the remainder of the crew, Deane went round the between-decks to ascertain if any of the wounded slaves still remained alive. A low groan reached his ears from a man who lay stretched out under one of the benches. The chain was still round his leg. Deane raised up the man's head.
I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last arrivals, and where the confusion was increased by the little preparations for dinner that were going on in each group. A few women here and there, had got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their way to their own people, or out on deck again.
To reach the powder-room, which is always situated in the after-part of a vessel, was easy. There would be no want of powder in a vessel which followed such a trade, and a spark would be enough to destroy it in an instant. Ayrton stole carefully along the between-decks, strewn with numerous sleepers, overcome more by drunkenness than sleep.
The two ships could no longer manoeuvre, the decimated crews were preparing to board, when a thick smoke shot up all at once from the between-decks of the Quebec; the fire spread with unheard of rapidity; the Surveillante, already hooked on to her enemy's side, was on the point of becoming, like her, a prey to the flames, but her commander, gasping as he was and scarcely alive, got her loose by a miracle of ability.
What with bad or scanty provisions, scarcity of water, severe hardship, and long confinement in a foul den, ship-fever reaped yet a glorious harvest between-decks, as frequent splashes of shot-weighted corpses into the deep but too terribly testified. Whatever the cause, the deaths on board the British ships enormously exceeded the mortality on the ships of any other country.
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