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Updated: June 9, 2025
I was called upon to witness a scene of constant suffering, daily ay, hourly my heart was wrung with pain, for there was not an hour in which some agonising spectacle did not transpire among the wretched denizens of the "half-deck." I need not here describe the ordinary sufferings of the slave-ship.
But he would now mention another instance, by way of contrast, out of the evidence. A child on board a slave-ship, of about ten months old, took sulk and would not eat. The captain flogged it with a cat; swearing that he would make it eat, or kill it. From this and other ill-treatment the child's legs swelled. He then ordered some water to be made hot to abate the swelling.
This distribution had not been long begun, before I witnessed its effects. The virtuous Abbé Gregoire, and several members of the National Assembly, called upon me. The section of the slave-ship, it appeared, had been the means of drawing them towards me. They wished for more accurate information concerning it. Indeed it made its impression upon all who saw it.
Certainly white men had torn them or their ancestors from their native land white men had brought them across the sea in the crowded slave-ship white men had made them slaves, treated them with severity and cruelty, and driven them to seek for freedom from tyranny among the wild rocks and fastnesses where they were now collected.
Nothing appears half so gloomy as such a place when deserted of its principal inhabitants. This disease was unknown in America until the opening of the African slave-trade. It is an African disease, intensified and aggravated by the rottenness and filthy habits of the human cargoes that brought it to America. It was entirely unknown at Vera Cruz until brought there in the slave-ship of 1699.
Yet shocking as this description must be felt to be by every man, the transportation had been described by several witnesses from Liverpool to be a comfortable conveyance. Mr. Norris had painted the accommodations on board a slave-ship in the most glowing colours. He had represented them in a manner which would have exceeded his attempts at praise of the most luxurious scenes.
But however humble he appeared, he had always the courage to dare to do that which was right, however it might resist the customs or the prejudices of men. In his own line of trade, which was that of a timber-merchant on an extensive scale, he would not allow any article to be sold for the use of a slave-ship, and he always refused those, who applied to him for materials for such purposes.
He would bring with him his picked bodyguard, and his following of wives and women; for the visit to the slave-ship, with her cargo of strong waters, was the signal for a series of coarse festivities on the grandest scale. At all other times of the year the factory would be deserted, its huts uninhabited by man, and its barracoon empty.
Continuation from July 1789 to July 1790 Author travels to Paris to promote the abolition in France attends the committees of the Friends of the Negros Counter attempts of the committee of White Colonists An account of the deputies of Colour Meeting at the Duke de la Rochefoucauld's Mirabeau espouses the cause canvasses the National Assembly Distribution of the section of the slave-ship there Character of Brissot Author leaves Paris and returns to England Examination of merchants' and planters' evidence resumed in the House of Commons Author travels in search of evidence in favour of the abolition Opposition to the hearing of it This evidence is at length introduced Renewal of Sir William Dolben's bill Distribution of the section of the slave-ship in England and of Cowper's Negro's Complaint and of Wedgewood's Cameos.
She lies chained at the wharf, and the tide rises and falls within her, thus furnishing a convenient bathing-house for the children, who also find a perpetual gymnasium in the broken shrouds that dangle from her masts. Turner, when he painted his "slave-ship," could have asked no better model.
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