Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had the appearance of black funnels on the horizon, in the days before modern navigation. If the survivors of these ships could not find land, the searchers found them. It was a cruel fate for these people to have survived the storm, only to die horribly at the hands of men whose lives were so closely intertwined with theirs. The question of how many Africans died while in the hands of European slave traders can never be answered, but the numbers are almost certainly staggering. Many were murdered and cast overboard before the ships were ready to head for the Americas. Most died on the _Middle Passage_ to the West Indies, the _Golfo de las Gracias,_ or the overcrowded slums of Virginia, and we know of few or no names. A single letter of testimony, a stray scrap of paper, a single entry in a ship's log, might never have seen the light of day had it not been for a ship that was lost, or a captain who died in the wrong place at the wrong time. We must also remember that there were likely large numbers of shipwrecks that we know nothing of and that the trade was likely an all-male business in the days before the development of a large slave trade. Some captains and crew died onboard from infection or disease, and there were those like _Sir John Sherbroke_ and _William and Ann,_ which sank in the sea while carrying slaves.
We may not have names for these many victims, but we do have some glimpses into the conditions that led to the deaths of so many Africans. The story of John Anderson, a young African woman who was murdered by a captain because she had given birth to twins, while being part of a cargo bound for Barbados, is an example of the brutality that could be found on ships. In the late 1660s, the trader Joseph Crichton and the captain of the ship _Rebecca_ agreed to bring the baby, Livia, to Barbados. The price for her was seven pounds. The captain was aware that the mother was healthy, but he also knew she had been in labor for three days and this gave him ample opportunity to assess her status. Livia would suffer the same fate as the others, but this one small baby would have two mothers to protect her.
As soon as they dropped her off, the captain would return the infant's mother to her people in Gambia and then sail with the remaining fifty slaves in the holds. The captain's wife would later tell Crichton that her husband "was so overjoyed that his wife had a child to nurse him (for he is always sickly) that he was resolved to drown the next one and so rid of the care." Even though the captain did not know whether Livia had given birth to a boy or a girl, he was certain that a black baby was a sign of death, and to the captain and his wife, this black baby signified death for their unborn child. Such were the beliefs that governed the slave trade during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and this kind of brutality did not appear to bother the authorities. Although there was a brief attempt in the 1820s to limit the horrors of the trade, the laws passed were ineffective and rarely enforced. The captain was put on trial, but he and his wife were acquitted.
### **A New Kind of Ship**
In the late summer of 1784, British slaver _Osterley_ was caught in the storm and found herself stranded on one of the British Virgin Islands, where the crew attempted to free the slaves and to find their way to land. As the crew prepared the ship for sale, they made the discovery that it had been taken by slave traders and it appeared that all had been killed and sold.
It was found that the crew had been murdered and eaten, the majority of them, after receiving a brutal flogging from the crew of the trader ship _Lord Clyde,_ which had arrived to acquire the cargo. An unnamed surgeon is said to have meticulously dissected the bodies of the slaves and carefully recorded all the details. He found that forty-three were dead, seventeen were still alive, and twenty-five more had been cannibalized, which he described as being "disgusting to be a Christian." The seventeen remaining victims were loaded aboard the vessel.
The _Osterley_ would later be refloated and sold for sixty-eight pounds. The ship arrived at a buyer in Spain, a trader known as Joseph De la Croix, and the new owners renamed it _Mignon._ When the ship arrived in Spain, they found De la Croix in a hurry to offload his cargo and put it to a variety of uses. He and his partners in the slave trade had been purchasing the enslaved men, women, and children from British traders who had purchased them from West African slavers. De la Croix had been buying the women and children from other captains who had been unwilling to part with them.
The ship sailed back to Trinidad, where she was rerigged as a brig. The ship made a few more trips and was last seen with a crew in the British Virgin Islands. The British colonial authorities attempted to retrieve records from the ship's log to identify who had been killed in this particular case, but all that was found was that it was "six of their number that were killed." The captain, Nicholas Dickson, was never found, but the survivors were eventually granted a trial, and it was during this trial that the men, who were given pseudonyms to protect their identity, testified to what they had seen. The judge's ruling on the murders was summed up in a short paragraph that said "the captain of a foreign vessel coming into the said town, and not having any authority from his superiors to take the said negroes on board the said ship, but having the said negroes on board the said ship contrary to his orders, and upon the death of the above-named owner of the said ship, having his body and effects found in the same with the slaves killed by a certain person on board, and as it appeared that he died of sickness, and having none to represent him or have his actions pleaded against the same person, and in case of the death of the said persons, that it was done contrary to their lawful owner, and by force, it was determined that the above-named negroes should be restored, and it is therefore that the said Nicholas Dickson or other person whomsoever to the said slaves shall pay all the charges and damages of this ship, which he did neglect or ought to have done." The court ruled that Joseph De la Croix was the culprit in this case, but nothing more was done.
Records such as these and many like it show us that the horrors of the slave trade could not be avoided, and in these difficult times, it seems as if the best people were the ones who tried to end this brutal business, despite the risks involved. However, there were those men who saw their lives as a means to an end—which was the acquisition of riches. Robert Rainsborough, a sailor who turned to piracy, claimed that "no great sum was ever got by us by the Black Trade; 'tis a very small branch of trade indeed, and a very good one for the Prince, but we were forced to it in our way to great things."
John Harrison, who sailed the slave ship _Hopeful_ out of Liverpool, was a young man who fell into piracy after he found himself involved in the slave trade. The _Hopeful_ was a black galley, built to resemble an ordinary merchant ship. She was launched in January 1719 and, unlike a merchant ship, she was designed for speed and was lightly armed with twelve guns. She was built with three decks, but only the first was devoted to the captain and crew. Above this deck, there was a room of living quarters for the men and below was the hold, which was located next to the cabins, which were separated from the hold by a door. The hold could only be accessed from above, and the cabins could not be seen unless the door was left open. It was rumored that the hatchways leading belowdecks had been altered so that when the ship was submerged, the slavers could reach into the ship and kill the slaves held there.
The _Hopeful_ was built by Nicholas Hickman, and the record of his ownership has survived. When Harrison arrived in Barbados and met with Joseph Brunt, the captain of the vessel, Brunt told him that Joseph Crichton, a very rich merchant, had asked him to bring the _Hopeful_ to the island, as he wanted to inspect the cargo. Crichton also told Brunt that he was sending Harrison to Liverpool in the _Hopeful_ to deliver the sugar to Crichton, and if the _Hopeful_ was delayed in any way, Harrison would be shot as a recompense for his delay. Harrison took the _Hopeful_ back to Liverpool and found that the ship had been built for speed and had a reputation for being a swift ship. With this reputation in mind, Harrison did not tarry in Liverpool. He stole the _Hopeful_ 's compass and headed north, where he met Crichton at St. Catherine's. Crichton loaded the ship with sugar, rum, and a thousand casks of butter and was so pleased with the speed of the _Hopeful_ that he asked Harrison for a repeat performance the next day, which Harrison agreed to
