Dear slave trade officer
I am writing to you in concern of the slave trade that you and other people around you are running. I think its appalling the way you treat the slaves. Interviewing some people who have been on the trip too Jamaica and witnessed the cruelty has told me plenty of terrible things.
When you actually arrived at the African countries, you would just snatch African people from there home villages. Families would lose the mother or children and never seeing them again. How would you like it if someone came and took you away from your family? After that you would tie up inside wooden cages and laugh at them.
They would be tormented and have racist comments shouted at them. This is a disgrace to mankind. You treated them like animals calling them monkeys because of the colour of their skin. There still humans. Once your sailors crammed the slaves into the boat they would be chained together. They would have to lie down for weeks.
From what I have heard you have been able to stuff up to four hundred and forty slaves in one ship. A doctor who had been on the boat said, “The floor of the boat was covered in blood and mucus resembling a slaughter house. After fifteen minutes I was so overcome by the heat, stench and foul air, I nearly fainted. With assistance I got back on deck”. When you said you fed them with healthy food, all you did was give a bowl of mashed rice and some vegetables per every ten slaves.
What’s worse is that they got a bucket to use as a toilet but most of them couldn’t reach it. One man commented on the revolting behaviour on board your boat,” On board, the common sailors are allowed to have intercourse with the black women slaves whose consent they can get even when they refuse”. I find this very inhumane and disgusting. Mr John Hammold told me about what you do with dead and sick slaves, “When a slave died on the ship, the sailors went down and unchained the body and dragged the dead out onto the deck and through the body overboard.
The ship captained by Mr. Slater got his worst slaves, which was over fifty. He ordered his men to get them onto the deck and throw them overboard too. Some of the slaves happily committed suicide by jumping over the edge because of the extremely harsh conditions they were in. All of this was because he thought he didn’t have enough water for the rest of the journey. But when we arrived it turned out that he had plenty of water left and claimed that the slaves was his cargo and that he could do what he pleased with it”. You think that these people are just like some cargo and that you can do what ever you want with it.
There not, they are ordinary people with human rights.
Mr. Smith who was watching the slaves come out of your boat told me that the slaves got branded. Twice! This is a type of torture! He said that you needed four of your men to stop them struggling. The screamed as the piercing pain hit them hard on the back. Then their new masters brand the slaves again. The slaves then get humiliated again by the public when they get sold at auctions. I personally saw people treating the Africans worse than animals by letting the public touch, poke and examine them. The crowd would then comment on the slave’s condition. Families would treat an auction as a “family day out” when taking there children to the auctions. Once the slaves have been bought they loose every part of their identity. Their names would taken and replaced with traditional English names. There religion
Is lost and they spend some of there free time at church on Sunday mornings. The punishments are dreadful. I have personally seen slaves being tied up by the hands and then whipped several times continuously. While the owner who thought he was a holy man did not want to be disturbed while reading!
The way you and other people treat slaves is outrageous. There shouldn’t even be slaves. Putting chains around their legs and treating them worse than animals. Making dirty money out of it all. The Africans you have kidnapped have committed suicide because they hate their lives so much. You call them second-class people when they are just as equal as you. They also have human rights. Slavery has got to stop and so have you and other people’s racism and total lack of respect to other people.
