Slaves were packed into the hull by the hundred
The slave trade was a business, albeit a supremely cruel one. Slaves were seen as little more than cargo by the owners of the slave ships, so, quite simply, the more they carried, the more money they stood to earn. This meant that most slave ships were not only packed to capacity, they were packed way beyond capacity. Over-crowding was commonplace and, for many years during the height of the transatlantic slave trade, there was simply nothing stopping the owners of the ships from setting sail with as many slaves as they could carry, both above and below deck.
The majority of slaves were kept below deck in cramped, inhumane conditions. As the chilling blueprints of ships revealed, slaves were often chained lying down, side-by-side on the floor. This meant hundreds could be lain side-by-side and head-to-toe. The unfortunate men and women had no more than a few inches to move. Some lucky ones might be able to sit up, but most were forced to lie down for almost the entirety of the two-month journey. In the best recorded cases, an individual would get a space around four feet wide and five high. Suffice to say, there were no proper toilet facilities, the slaves were simply left in their own filth and hosed down occasionally up on deck.
The Regulation Act of 1788, also known as the Slave Trade Act of Dolben’s Act after the man who managed to get it passed through the British Parliament, was designed to ease overcrowding on slave ships. It stipulated the number of slaves a ship could transport according to how heavy the vessel was. Notably, vessels such as the Brookes would not only be allowed to carry 400 slaves – prior to the law, the ship carried as many as 750, testament to just how densely packed-in the slaves were. Unsurprisingly, however, some unscrupulous captains broke these rules and continued to pack as many slaves below deck as they could. Ships carrying on the trade after the British Empire outlawed slavery were especially likely to break the law and subject their slave passengers to the worst conditions imaginable.