Discipline was very harsh and very cruel
The diaries of the trader John Newton help show the fear many crew members had about being attacked by the slaves. In one instance, he writes that “we were alarmed with a report that some of the men slaves had found a means to poison the water… which they had the credulity to suppose must inevitably kill all who drank it”. While this turned out to be a false alarm, the fear remained, with Newton noting that the “intentions” of the slaves they held captive were always clear.
Such fears were by no means ill-founded. Indeed, given the mental and physical abuse they suffered, it was inevitable that some slaves would try and fight back, however futile such a gesture might have been. Newton again noted instances of male slaves secreting makeshift weapons in preparation for an “insurrection”, with such plotting clamped down on in the most brutal way possible. Even the smallest act of resistance could be met with violence, though the punishments meted out by the crews were designed to hurt the slaves but not kill them – after all, a dead slave would cost them money.
One of the most common forms of punishments used on board the slave ships was subjecting a man, woman or even a child to the thumbscrews. This simple but brutally effective method saw the victim’s thumbs, fingers or toes placed into a crude vice and slowly but steadily crushed. The pain was intense, especially if sharp points were embedded in the vide to add to the agony. By the year 1800, these had become a quintessential tool of the slave trade. Indeed, so widespread was their use that Thomas Clarkson, an English abolitionist and a leading campaigner against the slave trade, would carry a pair of thumbscrews with him at all times. He would use these, as well as other small instruments of torture, to illustrate the cruelty of the trade and to win support for his cause.
Crude whips and other instruments for flogging were also used to maintain discipline on slave shops. In 1827, the Revered Robert Walsh joined the British Navy in patrolling the waters of the Atlantic in search of ships breaking the law that had by then made the slave trade illegal. He noted with horror the way in which the slaves on the ship were kept down. He wrote: “Over the hatchway stood a ferocious-looking fellow with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave driver of the ship, and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them and seemed eager to exercise it.” Reverend Walsh confiscated the whip and kept it for himself, not as a sick memento but rather as a symbol of the unquestionable cruelty of the slave trade.