The crews could be cruel – but they were often desperate too
The slave trade was a cruel business, and, as you might expect, working conditions were extremely tough. This meant that it attracted the very lowest rank of sailors, and many only signed up to work on a slave ship out of sheer desperation or because they were coaxed or coerced into it, for example because they owed money and worked to pay off their debts. Sailors who had been in prison and who could find no other work also ended up crewing slave ships – and many of these had a propensity to violence they would put to good use on the long journey across the Atlantic.
It would be wrong to compare the experiences of slaves and crew members. But, compared to crew on other ships, those working on slave ships had a very rough deal indeed. Since the hull of a slave ship was filled with as many slaves as possible, crew were usually forced to sleep on deck. This left them open to the elements, either storms and rain and cold winds or long hours of harsh sunlight. Disease was common among the crew, with many succumbing to malaria or yellow fever. What’s more, crew would often be attacked by revolting slaves, and usually killed in the most violent way imaginable. Or, if they failed in their duties, sailors could be flogged themselves, and might even be beaten to death should their negligence lead to the captain losing one or more slaves.
Indeed, the records show that around a fifth of all crew members died along the way. Even those who made it to the Americas without dying or disease or being beaten to death by rebelling slaves were still vulnerable. Some captains were rumoured to throw their crew overboard or poison them in order to avoid paying them when they landed back in Europe. Others simply refused to pay up at all, cheating their crews out of their wages. Given the nature of the industry, cheated sailors would usually have no way of taking action against unscrupulous captains or ship owners and simply had to accept their losses and walk away.