Cuyamaca College Student Reply Discussion

reply to this post:

When the Europeans took slaves aboard the ship, the Europeans fear of the slaves trying to escape so they took precautious measures to prevent the slaves from doing so. On the ships, there was a 9 foot tall barricado which “divided the ships in two and topped with spikes and swivel guns” ( video, virtual slave ship on the middle passage). The men and women were separated by the barricado, where they could not see nor speak to each other. When the men were allowed on deck, they had to take measures to ensure they wouldn’t be able to escape, therefor the europeans placed two iron chains on the deck, “every morning the men were locked to the chains to restrict movement” (Video, Virtual slave ship on the middle passage). It is also important to add that the men were locked up in firing range of the swivel guns to ensure they wouldn’t attempt an escape. Moving the men from the top deck, to below, they were still chained up, and pilled in a small space with no room to move.

The triangular trade, involved the trading of ideas, product, and people. The sugar plantation was on the rise, and the labor to produce sugar was harsh. “Unwilling migrants had been sold in exchange for European goods” (Video, Virtual slave ship on middle passage). So Europeans would trade product for slaves and take them to do labor. To me, The Triangular trade was brutal in the fact that they would take African Americans from their homes, to do harsh labor and endured terrible conditions while traveling to new lands.

Odaudah Equiano was captured in Africa and sent to the new world as a salve. When Equiano first reached land, he was terrified that the white men would eat them, but when he was reassured by the elder African Americans that, that was not going to happen, he began to look around and was shocked with almost everything he saw. “What struck me first, was, that the houses were built with bricks and stories, and in every other respect different from those I had seen in Africa” (Excerpt, pg.4) Equiano then saw people riding horses and that just amazed him.

After watching the video, and reading Equiano’s autobiography, it makes me so sad. In the video, it showed an imagine of what the ship would have looked like with the slaves stuffed below, and I honestly don’t know how anyone survived those conditions for three months. It is absolutely horrifying to imagine what it was like as a slave on the ships, only getting a pint of water a day, and really no air under the deck. It is terrible. Hearing Equiano’s story, The part that got to me the most, was the separation of loved ones, which they would never see again. I feel like that would be the hardest thing of them all. To endure so much pain already, and then on top of everything be separated from your family and friends. It’s heartbreaking.