Behind the black curtain, there are voices. They are African
voices of different dialects, each with an invitation to share
a personal story. Step through the curtain and it becomes clear
that these are the voices of ghosts. Their words echo through
the cramped quarters that are a recreation of the cargo hold
of the Henrietta Marie, a slave ship. Yet there are no people
to be found. Only black mannequins of men laying on their sides.
They are bound in chains and stuffed on top of and beneath wooden
shelves, shelves like you might use to store possessions for
later use. Indeed this is how they were assessed. Possessions,
articles of barter, stowed and secured for delivery to market.
The history books we're taught from have sanitized the horror
out of the merchant slave business. It's all so matter of fact.
The wealthy merchants of Europe loaded their wooden sailing ships
with pewter bowls and mugs, glass beads, linen, iron bars, and
sometimes muskets. They launched their investments toward the
Ivory Coast of West Africa, where powerful tribal chiefs unloaded
those goods and replaced them with ivory, gold and the spoils
of war...human captives. From there those ships sailed to the
West Indies, near America, once again unloading the human and
material cargo and reloading with refined sugar, coffee and cocoa,
before setting sail on the trip back to Europe. It was referred
to in polite company as the triangular trade route. It is more
correctly the transatlantic slave route.
To gain any emotional understanding of that experience, one
needs to be taken back there and dropped into the midst of what
occurred. One needs to listen to the ghosts, as they tell their
stories. You hear their words being spoken. You read the documents
and study the drawings. You touch the shackles that bound their
arms and legs, even try them on as some young black boys do to
sense what it was really like for their ancestors. What was it
really like? It was a holocaust that lasted for 350 years.
Imagine yourself a proud tribal warrior on the continent of
Africa in 1699. Your pride and happiness come from a life of
honor in loving and caring for your family, protecting your tribe
and celebrating your ancestors and the great spirits who look
after you. Your world is one day shattered without warning in
a pitched battle with an aggressor tribe, but you are not killed.
Your hell on earth has just begun as you are bound and dragged
away to a distant port, held with hundreds and thousands of others
in a wretched prison and finally thrown brutally into the cramped
hold of a dark wooden vessel. Some of your companions crack under
the strain. They dive off the ship in a desperate attempt to
avoid the fate that has been whispered through the ranks. You
are food for a distant people. You will be killed and eaten one
day.
As the ship rocks and pitches through the waves for weeks
on end, the stresses take their toll. Some die of a broken heart,
giving up all hope of ever seeing Africa or their loved ones
again. Others expire from malnutrition, the intense atmosphere
of human waste and the diseases that pass in lightning speed
from one naked body pressed up against another. At times, the
mortality is as high as 50%. Your chances of even standing on
land again are no better than a coin's flip. And to those in
charge, this is OK. They buy a man or woman for a few pounds
and sell them for two or three times that. When the wastage is
accounted for, there is still gold on the table.
For
centuries they got away with it. From generation to generation,
the conspiracy of trading manufactured goods for humans, and
then for refined materials worked by those humans, passed unchecked.
The elite invested their money and goods as they would in speculation
today. The warring tribes were all too happy to cash in troublesome
captives for the luxuries of European civilization. Monarchs,
clergy and people just like you and me turned a deaf ear to the
cries for abolition or the screams of fellow humans writhing
in pain. Ironically, the Declaration of Independence was signed
in the United States by those who demanded freedom for themselves
but enslaved others. In the end, it was more the changing marketplace
of the industrial age that abolished slavery by making it obsolete
than mankind coming to its moral senses.
Yet the ghosts will not rest until their voices are heard
and their anguish validated. They come back to us in movies such
as Amistad, the story of a mutiny on one such slave ship and
their trials up to the Supreme Court. They come to us from the
sea, as Mel Fisher searched for pirate's treasure and instead
found the Henrietta Marie, quietly waiting where she perished
off the Florida Keys in 1700, her human cargo already enslaved
in the Caribbean. The greenish lettering of her ship's bell,
the remains of her cargo and still-intact iron shackles gave
her away. The physical evidence is there for us to touch.
Books of Interest:
The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie: An African-American's
Spiritual Journey to Uncover a Sunken Slave Ship's Past by
Michael H. Cottman, Designed by Lenny Henderson. In telling
the story of the salvage of the slave ship, this gripping book
takes the historical abstraction of the African slave trade and
charges it with the immediacy of warm flesh and cold iron. 16-page
photo insert.
Slave Ship: The Story of the Henrietta Marie by George
Sullivan. In an especially good book for students, George Sullivan
provides a history of the slave trade, talks about how the Henrietta
Marie was discovered, and discusses the details of salvaging
treasures that have been under water for hundreds of years. There
are many maps, pictures and illustrations to bring the story
to life.
The Middle Passage, White Ships/Black Cargo by Tom
Feelings; John Henrik Clarke.The Middle Passage is the name given
to one of the most tragic ordeals in history: the cruel and terrifying
journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. In this
seminal work, master artist Tom Feelings tells the complete story
of this horrific diaspora in sixty-four extraordinary narrative
paintings. Achingly real, they draw us into the lives of the
millions of African men, women, and children who were savagely
torn from their beautiful homelands, crowded into disease-ridden
"death ships", and transported under nightmarish conditions
to the so-called New World. An introduction by noted historian
Dr. John Henrik Clarke traces the roots of the Atlantic slave
trade and gives a vivid summary of its four centuries of brutality.
The Middle Passage reaches us on a visceral level. No one can
experience it and remain unmoved. But while we absorb the horror
of these images, we also can find some hope in them. They are
a tribute to the survival of the human spirit, and the humanity
won by the survivors of the Middle Passage belongs to us all.
Spirit Dive, An African-American's Journey to Uncover a
Sunken Slave Ship's Past by Michael H. Cottman. A powerful
and compelling testament of one man's attempt to make sense of
the history of his ancestors, chronicling his journey while confronting
questions with no answers and striving for reconciliation with
his homeland's past and his own country's future.
Expedition Whydah; The Story of the World's First Excavation
of a Pirate Treasure Ship and the Man Who Found Her by Barry
Clifford, Paul Perry. Two great stories in one big book. Business,
adventure, and ghosts: from a writer's point of view, this book
has everything. Which means, of course, that it has everything
from a reader's point of view, too. This is a story of obsession,
that of a modern day explorer named Barry Clifford and an 18th-century
pirate named 'Black' Sam Bellamy. Bellamy crashed his pirate
ship, the Whydah, on the sandy shores of Cape Cod in April of
1717. At least 146 pirates were killed in that crash, along with
the booty from 50 ships. Such a crash would have been a heyday
for the residents of the impoverished Cape had they been able
to reach the capsized vessel. Unfortunately for them, the storm
prevented any kind of salvage, and they could only watch in frustration
as the ship filled with treasure sank into the voracious sands
of the Cape. Shortly it disappeared and people forgot exactly
where it had sunk. Eventually it became a legend, like so many
other 'lost gold' legends around the world....Enter Barry Clifford.
It is 266 years later and he is telling Walter Cronkite the story
of 'Black' Sam Bellamy at a Thanksgiving get together at writer
William Styron's house. 'Why don't you look for the Whydah?'
asks Cronkite. And Barry does. Through an exciting process of
discovery, he finds the Whydah.
Slave Ship Guerrero by Gail Swanson. A Florida Keys
historian writes about the wrecking of a laden (561 Africans
in the hold) Spanish slave ship wrecking off Key Largo in 1827
while being pursued by a British warship, HBM (His Britannic
Majesty's) schooner Nimble.
For
centuries they got away with it. From generation to generation,
the conspiracy of trading manufactured goods for humans, and
then for refined materials worked by those humans, passed unchecked.
The elite invested their money and goods as they would in speculation
today. The warring tribes were all too happy to cash in troublesome
captives for the luxuries of European civilization. Monarchs,
clergy and people just like you and me turned a deaf ear to the
cries for abolition or the screams of fellow humans writhing
in pain. Ironically, the Declaration of Independence was signed
in the United States by those who demanded freedom for themselves
but enslaved others. In the end, it was more the changing marketplace
of the industrial age that abolished slavery by making it obsolete
than mankind coming to its moral senses.