The+Middle+Passage

**// "Chained two by two, right leg and left leg, //**
 * What was the "middle passage"?**
 * // r //****// ight hand and left hand, //**
 * // each slave had less room than a man in a coffin." //**

The Trade Triangle was the series of journey made by merchant ships carrying goods to three major destinations. Click on the image to see the trade triangle. [|Click here to find out more about the trade triangle]- what good were traded, where did they travel to and from?

The Middle passage was the voyage that the merchants and slave traders made from west Africa to South America, the West Indies and to the southern part of North America. [1259411648#|View picture.] It was known as the middle passage because the first leg of the journey traders had travelled from Europe to Africa with goods to trade for captured Africans. The second leg was known as the middle passage - between Africa and the Americas. The final leg of the triangle was to return to Europe with the goods produced by slave labour in the Americas.

Conditions were horrific aboard the [1259411648#|slave ships]. They packed the slaves into the [1259411648#|hulls of the ship]to maximise profit. Here are some quotes from people who witnessed the middle passage.

Conditions on the ships || Details || //“I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste// //anything”// [1259411648#| Olaudah Equiano an enslaved African who went on to write an account of his experiences.] || [|Listen to an account by Olaudah Equiano] || “The deck that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux that it resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of human imagination, to picture itself a situation more dreadful or disgusting” Alexander Falconbridge. [1259411648#|Examine a photo]of loading slaves || [|Watch] a speech made by an MP to Parliament about the middle passage. He wanted to show the horrendous conditions on board slave ships. || “This morning buryed a woman slave (No. 47). Know not what to say she died of for she has not been properly alive since she first came on board” John Newton || [1259411648#|Look at an image of how slaves were packed into the ship]. || “…frequently finds several dead; and among the men, sometimes a dead and living negroe [1259411648#|fastened by their irons]together. When this is the case, they are brought upon the deck, and being laid on the grating, the living negroe is disengaged, and the dead are thrown overboard” // Alexander Falconbridge  // || [1259411648#|Look at an image of the Brooks slave ship] ||
 * //Interior of a Slave Ship//, a woodcut illustration from the publication, A //History of the Amistad Captives//, reveals how hundreds of slaves could be held within a slave ship. Tightly packed and confined in an area with just barely enough room to sit up, slaves were known to die from a lack of breathable air. || [[image:http://www.northumberlandvtle.net/files/media/81/documents/5785/interior%20of%20a%20slave%20ship.jpg width="340" height="177"]] ||