The Slave Ship

Marcus Rediker’s historical The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007) describes what happened aboard the ships carrying slaves from Africa to the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean. The book won numerous awards, including the 2008 George Washington Book Prize and the 2008 Merle Curti Award. Critics praise it for shedding light on a little-explored facet of North American history. Rediker, a bestselling nonfiction author and documentary film writer, is the Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d’études mondiales in Paris.

In The Slave Ship, Rediker highlights the horrific conditions endured by slaves transported from Africa to America between 1700 and 1807 aboard the “slave ships.” According to Rediker, slavery was especially profitable in the eighteenth century, and Great Britain and America moved millions of Africans to develop the New World. Rediker confines his discussion to these busiest years to best explore the slave ships in detail.

To write the book, Rediker spent years researching primary resources including maritime archives, court records, first-hand accounts, and diaries. He includes drawings and diagrams in the book to illustrate the points he makes about crammed spaces, suffocating conditions, and the crimes committed aboard these ships. Rediker wrote The Slave Ship to appeal to casual readers and students interested in African American cultural history.



Rediker notes that many slaves didn’t survive the journey across the oceans primarily because of the squalor they lived in. Disease spread quickly. The slaves didn’t receive proper rations of food and water, and the crews punished slaves severely for minor altercations. Crews threw dead slaves overboard without giving them a second thought. They simply returned to Africa to gather more slaves.

In the book, Rediker examines four major types of relationships aboard the slave ships: captain and crew, sailor and slave, slave and slave, and merchants against abolitionists. Rediker asserts these relationships played a key role in how life played out aboard the slave ships; many slaves only survived by banding together and finding solace in each other. Although many slaves aboard the ships didn’t speak the same language, they found other ways to communicate and share messages.

The relationship between captains and crews set the stage for the drama unfolding aboard the ships. Captains paid sailors terribly, fed them next to nothing, and ran their ships with as few sailors as possible. Sailors mutinied and frequently deserted, leaving the remaining crew stressed, bitter, and resentful. These sailors took their tempers and frustrations out on the easy targets—the slaves.



The slaves suffered a great deal at the hands of the crewmates. The sailors despised sharing quarters with them, hated touching them, and resented every morsel of food they received. Female and child slaves aboard the ships suffered especially badly. Although the women weren’t confined to the “dungeons” below deck, they couldn’t protect themselves from sexual assault, rape, and abuse.

Slaves struggled to watch their fellow captives suffer in this way. However, for the most part, there was nothing they could do other than silently endure the journey. Some slaves refused to eat and threatened to throw themselves overboard; they were punished severely—too many dead slaves ate into the captain’s profits.

Rediker doesn’t shy away from the grim realities of the slave ships and the content may be distressing or triggering for some readers. The Slave Ship is a stark reminder that, for these slaves, suicide wasn’t an escape from misery and toil. Instead, suicide was an act of rebellion against the slave trade. It was a slaves’ weapon against the masters who decided what happened to their bodies and spirits. Rediker reminds us that these slaves no longer owned themselves—their bodies belonged to the slavers—and so suicide served as a final act of defiance.



Rediker also touches upon the relationships between slave traders and abolitionists. The conflicts between these rival groups culminated in the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807. Although abolitionists triumphed, their victory doesn’t account for the centuries of slavery, cruelty, and misery endured by the captives aboard these slave ships. As Rediker explains, no act of parliament or government can make amends for these atrocities.

In The Slave Ship, Rediker reminds readers that the slave trade had far-reaching consequences for many people. Although we can’t call the crews innocent, since they stood by and watched the captives suffer, the sailors were themselves prisoners of a brutal system. Rediker highlights that, although many slaves died aboard the ships, crew mortality rates often exceeded captive mortality rates.

Rediker leaves readers wondering how to make up for what happened during the eighteenth century. All we can do, Rediker believes, is remember what happened, and ensure that it never happens again. We must learn from the mistakes of this eighteenth-century capitalist system gone wrong and promote social justice at every opportunity.