Edit, november 14, 2009: This is really painful reading as it retraces 300 years of slave shipping across the Atlantic. Millions of kidnapped Africans were transported on this route - quite a number of them died during those transports. The slave ships were cruel instruments of commerce and war and they helped to shape the western world. This is a tale of suffering and surviving and a few people made fortunes out of it. Most interesting is the part regarding the different ships used, from very small ones, carrying around 30 slaves only, to the large ones carrying several hundred slaves. This book has a heavy emotional impact.

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The slavers are on their way to Australia...

received as part of bookspiral on slavery

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wow, i sobbed in some parts of thsi book. a very emotional but informing read

Received today. Thank you, tokorua! I have a few books ahead of this one but I'll try to read it as soon as possible. It looks really interesting.

This a fascinating and harrowing book. It was interesting to read about the slave trade not just from the slaves' perspectives but also from that of the sailors and the captains of the slave ships. I had never really thought about how they affected or were affected by the slave trade before. As a lover of naval fiction I think the sailors' stories were specifically interesting to me.

An interesting point for me was the vast numbers of people involved in the trade, especially in African societies. You get the impression from reading this book that during the period of the European slave trade no one in West Africa was really safe. Slavery had existed there for many centuries but once the Europeans brought their guns and manufactured goods to trade for humans, suddenly kidnapping raids became a common threat and anyone, including African slavers or royalty, could be captured and sold. The European traders asked no questions about where the slaves came from and were happy to believe that they were prisoners of war or criminals. Most were just innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was also struck by the irony that often if the slave ship got into trouble at sea, either in a storm or in an attack by another ship, the captive men would have to help sail and defend the ship so that the precious cargo - they and their fellow slaves - could be delivered safely on the other side to be sold.

There is so much interesting and disturbing information in this book. Thanks so much, book-man-8, for giving me the chance to read it!

Sorry for keeping it so long! I'll post this and The Slave Trade off together before the end of the week.

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Sent by airmail on Thursday.

Received today as part of the book-man-8 spiral. Thanks for letting me participate and thank you to snufkin81 for sending it on. I'm looking forward to reading this book and will get to asap.

Started reading today...

I found this book so well written and so good that i'm going to invest in a copy for myself. This book particularly fascinated me as a resident of Liverpool (and someone who makes a living out of knowing about dock history and engineering!) because it contained so many names that i'm already familiar with! Slave trader and Merchant Joseph Manesty is a name well known to me (he has a street named after him just off Paradise Street - Manesty's Lane)as is Thomas Staniforth, who was related to Charles Goore by marriage and was one of the most successful slave traders with additional business interests in the Greenland whaling industry - he had whale bone warehouses on Hanover Street. William Hutchinson is also very famous within Liverpool history as a merchant, boat builder, inventor, politician and philanthropist.

What is most notable about this book is the losses on both sides - millions of Africans forced onto ships and ultimately to their deaths through disease, overwork, starvation and the predation of the white man and thousands of sailors (many of whom did not want to be involved in the trade in the first place). How was it viewed as being a worth while enterprise in any way? How did the idea of a turning a profit replace the idea of humanity?Inhumane on so many counts and fatal to so many it is incredible that the slave trade carried on for such a huge length of time, especially when you consider that people placed so much emphasis on the idea of Christian values during this period and a good deal of money generated by the slave trade ironically being spent on the construction of churches in Liverpool.

If anyone visits Liverpool in the near future please visit the site of St Thomas's Gardens at the bottom of Park Lane near the Liverpool One development. Some of the merchants mentioned in this book are buried here, including Hutchinson and Staniforth, Goore, the Parr family and others. I've just finished doing a lot of research on the people buried within this cemetery and writing an information board which has been erected on the site with information about these people. For people who are interested in finding out more about Liverpool and its part in the maritime trade including the slave trade please visit The International Slavery Museum, The Maritime Museum, The Museum of Liverpool Life and The Old Dock Experience, all in Liverpool City Centre. Extensive records of first hand information and documents are available at the Maritime Museum Archive at the Albert Dock and the Liverpool Records Office at the Central Library on William Brown Street.

The image above shows the Old Dock , designed and built by Thomas Steers in 1715 which was the impetus for Liverpools involvement in the slave trade and opened the way for Liverpool's development to a port city of internationl importance in the 18th and 19th centuries. Between 2004 and 2010 I was part of a team who excavated this structure and surrounding areas in order to examine the archaeology of Liverpool as a port city. The dock is now open in a subterranean museum (designed by myself and a team of architects/ graphic designers and researchers) beneath the Liverpool One development where you can find out more about Liverpool and its maritime history.

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Now travelling onto Switzerland to meet the next person in the spiral.

This arrived in the Alps today, where it will have to enjoy the scenery for a while until I can get to it- which may not be for another month when I will be on holiday... Thanks so much for making these available!

Well, considering the length of the Middle Passage, I think I've navigated this book more or less within a reasonable time. Although at times the going was a bit dry, on the whole this was a fascinating book about an era which has often been either ignored or if touched on, often somehow romanticized. The reality of the slave ship, and most likely shipping in general at that time, was as the author points out, a wooden hell.
I apologize for keeping this so long - it was not the kind of reading I wanted to do while on holiday and left the book home. I've requested the next address and will send as soon as I get it.

Now travelling to the Republic of Ireland. Thank you for making these available, and sorry for the long delay.

This will be a book the husband and I both will read. In fact he may read all the books in the spiral. I look forward to reading this book I have been wanting to read it for awhile.