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NavioNegreiro.gif Slave ships were cargo boats specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves, especially "freshly caught" black African slaves. The most important routes of the slave ships led from the northern and middle coasts of Africa to South America and the south coast of what is today the USA.

Atlantic slave trade

In order to achieve high profits from the transports, the owners of the ships divided the hull into between decks, in order to transport as many slaves as possible. This led to indescribably unhygenic conditions, and consequently an enormously high mortality rate. Only the most resilient survived the transport. Often the ships transported a few hundred slaves, who were chained tightly to plank beds. For example, the slave ship "Henrietta Marie" carried up to 400 black slaves on a single passage, who were confined to two decks, and spent the week long passage chained to only one half square meter.

Already following a few decades after the discovery of America, the Indian population was so strongly decimated that it was a profitable business to send slave ships into the Atlantic. The peak time of slave ships to the Atlantic passage was between the 17th and 18th century when large plantations developed in the English colonies of North America.

List of slave ships

See also

Notes

External links

Racism | Ship types | Slavery

Sklavenschiff | Slaveskip

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Slave ship".

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