slave ships
Middle Passage vessels
Slave ships were vessels designed or modified to transport enslaved people, most notoriously across the Atlantic during the transatlantic slave trade from the 16th through 19th centuries.
These ships packed human cargo in brutal conditions below deck, with mortality rates often exceeding twenty percent.
The slave ship arrived in Charleston with three hundred captives.
The term evokes the horrors of the Middle Passage—the voyage from Africa to the Americas.
Transatlantic slave trade crossing
- AtlanticOcean bordering Europe
- transatlanticSpanning the ocean between continents
- crossingPoint where paths intersect
- journeyTravel from place to place
captives · shackles · chains · cargo · hold · Africans · triangular trade · route
Competitive public sale
- commoditiesTradeable raw materials
- human cargoPeople moved as property
- traffickingIllegal transport for profit
- portsShip berths or device jacks
merchants · buyers · sellers · manifest · insurance · profits · Liverpool · Bristol
Large-scale farming operations
- New WorldWestern Hemisphere landmasses
- imperialismExtending dominion over others
- mercantilismTrade policy favoring exports
- colonial powersNations that colonized others
Caribbean · Americas · Brazil · sugar · tobacco · cotton · labor · exploitation
Middle Passage
Transatlantic slave trade crossing
- AtlanticOcean bordering Europe
- transatlanticSpanning the ocean between continents
- crossingPoint where paths intersect
journey · captives · shackles · chains · cargo · hold · Africans · triangular trade · route · deck
auction
Competitive public sale
- commoditiesTradeable raw materials
- human cargoPeople moved as property
- traffickingIllegal transport for profit
ports · merchants · buyers · sellers · manifest · insurance · profits · Liverpool · Bristol · Nantes
plantations
Large-scale farming operations
- New WorldWestern Hemisphere landmasses
- imperialismExtending dominion over others
- mercantilismTrade policy favoring exports
colonial powers · Caribbean · Americas · Brazil · sugar · tobacco · cotton · labor · exploitation · European
- watercraftboat, sailboat, kayak, canoe, ship
- maritime historysailors, seamen, celestial navigation, merchant vessels, seafaring
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, manumission
- Atlantic tradetriangle trade, trade winds, Atlantic crossings, transatlantic routes, shipping routes
- Slavery Historyabolitionism, abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, Emancipation Proclamation, Harriet Tubman
- slave tradeleg irons, human cargo, triangle trade, auction block, African slaves
slave shipspassenger liners
Ships for fare-paying travelers
cruise ships · ocean liners · luxury liners · luxury yachts · pleasure craft
slave, slavery, ships, enslave, enslaved, enslavement, enslaving, slaveholding, antislavery