In the riveting novel, The Slave Ship: A Human History, written by Marcus Rediker, a story of history is told about the intense suffering of slaves brought to America from Africa on British slave ships, and their journey along the way. Marcus Rediker is a history professor at the University of Pittsburg. Rediker wrote this book very carefully, studying massive amounts of novels in British libraries and record offices as well as literary documents on the slave trade. This historical novel highlights the slave trade from the year 1700 to 1807, when British parliament approved the Abolition Act of the slave trade. The Slave Ship starts out talking about the estimated deaths that occurred during the slave trade. The book takes into account who died in transit and who was held in barraccoons and factories, which estimates 15% of those slaves died. Not to mention in Africa, another 1.8 million deaths occurred as well as 15% of slaves died after entering the New World. In total, taking into consideration Africa, The Middle Passage, and first coming to the New World, 5 million people died. 14 million Africans were enslaved and only 9 million survived (page 25). …show more content…
The people that were on the ship included: the captain of the ship, the motley crew, the enslaved Africans, and towards the end of the slave trade, middle class abolitionists and the metropolitan public started using the ships as well (page 28). Something that I learned through reading this novel was that enslaved Africans who were brought to the New World had been kidnapped by other African leaders who traded them to English slave ships. The slave trade was part of the triangular trade where English traders would ship goods from England to West Africa to be traded with the African leaders in exchange for slaves to bring to the New