From around the early 1500’s to the late 1800’s the transatlantic era occurred, where millions of people were captured or sold into slavery, thus began a voyage from Africa to the Americas. The middle passage was the essence of slavery. It demonstrated the struggles of people as they entered slavery and represents the challenges that were yet to come in the future. Eighteenth-century texts such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African by himself, and images such as Hold of a Ship by Mohommah Gardi Baquaua, can be analyzed to help give an account about the experiences faced during this period. These visual images and narratives, that represent the slave trade era, hold a theme of physically transitioning from one’s native land to the colonized country, but can also be broadened to a psychological aspect as well, due to the treatment that these white men showed the African people. In Hold of a Ship, viewers are able to see people being chained together living in horrid conditions, sometimes they would starve themselves because they cannot withstand the gruesome environment they were forced to live within. Another theme would the consequences of colonization, for instance, many people taken from home now being forced into slavery or the shift in treatment from being treated like a human being, to being shunned as a person. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus the African can give somewhat of an insight into the image, Hold of a Ship due to putting a narrative behind the very image. Connecting these two works about the slave trade helps portray these writers’ accounts, and can also help support the history behind the message both the image and narrative is trying to address.
The New York Public Library’s, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the digital archive on the Transatlantic Slave Trade shows an illustration of men aboard the ship that took them to Brazil called Hold of a Ship by Mohommah Gardi Baquaua. It is an illustration that shows the conditions that were provided to the African people when they boarded this ship. The image shows a darkened room so dark that they could not tell whether it is day or night. Men and women are laying close to one another, one could feel the warmth of their breath. Throughout their journey, it is apparent that the slaves could not stand upright because the shelves stopped right above their heads and they lay there on hard-wooden racks barely clothed or often naked. The caption states: “We were thrust into the hold of the vessel in a state of nudity, the males being crammed on one side and the females on the other; the hold was so low that we could not stand up, but were obliged to crouch upon the floor or sit down; day and night were the same to us, sleep being denied us from the confined position of our bodies, and we became desperate through suffering and fatigue.” The object carries a strong emotional impact; seeing people chained, packed tightly together, and being treated worse than an animal is a dreadful sight to see. Additionally, the image itself discloses the fact that the slaves were not able to move because there is no space to move or nowhere to move because one is chained up with the companions of strangers from different areas of Africa. Some people did not have the capability to communicate because they spoke different languages. This image withholds this theme of transitioning and the consequences of slavery as well due to the notion of one demonstrating the visuals of what it was like to be aboard this slave ship, and the treatment of the people who were not used to this way of life. The concept of slavery was to control and degrade. This image shows belittling conditions because these people were barely clothed, starving or being told when to eat. This can be viewed as a way to control them. The African people had to physically be moved from their home country, as well as, be stripped of their culture to transition to this humiliating new way of life.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa gives a voice to what Mohommah Gardi Baquaua was trying to disclose in his illustration. Within the narrative, Equiano is kidnapped and sold several times up to the point where he describes the situation of being brought on to the slave ship by fellow Africans and then being abandoned. All hopes of returning to his home are gone. Upon entering the ship, he speaks about asking other African aboard on the ship if he was “to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair” (55). Although the others confirmed that they were not to be eaten he was still afraid. Later on, he was to be brought under the decks where he states, “I received a salutation in my nostrils as I never experienced in my life” (56). He illustrates this “loathsomeness of the stench,” people crying together. Equiano wanting to leap overboard but cannot because he witnessed “these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. He narrates his experiences of the horrid “shrieks of the women, and the groans of dying” (58). He never saw people be so cruel towards blacks and let alone “to some of the whites themselves” (57). This narrative by Equiano was able to tell a first- hand account and kind of narrate the message of what the digital archive item was trying to deliver. Both Baquaua and Equiano were able to show how Africans journeyed through the middle passage in deplorable conditions, demonstrate the way that the slave- owners and traders perceived people of color, and dehumanized them by treating them as objects. They treated them as if their human life shared no value to theirs. This connection correlates with the idea of transitioning physically and mentally on the basis of the conditions that the African people had to live that were expressed in Equiano’s account. He mentions him asking whether these strange people were to eat him, indicating fear and the way he describes the surroundings of the slave ship shows in a sense an unfamiliarity of these types of settings, as well as the type of people that has possession of him.
As a result, the theme of transition is being portrayed in these works through the recount of both narrative and the image. As readers of Equiano’s autobiography, we see first-hand the disgusting treatment of the slaves and in the illustration, we see the way people are being kept inhumanely on the slave ship. Equiano’s narrative is important because it brings life to Baquaua’s image with the usage of the sensory language of the distasteful stench, the frightening groans, and shrieks from people aboard the ship. We learn of the brutal and animal-like treatment of Africans on board the slave ships. We now have a perspective of what it was like to transition from home to a new world where one’s presence was not respected. Also, as readers, we now have an insight into how these people felt when transitioning throughout these voyages. The consequences of colonization also are portrayed throughout these works through Equaino when he speaks about the terror of not knowing what these white men were to do to him. Africans although physically transferred to the newly colonized world, they had to transition themselves mentally to prepare for their brand new, forced upon lifestyle. Both narrative and visual aid were able to help people have a greater insight into the Middle Passage from Africa to the west indies. They both demonstrate what it was actually like to be a part of this time and experience in history.
Works Cited:
Equiano, Olaudah, 1745-1797. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. Peterborough, Ont. : Broadview Press, 2001. Print.
Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua (Detroit: Geo. E. Pomeroy & Co., 1854) http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/detail.cfm?migration=1&topic=99&id=297611&page=6&type=image
