…the favour that you be pleased to order the Mast Builders both of Deptford and Woolwich…to fit the platforms and the other conveniences of the bombress …and that the men which are intended for them be ordered as soon as possible… In the below letter that Phillips wrote on 8 th September 1693 from St James, Deptford, London, he refers to the urgent need for carpenters and blacksmiths to fit secure slave decks in the hold of the Hannibal: Captain Thomas Phillips referred to the slave decks as ‘kennels’.īeing all upon deck…till they have done and gone down to their kennels between decks… Ī chilling document has survived, dated 8 th September 1693, with Phillips requesting that the mast-makers of Deptford and Woolwich be ordered to work faster in fitting new platforms and that the blacksmiths to have the same orders for fitting ironwork. The men were allowed onto the upper deck to have their food and water twice a day unless there was fear of an uprising occurring. Graphic image No.1 depicts how the captive men on the lower were to be shackled and positioned below deck.

The enslaved men were chained in irons within the hold of the ship on what were known as ‘the slave decks’. (Now known as Ouidah in the Republic of Benin, West Africa).

The 372 enslaved Africans who survived the voyage on the Hannibal spent a total of 126 days onboard the ship after it had departed Whydah. For the enslaved Africans on board a slave ship sailing to the New World – in this case Barbados – they were to experience a passage of unimaginable horror. Let me begin by saying that there was nothing unique about the utterly appalling conditions that existed on the Hannibal slave ship: All merchant slave ships were floating prisons of cruelty and depravity. The stench of the hold…was so intolerably loathsome that it was dangerous to remain there for any time…but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. Warning – Due to the nature of the topic this article is not suitable for children

Facts about the brookes slave ship