A Slave Ship Called Jesus
The Black Holocaust written by S. E. Anderson contains the following narrative by an enslaved African on a slave ship: “We had to either squat with knees and arms folded together or sit with another person wedged between our legs for 8 to 14 hours every day for the weeks and months it took to cross the Atlantic. The alternate was to lie flat on our backs for hours or days on a splattered, splintered, filthy wooden deck board, which were covered with blood, human waste, parasitic bugs, flies, and vomit.
We were shoulder to shoulder chained to each other or the ship’s hull.” The dying lay shackled to the living, and the living to the dead. They could reach the latrines, if they were available, by crawling over other human beings in a tossing ship. At the end of the journey, those Africans who did survive were often so ill that they were unable to stand without excrement running down their legs or to walk from the ship without having to pause every minute. On many ships, the men were sold, and the women were kept on board for the pleasure of the crew. Anderson calls the enslavement of African people the “most under reported major event in history.”
African people were prisoners aboard ships of death and brutality, but these ships had such names as Brother hood, John the Baptist, Justice, Integrity, Liberty, Good Intent, Black Boy, Morning Star, Mary, Gift of God, and the Good Ship Jesus. John Hawkins, the slave trader for Queen Elizabeth I, commanded the ship Jesus. He was considered to be the first English slave trader to profit from the Triangular slave trade. In 1564, Queen Elizabeth partnered with Hawkins by leasing the huge 700-ton ship the Jesus to him. Hawkins roamed up and down the west coast of Africa with his cousin Francis Drake. His mission: to capture human lives. He conducted brutal raids, violent beatings, and terrorized the Africans aboard his ship. In a book called, “In the Queen’s Slave Trader, historian Nick Hazlewood wrote the following: “Hawkin’s actions and attitudes toward his cargo set the precedent for those who followed him for the next two hundred years.”
The fleet of John Hawkins consisted of four ships. In the lead was the ship Jesus. It was a huge floating fortress. Hawkins commanded an artillery of huge firepower. Hawkins and his men went ashore every day to take the inhabitants with guns their guns burning and looting as they went along. As the invaders ravaged land, they record ed that the high quality of the African craftsmanship and the organization of their settlements.
Their homes were kept in order with a place for everything. The Africans were well organized in battle. They fought the slave traders with swords and darts with heads at both ends of iron. One end of the dart was like a double-edged sword, a foot and a half long with the other end acting as a counterweight so that it flew level. This was recorded in Hazlewood’s book The Queen’s Slave Trader.
Although the Africans fought a val iant fight and murdered more than a few of the slave traders, they were no match to the power of the gun. Loaded with human cargo, stolen goods, and gold, the Jesus set sail across the ocean only to return. Although he committed murder and other violent acts, John Hawkins was knighted by the Queen for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada.
The voyages of John Hawkins paved the way for slave ships around the world leading to the shores of Ameri ca. The slave ships that docked at the New York Harbor between 1715 and 1765 included such names as Charity, Friendship, Hope, Morning Star, Mary, and yes there was a slave ship called “The Wheel of Fortune.” Even on the eve of the American Revolution these slave ships sailed into the New York harbor not far from Wall Street – on of the biggest slave markets in America.