The determinants of slave mortality rates on the middle passage

[alice malice]

The wind, and lack of wind, was a determinant.

cited in Perkins's _The Economy of Colonial America_


The determinants of slave mortality rates on the middle passage

Raymond L. Cohn and Richard Jensen

Explorations in Economic History, 1982, vol. 19, issue 3, pages 269-282



http://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeeexehis/v_3a19_3ay_3a1982_3ai_3a3_3ap_3a269-282.htm


Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight,
sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like
hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to
bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while
the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving
each other’s live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled,
the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely
carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to
turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the
same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for
all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of
all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting
alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or
a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like
instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and
occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most
hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when
you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more
jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a
whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your
decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of
conciliating the devil.

http://www.juneteenth.com/middlep.htm
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