Age of Exploration

What Was the Middle Passage?

The Middle Passage was the second leg of the triangular trade — the brutal sea voyage that carried enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean from the African coast to the Americas. The term was first used by an eighteenth-century British abolitionist, and it has stuck because the experience it names cannot be captured in any other phrase. Operating from the early sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, the Middle Passage was the central event of the Atlantic slave trade, and the African diaspora that resulted from it is the demographic fact around which the modern history of the Americas turns. David Eltis and David Richardson’s Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2010) provides the definitive numerical base; Olaudah Equiano’s 1789 Interesting Narrative is the most widely read first-person account; and Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship (2007) is the most powerful recent treatment of the human experience.

The broader context of the Atlantic slave trade — the African supply, the American demand, the abolitionist movement — is treated on our Atlantic slave trade cluster page. This page focuses on the voyage itself: the journey to the African coast, the slave forts, the ships, the conditions aboard, the experience of the captives, and the numbers.

The Journey from Africa to the Sea

The Middle Passage did not begin at sea. It began in the African interior, where most of the enslaved Africans were captured. Captives were typically taken in wars, raids, or kidnappings, and then marched in chains to the coast. The march from the interior to the coastal slave-trading posts might take weeks or even months, during which the captives were chained together in coffles, fed minimally, and subjected to various forms of abuse. Mortality on the march is not well documented but is estimated to have been significant, perhaps 10–20 percent on the longer routes from the African interior to the coast.

Once they reached the coast, the captives were held in coastal forts or “barracoons” while awaiting transport. The most famous of these forts were the British and Dutch forts along the Gold Coast of West Africa, including Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle. The conditions in these forts were horrific: captives were held in cramped, dark dungeons, with little food or water, and many died before ever being placed on a ship. Elmina Castle, originally built by the Portuguese in 1482 as São Jorge da Mina, was one of the oldest European structures in sub-Saharan Africa and a major embarkation point until the British abolished the trade in 1807.

The forts also served as the trading posts where European merchants exchanged manufactured goods for enslaved Africans. The captives were inspected, branded (sometimes), and then loaded onto small boats or directly onto the slave ships waiting offshore. The embarkation process was often traumatic, with captives being forced aboard in chains, sometimes with their families being split up for sale to different buyers.

The Slave Ships

The slave ships that operated the Middle Passage were typically converted merchant vessels, ranging from small sloops and schooners to large, three-masted ships. The most famous of these was the Brookes, a Liverpool slaver whose 1788 diagram of how captives were packed aboard became an iconic image of the abolitionist movement. The Brookes was licensed to carry 454 captives, and the diagram showed the captives packed into the hold in horrifying density, with barely two feet of space per person.

The conditions aboard the slave ships were designed to maximize the number of captives that could be carried, since profits depended on the number of captives delivered to the Americas. The captives were typically kept below decks in the hold, chained together in pairs, with men separated from women and children. The men were often kept in chains throughout the voyage, while women and children might be allowed slightly more freedom of movement.

The captives were brought up on deck in shifts to eat, exercise, and relieve themselves. The food was generally of poor quality — yams, rice, beans, and salted meat — and the captives were given little water. Disease was rampant: dysentery, smallpox, scurvy, yellow fever, and various other illnesses killed large numbers of captives. Mortality rates during the Middle Passage averaged around 15–20 percent, but on some voyages, more than a third of the captives died.

The Experience of the Voyage

For the captives, the Middle Passage was a profound and traumatic experience. The captives were taken from familiar surroundings, separated from their families, transported across thousands of miles of ocean, and subjected to conditions that killed many of them. The voyage was not only physically dangerous; it was also psychologically devastating, since the captives had no knowledge of where they were going, what would happen to them, or whether they would ever see their homeland again.

The captives resisted in various ways. Some refused to eat, and had to be force-fed through a funnel. Some jumped overboard, preferring death to enslavement. Some led or participated in shipboard revolts, of which there were hundreds over the history of the trade. The most famous such revolt was that led by Sengbe Pieh (called “Joseph Cinqué” in American newspapers) aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad in 1839. The Amistad case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841, which ruled in favor of the captives.

The crew members of the slave ships lived in constant fear of revolt, and they employed various measures to prevent it. The captives were kept divided, with men separated from women, and members of different ethnic groups kept apart where possible. Aboard the ships, the crew were always heavily armed, and any sign of resistance was brutally suppressed. The captains and crew of slave ships also faced moral and psychological strain, and some of them later became supporters of abolition.

The Voyage to the Americas

The Middle Passage took various routes, depending on the origin in Africa and the destination in the Americas. The shortest voyages — from Senegambia to the Caribbean or the American South — might take only three to four weeks. The longest voyages — from Mozambique or Madagascar to Brazil or the Caribbean — could take three to four months. The average voyage probably lasted six to twelve weeks.

The slave ships generally followed the trade winds and ocean currents, sailing south from the African coast to catch the southeast trade winds, then west across the Atlantic, and finally north along the South American coast to reach the Caribbean. The return voyage to Europe was generally faster, since the ships could take advantage of the Gulf Stream and the prevailing westerlies. The entire round trip — from Europe to Africa to the Americas and back to Europe — might take a year or more.

The destination of the slave ships depended on the demand for enslaved labor in the Americas. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the major destinations were the Spanish Caribbean and Portuguese Brazil. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British, French, and Dutch Caribbean became dominant, with the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) receiving the largest single share of the trade. In the nineteenth century, the Brazilian sugar and coffee economy was the major destination.

The Arrival in the Americas

The arrival of a slave ship in the Americas was a major event. The captives were typically brought ashore at a slave market, where they were washed, oiled, and inspected by prospective buyers. The captives were sold at auction, with buyers examining them for physical fitness, age, and other characteristics. Families were often split up, with members being sold to different buyers, and many captives never saw their relatives again.

The period immediately after the Middle Passage, sometimes called the “seasoning,” was one in which the newly arrived captives were forced to adjust to the brutal conditions of plantation labor. Many died during this period, especially from diseases to which they had no immunity. Those who survived became the labor force of the plantation economies of the New World, and their descendants became the African diaspora communities of the Americas.

The Numbers

The total number of Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic has been estimated by historians, and the figures are staggering. The most authoritative recent study, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, estimates that approximately 12.5 million Africans were forcibly embarked on slave ships between 1500 and 1866. Of these, approximately 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage to arrive in the Americas. The remaining 1.8 million — about 14 percent — died during the voyage or shortly before embarkation.

The numbers varied considerably over time. The slave trade was small in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but it expanded greatly in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, peaking in the 1780s at perhaps 80,000–100,000 captives per year. The British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, followed by similar measures in other countries, gradually reduced the volume, but the trade continued illegally for several decades, with the last major slave ship, the schooner Clotilda, arriving in Alabama in 1860.

The Abolition Movement

The Middle Passage became a central concern of the abolitionist movement from the late eighteenth century onward. Abolitionists in Britain, the United States, and other countries published graphic accounts of the Middle Passage, circulated illustrations of the Brookes and other slave ships, and organized boycotts of slave-produced goods. The campaign culminated in the abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807 and the United States in 1808, followed by similar measures in other countries.

The British Royal Navy played a major role in suppressing the trade after 1807, with the West Africa Squadron intercepting slave ships along the African coast. The West Africa Squadron, based at Freetown in Sierra Leone (founded in 1792 as a settlement for freed slaves by the Sierra Leone Company, with British government support), freed around 50,000 captives between 1808 and 1860 and brought many of them to Freetown, where they swelled the existing settlement. The squadron’s work was dangerous and unhealthy, and many British sailors died of disease contracted in the tropical climate.

The abolition of the slave trade was followed, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by the abolition of slavery itself. The British abolished slavery in 1833, the French in 1848, the Americans in 1865 (after the Civil War), the Spanish in 1886, and the Brazilians in 1888. The Middle Passage, as a system, finally came to an end, although the broader patterns of coerced labor, racial inequality, and economic exploitation that it had helped to create have not been fully erased.

The Legacy of the Middle Passage

The legacy of the Middle Passage is enormous. The forced migration of millions of Africans to the Americas transformed the demographics, cultures, and economies of the New World. The African diaspora that resulted from the Middle Passage created new cultural forms — including music, religion, language, and cuisine — that have enriched the cultures of the Americas and the world. The political and economic structures that grew up around the slave trade shaped the development of European capitalism, the colonial empires, and the modern global economy.

The moral legacy of the Middle Passage is equally significant. The Middle Passage is widely recognized as one of the greatest crimes in human history, and the struggle to end it was one of the great moral achievements of the modern era. The memory of the Middle Passage continues to shape contemporary discussions of race, reparations, and global justice, and it is an essential part of any honest reckoning with the history of the modern world.

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