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Mortality Caused by Dehydration during the Middle Passage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Kenneth F. Kiple and
Brian T. Higgins
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Extract

Accounts abound of slaves suffering from lack of water during the middle passage, many of them collected during testimony before the British Parliament and by British abolitionists. A Captain Hayes spoke of a cargo “labouring under the most famishing thirst. . . being in very few instances allowed more than a pint of water a day” (Buxton, 1844: 154–155). Thomas Clarkson (1969 [1789]: 573) claimed that he had seen slaves “almost dying from want of water,” and Thomas Buxton (1844: 151-152) alleged that “there is nothing which slaves during the middle passage suffer from so much as want of water.”

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Research Article
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Social Science History , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989, pp. 420 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1989 

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