Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/135

( 101 ) It appears first then, that if we look at the seamen while employed on board their respective ships, and judge of them from the above accounts, we shall see the destructive nature of the slave trade, for it appears that in 350 vessels 12,263 seamen were employed, out of whom 2643 were lost, that is to say, that more than a fifth of the whole number employed, or more than seven in every single voyage perished.

If again we look at such of them as are discharged or desert in the West Indies, where the muster-rolls cease to take an account of them, (for so systematical does the management of the trade appear by the second and fourth columns, that nearly one-half of those who go out with the ships are constantly left behind) and judge of them by what the different evidences have to say of them there, we shall see great reason to apprehend another very severe loss besides that already stated to happen among them while on board their respective ships.

To shew this in the most unquestionable manner, we may begin with Captain Hall (of the merchants service). The crews of the African ships, says he, when they arrive in the West Indies, are generally (he does not know a single instance to the contrary) in a sickly, debilitated state, and the seamen, who are discharged or desert from those ships in the West Indies, are the most miserable objects he ever met with in any country in his life. He has frequently seen them with their toes rotted off, their legs swelled to the size of their thighs, and in an ulcerated state all over. He has seen them on the different wharfs in the islands of Antigua, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, particularly at the two last islands. He has also seen them lying under the cranes and balconies of the houses near the water-side in Barbadoes and Jamaica expiring, and some quite dead. He met with an instance last July (1789) of a dead seaman lying on one of the wharfs in Bridge Town, Barbadoes, who had been landed out of an African ship.

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