Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/140

( 106 )

Barbarous Usage of the Seamen employed in the Slave-Trade.

That the Seamen employed in the slave trade are worse fed, both in point of quantity and quality of provisions, than the seamen in other trades, is allowed by most of the evidences, and that they have little or no shelter night or day from the inclemency of the weather, during the whole of the Middle Passage, is acknowledged by them all.

With respect to their personal ill usage, the following extracts may suffice.

Mr. Morley asserts that the seamen in all the Guinea men he sailed in, except one, were generally treated with great rigour, and many with cruelty. He recollects many instances: Mathews, the chief mate of the Venus, Captain Forbes, would knock a man down for any frivolous thing with a cat, a piece of wood, or a cook's axe, with which he once cut a man down the shoulder, by throwing it at him in a passion. Captain Dixon likewise, in the Amelia, tied up the men, and gave them four or five dozen lashes at a time, and then rubbing