Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/70

( 36 ) two or three instances of a dead and living slave found in the morning shackled together.

The crowded state of the slaves, and the pulling off the shoes by the surgeons as described above, that they might not hurt them in traversing their rooms, are additionally mentioned by Surgeons Wilson and Claxton. The slaves are said also by Hall and Wilson to complain on account of heat. Both Hall, Towne, and Morley, describe them as often in a violent perspiration, or dew sweat. Mr. Ellison has seen them faint through heat, and obliged to be brought on deck, the steam coming up through the gratings like a furnace. In Wilson's and Towne's ships some have gone below well in an evening, and in the morning have been found dead, and Mr. Newton has often seen a dead and living man chained together, and to use his own words, one of the pair dead.

This mode and its consequences confirmed by another species of proof.

To prove that this stowage, and of course that the consequences of it, must unavoidably be as described by the Gentlemen above, the following species of evidence and calculation may be resorted to.

Captain Parrey of the Royal Navy was sent by Government in the year 1788, to measure such of the slave vessels as were then lying at Liverpool, and to make a report of the same to the House of Commons. In this Report are mentioned the names of the different vessels, and their respective dimensions as taken by him. The first of these, as delivered in by himself, is the Brookes, and as some one ship must be taken to make out the proof intended, it will be less objectionable to take the first that comes than any other. The dimensions then of the Brookes as reported by Captain Parrey will be found as in the annexed Plans.