Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/101

Rh called the upper hold, but was generally designated "'tween decks." The 'tween-deck space was reserved for the slaves. The newslaver built at "Warren in the county of Bristole, in the colony of Rhode Island," was to be "ten feet in the hold, with three feet ten inches betwixt decks." That is to say, the space between the decks where the slaves were to be kept during the time the cargo was accumulating (three to ten months) and while crossing the Atlantic (six to ten weeks) was a room as long and as wide as the ship, but only three feet ten inches high — the space of an average Newport slaver in the days when the traffic was lawful and respected.

The men were ironed together, two and two by the ankles, but women and children were left unironed. They were then taken to the slave-deck, the males forward of a bulkhead built abaft the main hatch, and the women aft. There all were compelled to lie down with their backs on the deck and feet outboard. In this position the irons on the men were usually secured to chains or iron rods that were rove through staples in the deck, or the ceiling of the ship. The entire deck was covered with them lying so. They were squeezed so tightly together, in fact, that the average space allowed to each one was but sixteen inches wide by five and a half feet long.

In the Liverpool ships in the latter part of the eighteenth century — ships that carried from three hundred to five hundred slaves at a load — the average height between the two decks was five feet two inches. This statement of the average distance between decks was proven by measuring many ships. But that is not to say that the slaves were more comfortable on the