Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/152

 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 rubbed them with pickle. Mr. Morley also himself, when he was Dixon's cabin-boy, for accidentally breaking a glass, was tied to the tiller by the hands, flogged with a cat, and kept hanging for some time. Mr. Morley has seen the seamen lie and die upon the deck. They are generally, he says, treated ill when sick. He has known men ask to have their wounds or ulcers dressed; and has heard the doctor, with oaths, refuse to dress them.

Mr. Ellison also, in describing the treatment in the Briton, says there was a boy on board, whom Wilson, the chief mate, was always beating. One morning, in the passage out, he had not got the tea-kettle boiled in time for his breakfast, upon which, when it was brought, Wilson told him he would severely flog him after breakfast. The boy, for fear of this, went into the lee fore chains. When Wilson came from the cabin, and called for Paddy, (the name he went by, being an Irish boy,) he would not come, but remained in the fore chains; on which Wilson going forward, and attempting to haul him in, the boy jumped overboard, and was drowned.

Another time on the Middle Passage, the same Wilson ordered one James Allison (a man he had been continually beating for trifles) to go into the women's room to scrape it. Allison said he was not able, for he was very unwell; upon which Wilson obliged him to go down. Observing, however, that the man did not work, he asked him the reason, and was answered as before, "that he was not able." Upon this, Wilson threw a handspike at him, which struck him on the breast, and he dropped down to appearance dead. Allison recovered afterwards a little, but died the next day.

Mr. Ellison relates other instances of ill-usage on board his own ship, and with respect to instances in others, he says, that in all slave ships they are most commonly beaten and knocked about for nothing. He recollects that on board the Phceuix, a Bristol ship, while lying on the coast, the boatswain and five of the crew made their escape in the yawl, but were taken up by the natives. When Captain Bishop heard it, he ordered them to be kept on shore at Forje, a small town at the mouth of Calabar River, chained by the necks, legs, and hands, and to have each a plantain a day only. The boatswain, whose name was Tom Jones, and an old shipmate of his, and a very good seaman, died raving mad in his chains there. The other five died in their chains also.

Mr. Towne, in speaking of the treatment en board the Peggy, Captain Davison, says that their chests were brought upon deck, and staved and burnt, and themselves turned out from lying below; and if any murmurs were heard among them, they were inhumanly beaten with any thing that came in the way, or flogged, both legs put in irons, and chained abaft to the pumps, and there made to work points and gaskets, during the captain's pleasure; and very often beat just as the captain thought proper. He himself has often seen the captain as he has walked by, kick them repeatedly, and if they have said any thing that he might deem offensive, he has immediately called for a stick to