The Middle Passage

Women who had mulatto babies as a result of being raped by the captain and the crew members left their afterbirth decaying among them in the cargo slave quarters, the blood and the stench in their bedding compartments which was the same area where they ate and defecated, and where they slept was atrocious, the diseases that stem from this condition was inexplicable. Under these bad conditions we could understand how many of the slaves were immersed in a mountain of insects, lying next to a two week old corpse who's dead body was being eaten by ants, flies, worms, rats or worse. Suddenly we have a clue to the time it took for the slave ships to reach shore, as it took a woman nine months to have a baby on board, but just a few minutes for the crew members to toss it over board. Sharks followed the boat's shadow that it cast in the water or the stench that generally trailed the slave ships knowing that a human slave would be thrown overboard, because of sickness, diseases, as a punishment for disobedience, or to instill fear in the remaining slaves, sometimes babies were cast aside by the crew members for mere fun and entertainment (merely to pass the time). Babies that were stripped from their mothers arms died horrifically as their mothers melted emotionally from the sight of their babies being thrown over board, to be abruptly devoured by the sharks.

After slavery was abolished the slave ships continued to actively transport slaves around the world, it was when a British or international policing ship was in sight that the captain of these illegal slave ships would then order the complete eradication of all the slaves on board, so they threw over board the big ball and chain which then pulled all of the slaves that was chained to that ball into the ocean to drown or to be eaten by the sharks.

http://www1.somerset.gov.uk/archives/Images/EducImages/SLAVERY1.gif

There was no governable system which accounted for the millions of persons that died as a result of these factors, although some captains maintained records of their human cargo many were afraid of arrest after slavery was legally banded, so they never kept records that would suffice as a tool for their own imprisonment.

“Another inhuman practice of the crews of the slave ships was that of "bedwarming". In this custom a member of the crew, or sometimes even the captain, would take a slave women out from the 'tween decks during the night. The woman would be taken back to either the captain's chamber or the crew's living quarters and be beaten and physically forced to have sexual relations with the crew member. This practice demonstrated the complete rape of the African-American culture by the slave traders of the Middle Passage, both figuratively and literally.......