By the mid-17th century a profitable slave trade had evolved between the west African coast and the Americas, especially the sugar islands of the West Indies. Dutch, Portuguese, and later New England slavers would carry slaves from Africa to the Americas providing labor for the French and British sugar plantations. Ship captains consulted special books advising on the most profitable method of packing slaves below deck in their cargo holds. The illustration above is taken from one of those books.
The dense packing of human cargo as shown in the illustration resulted in problems that could cause serious illness and death for the captive Africans. What were these problems and how did the captains attempt to mitigate the death toll among their human cargo?
