This is a first person analysis essay on the Middle Passage Slave Trade.

Essay by Merlin1High School, 10th gradeA+, April 2006

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History has forgotten those who died in the Middle passage. For me it was just yesterday. As white men came into my village and tore me away from everything I had ever known. Taking me to an unknown ship which would be worse than a living death.

I saw the ships coming into port. Lined up in front and behind me were hundreds of others who had been "selected" to go to this new world. They branded us and shackled our wrists and ankles, leaving just enough slack to rip my skin off and allow me to stumble forward. Aboard that ship I was forced into a hold built for about 300 people with 600 others, creating an unbearable heat as our bodies. When the ship pitched forth toward our destination cries of anguish filled the hold as we left our mother, Africa.

Within the first few days there were already 17 suicides and the boat was rank with the stench of death and disease.

My only refuge was the night, for within its sweet mercy I could forget the pain and lie in the folds of sleep. Still when the morning came reality would hit me and I would find myself lying beside the dead in a pool of fesus, urine, and vomit. The smell grew so bad that our captors even refused to stay down and watch us for very long, but really what did it matter. They had metal and we had nowhere to escape to except the depths of the sea, which I couldn't bring myself to doing.

At about the beggining of the second week the rumours started about why we were actually going to the new world. Some said that we would be fattened up and eaten, others replied our skins would be...