By: Jake Robinson

In my eyes, this piece of art stood out more than any other work I have seen. In this picture, you can clearly see white slave owners beating African slaves, and even throwing one of them over the side of the ship. This reminded me of the in-class presentation on “The Zong” slave ship because this picture not only depicts what events occurred on one slave ship, but on most if not all of them. As you can see, the African slaves are being beaten by white slave owners with whips. Other African slaves who are not being beaten are on the ground, trembling in fear. I found this picture to be interesting and highly informative, because this picture shows the absolute horror of what life was like on a slave ship. If you look at this picture, you can see that these African slaves are not on the lower decks of the slave ship, so one can assume that they will be thrown overboard. The life on the slave ship was most definitely a harsh one, and we can only imagine the terror of watching someone close to us being murdered. Although we cannot see it, the worst part about these slave ships was the lower levels. In these lower decks, many African slaves were chained together with little food and water, and no restrooms. Many died down there due to starvation, and diseases. I feel that this picture, although it does not show horrors of the lower levels of the slave ship, does a very good job of depicting what actually occurred on the slave ships in the triangle trade.