An example of this is the Zong massacre. In this massacre, a lot of the slaves died from illness. As a result of this, the shipmen and slave owners began to throw people overboard and into the sea to try and make sure as many people as possible survived. However, the problem was they weren’t just throwing away the dead people, but the people alive as well, and when news of this spread to England it was the start of the turning point against slavery. To add to this, many diseases such as dysentery and typhoid began to spread due the the smell of excretion and sea sickness from the slaves due to there being no toilets. This is backed up as many people who were at the coast when these slave ships arrived stated that you could smell a slave ship before you could see it. Therefore, the Middle Passage was the cruellest part of the slave trade due to it being described as a state of limbo (a state between life and death) by Oloudah Equiano as well as how during the abolition of slavery the transport of people in the Middle Passage was the first thing that was made …show more content…
In addition, in places such as the salt ponds in the Turks and Caicos, many slaves would get blisters and boils from being in the salt ponds all day long which then were not treated correctly which meant that they became infected which led to many of the slaves dying. Finally, in the experiences of Oloudah Equiano he states that he once said a fellow slave was beaten until many of his bones were broken by his masters due to him letting a pot boil over, showing the brutal reality of working on a plantation. In addition to the cruel living conditions in places such as Antigua and Barbuda, it only became illegal to kill a slave in 1723, over 100 years after slavery had begun. In conclusion, life on the plantations was extremely cruel due to the high likelihood of a slow painful death as well as the immense pain from injuries obtained in the plantations and the beating received by the slaves. In conclusion, the worst part of the slave trade was the Middle