Excerpts from "A  Slave Ship In The South Atlantic" by Robert Walsh (May 24, 1829) taken from Colbert, David. Eyewitness To America. New York: Vintage Books, 1998, 155-159.

Note: Walsh was active in one of the English abolition societies that had a great influence on the issue in America. The Reverend Walsh served aboard one of the ships assigned to intercept the slavers off the African coast. On the morning of May 22, 1829, a suspected slaver was sighted and the naval vessel gave chase. The next day, a favorable wind allowed the interceptor to gain on its quarry and approach close enough to fire two shots across her bow. The slaver heaved to and an armed party from the interceptor scrambled aboard her. We join Reverend Walsh's account as he boards the slave ship:

....Our boat.....was called the Veloz, commanded by Captain Jose Barbosa, bound to Bahia. She was a very broad-decked ship, with a mainmast, schooner-rigged, and behind her foremast was that large formidable gun, which turned on a broad circle of iron, on deck, and which enabled her to act as a pirate, if her slaving speculation had failed. She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males, and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways, between the decks. The space was so low, that they sat between each other's legs, and stowed so close together, that there was no possibility of their lying down, or at all changing their position, by night or day.......

Over the hatchway stood a ferocious looking fellow, with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slavedriver of the ship.....

But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the opens sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89 degrees. The space between decks was divided into two compartments, 3 feet 3 inches high, the size of one was 16 feet by 18, and of the other 40 by 21; into the first were crammed the women and girls; into the second, the men and boys: 226 fellow-creatures were thus thrust into one space 288 feet square; and 336 into another space 800 feet square, giving to the whole an average of 23 inches, and to each of the women not more than 13 inches.....

The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odour so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured as above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck to get air and water. This was opposed by the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would murder them all. The officers, however, persisted and the poor beings were all turned up together.... They came swarming up, like bees from the aperture of a hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from stem to stern; so that it was impossible to imagine where they could have come from, or how they could have been stowed away. On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children...lying nearly in a torpid state....The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death, and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand.....

Some water was brought....They all rushed...toward it,...and struggled...for a drop of this precious liquid.....There is nothing which slaves, in the mid-passage, suffer from so much as want of water...

It was not surprising that they should have endured much sickness and loss of life, in their short passage. They had sailed from the coast of Africa on the 7th of May, and had been out but seventeen days, and they had thrown overboard no less than fifty-five, who had died of dysentery and other complaints, in that space of time, though they had left the coast in good health....

While expressing my horror at what I saw, and exclaiming against the state of this vessel for conveying human beings, I was informed by my friends, who had passed so long a time on the coast of Africa, and visited so many ships, that this was one of the best they had seen. The height between decks was only eighteen inches; so that the unfortunate beings could not turn around, or even on their sides, the elevations being less than the breadth of their shoulders; and her they are usually chained to the decks, by neck and legs.....