Charts the history of slave ships, their crews, and their enslaved passengers, documenting such stories as those of a young kidnapped African whose slavery is witnessed firsthand by a horrified priest from a neighboring tribe responsible for the slave's capture.
For more than three centuries, slave ships carried millions of people from the coasts of Africa to the New World. Here, award-winning historian Rediker creates a detailed history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their decks.
"Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. --Book jacket
This unsparing account of the eighteenth-century maritime world reconstructs the often brutal social and cultural milieu of Anglo-American seafaring and piracy, following sailors and their ships from their trade routes into rowdy waterfront ports. -- Publisher description.
The common seaman and the pirate in the age of sail are romantic historical figures who occupy a special place in the popular culture of the modern age. And yet in many ways, these daring men remain little known to us. Like most other poor working people of the past, they left f…