Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano

In 1745, Olaudah Equiano was born in a small village called “Eboe,” in Nigeria. His father was one of the chiefs in the village. At age eleven Equiano and his sister were kidnapped by two men and a woman never to see his home or parents again. After being kidnapped he was dragged across parts of Africa until he arrived at the coast where he was loaded onto a slave ship. While crossing the Atlantic to Barbados on the slave ship he and the other victims went through horrific traumatizes you could hardly imagine. Equiano explained about the horrors and torture slaves faced not only on the slave ship but also on the plantations and the other aspects of a slave's life. Equiano experienced almost all parts of a slave's existence. He was a slave throughout parts of Africa, England, and the New World. Equiano was bought and sold several times. Religion played a huge part in Equiano's life and I think that it helped him get through some really hard times. He was bought by a British Naval officer and served in the British Navy during the Seven Years' War; he was then sold to Robert King where he began trading goods between islands and eventually made enough money to buy his freedom. Equiano explained the happiness he felt when he became a free man. The rest of his life was devoted to helping slaves and to aid the cause of abolishing slavery (Kennerly, 1971).

In 1756 Olaudah Equino was kidnapped and taken to a slave ship which is when his nightmare and battle with slavery began. Equiano and the others were chained together and treated extremely bad. I've never heard of animals being kept in a worse place than the slaves aboard the ship. Below decks on the ship is where the real horrors took place. There were hundreds of slaves packed into a very small place. There was no room for a person to turn over and barely enough room to sit up. There was no light below decks, just a suffocating darkness. With all the people in such a small place and the humidity, the temperature below decks was unbearable. There was no fresh air, nothing but the nasty smell of the latrines and peoples body odour. The air became unfit to breathe and almost suffocated them as Equiano explains it. There were children that would fall into the latrines and almost drowned. Many slaves would get sick and die in this terrible place and never make it to Barbados. Shrieks of women and the groans of the dying made the whole scene a nightmare. This caused some slaves to jump off the ship and drown themselves. The first time he was flogged was on the ship when he refused to eat. Two white men tied his feet. One white man held his hands while the other flogged or whipped him. Prisoners were severely cut and flogged for hours for trying to jump off the ...