Istwa Nou

Crossings to mainland North America ran longer than crossings to the islands, and more people died aboard them. Two things made them long. Vessels often stopped at ports in the eastern Caribbean to take on water and provisions, and the passage between the southern and northern Atlantic current systems was awkward to sail. Length alone fails to account for the deaths. The condition of the captives when they were first brought aboard predicts survival better than the number of days at sea. Some long voyages out of the Gold Coast recorded lower mortality than much shorter ones from elsewhere. What that measures is what happened before the ship, in the marches to the coast and the weeks or months of confinement in barracoons waiting for a buyer. The Atlantic crossing has become the whole image of the trade because it can be counted from ships' papers. The dying began earlier, inland, where nobody kept a ledger.