Istwa Nou

Of all the risings recorded aboard slave ships, close to 63 percent happened while the vessel lay anchored off the African coast taking on more people. Another 13 percent came within the first week after the ship finished buying and turned west. Those two figures cover three quarters of everything on the list. Loading was slow work. A ship might spend months moving along a coast, so hundreds of people sat in irons within sight of their own country while the crew went on trading, and that is the moment at which a rising has somewhere to go. The rest of the record matters just as much. Measured week by week rather than in raw totals, the rate of rebellion held roughly level for the entire period captives were on board, at anchor and in mid ocean alike. There was no stage of the voyage at which the crew could stop watching, and no stage at which the people below stopped looking for a way out.