The Transatlantic Trade included many continents. There was money, trade goods and other commodities associated with this trade route. But the main destinations of the route were the Americas and Africa. "The Middle Passage". It's major product of trade, African lives. " The Slave Trade". Lives stolen, traded and sold by Africans, as well as Europeans and anyone else brave enough to journey to the dark continent.
It is estimated that as many as twenty million Africans made it to be tortured in the "New World". Which in fact was already populated when discovered, but that's another story. Twenty million. Which can only mean that millions more were lost to disease, starvation and murder on the middle passage.

Uprooted and chained like animals. Packed into the bowels of filthy ships for weeks at a time. The horror that they must have experienced. Not knowing that even worse horrors awaited them.

The crew of the British ship Zong, threw one hundred thirty two souls overboard, maybe more. In an attempt to guarantee the ship's owner could collect on their insurance.

There were mutinies and escapes but even those endeavors ended with the death or displacement of many thousands of souls. It is a fact that once ensnared in the slave trade, the life of the slave, was doomed to a tragic outcome.

Only the resilient nature of the slaves allowed them, for the most part, to survive all that they were to face. I like to think that because of that resilience, the people in my family are as resourceful as we are. For generations my family has overcome all types of hardships and thrived. If it were not for the middle passage we may not have become who we are.

Titled Surviving In Spite©
    By EdwinBrown9®™
               7/15/15

Dedicated to every life effected by the slave trade. The past is not always pretty.