The Slave Ship

[Eva Elisabeth]

For the first time since I saw the Lincoln movie I went to the movies yesterday to watch this movie (as I like his paintings):
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9yuanTQdAGc
Well, it was a bit long, Turner was portrayed as a quite unsavory person (I wonder if he was indeed), and his appearance didn't resemble his self-portrait:
   
...but still the movie was very interesting - and very "Victorian" (setting, costumes, etc.). One remarkable "aside" scene: Turner visited a daguerrotypist to have his first likeness taken- and sensed this new invention as the downfall of his art.

One main topic in the movie was one of his paintings: "The Slave Ship", originally entitled "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on". I found it and it's "history" so fascinating that I think it's worth a post, also as it is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (while most of Turner's works are kept and exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London).
   
J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship (1840). Oil on canvas. 90.8 × 122.6 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A "Wiki summary":
"'The Slave Ship', originally entitled 'Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on' depicts a ship, visible in the background, sailing through a tumultuous sea of churning water and leaving scattered human bodies floating in its wake. Their dark skin and chained hands and feet indicate that they are slaves, thrown overboard from the ship. Looking even more carefully, one can see fish and sea monsters swimming in the water, possibly preparing to eat the slaves, and sea gulls circling overhead above the chaos.

J.M.W. Turner was inspired to paint "The Slave Ship" in 1840 after reading "The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade" by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Although slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire since 1833, Turner and many other abolitionists believed that slavery should be outlawed around the world. Turner thus exhibited his painting during the anti-slavery conference, intending for Prince Albert, who was speaking at the event, to see it and be moved to increase British anti-slavery efforts. Placed next to the painting were lines from Turner's own untitled poem, written in 1812:

'Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying – ne'er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?'

The painting might be viewed as an allegory against the exploitation of slaves and other human labour in favour of machines and economic advancement, represented by the coming storm engulfing the cruel captain, while the storm might remind of nature's dominance over man.

Mark Twain said, in A Tramp Abroad, Volume 1, Chapter XXIV: 'What a red rag is to a bull, Turner's 'Slave Ship' was to me, before I studied art. Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when I was ignorant. His cultivation enables him—and me, now—to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him—and me, now—to the floating of iron cable-chains and other unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud—I mean the water. The most of the picture is a manifest impossibility—that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. In my then uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye. Mr. Ruskin would have said: This person is an @$$. That is what I would say, now.'

The art critic John Ruskin, who was the first owner of The Slave Ship [and one character in the movie and in the trailer], wrote, 'If I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single work, I should choose this.'"

Has anyone here seen this painting in Boston? (Would love to!)

[HerbS]

Yes,I saw it! Slave ships were brutal.The slaves were packed in like sardines on wooden boards[slivers galore].Survival rate of less than 50%.

[Wild Bill]

While not arguing with the description of slaves picked aboard ships, and avoiding abolitionist propaganda, the death rate in slaves transported across the Atlantic (the so-called Middle Passage) was much less than 50%. according to Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Wisconsin, 1969), 275ff., generally considered a good voice on the problem of slave mortality, death rate from all causes including disease averaged about 22% for the longest sailing distance of over 60 days and under 20% for lesser routes.

A rate of 50% was considered exceptional under special circumstances. The rate of survival was really deadly after the slaves were landed in the new world, and very much on a par with whites from Europe, whether they came free or indentured. The survival rate depended on length of journey, condition upon capture and sale, disease present in the slaves' village environment, and chance of epidemic during the voyage to the new world (which could prove catastrophic for any single ship).

Of course conditions improved over the years and the worst catastrophe for a slaver was to be overhauled by a warship. The whole cargo could be hooked onto cannon balls and dropped overboard in that eventuality. The History Channel has a show that runs every once in a while on the USS Constellation, the US's contribution to stopping the Atlantic slave trade before the Civil War. But no one was hanged for slave transport on the high seas in the US until 1862. I believe he was Cpt Nathan Gordon.

Remember that the trade was a business for profit, cruel as it was. The goal was for the slave cargo to survive in as great a number as possible, not to kill them.

[brtmchl]

Great post Eva. While reading this my mind couldn't help conjuring up the brutal slave ship scenes from the movie Amistad.

[HerbS]

My sources are from"Before the Mayflower".

[L Verge]

The field of black history was really coming into its own while I was teaching back in the 60s and 70s, and I was fortunate enough to take several good courses on the subject. I remember being amazed at much the same statistics that Bill quoted as to the survival rate en passage vs. the toll that "seasoning" cost in the various islands before they finally reached the U.S. I had expected the shipboard deaths to be much higher.

[HerbS]

I took a course in 1969 at Cornell on African American History.I never got to see the Moon Landing,because that was white history.Shock history at it's beast.

[Wild Bill]

Ok, no offense to anyone.

I took a summer course Afro American History and Culture, a post graduate course sponsored and funded by the Federal Government and taught by some fine black professors at Kentucky State College, then the black twin to the University of Kentucky (all Southern states commonly had such clones under the doctrine of separate but equal). I also taught the topic of Slavery in the Old South for 5 years at a college in Oklahoma, which began with an extensive look at domestic and international slave trade. BTW, WEB DuBois, the first black history PhD at Harvard, wrote his dissertation on the Suppression of the African Slave Trade--well worth reading.

I am not challenging anyone's credentials, but pointing out that we have the same basic backgrounds at different institutions. I would trust Curtin over Before the Mayflower, but that is my personal analysis. But I also trust most of what Lerone Bennett, Jr, says about Lincoln and race in Forced into Glory, despite Burlingame calling him a "black radical" in his critique, which was printed in the Courier some years back, I believe.

Personally, I doubt Burlingame would know a real black radical were he to see one. It is a gut feeling of living in the South and understanding what 19th century whites thought about blacks and slavery the South brought on by 50 years of study. But everyone is entitled to their feelings and analysis of what sources say and why, as am I.

[HerbS]

Wild Bill-Thanks for your info and tremendous opinion.-Herb

[Eva Elisabeth]

Mike - thanks, I'm glad this was worth posting then.

I agree with Herb, Bill. Re: "...death rate from all causes including disease averaged about 22% for the longest sailing distance of over 60 days and under 20% for lesser routes."
I assume diseases also occasionally affected regular passengers on long sailing passages. Are there any figures about death rates on such trips in general?

As for "insurance payments could be collected" - did the slaveholders insure their slaves? (Maybe the strongest men and working forces?)

[HerbS]

The save ship was tracked by throwing hot tar on sharks from Africa to the colonies,the sharks would follow the ship for food.The slaves were divided by tribe and the chiefs weren't with the tribe[no communication-for fear of rebellion].Tribes were paid$$to catch each other[with nets-no marks or harm of goods].They were brought up on deck every 2days for fresh air and to be washed off].The entire trip was 90 days.So,it would not suprise me that the slaveholders would insure thier cargo.The slaves were then sold at auction on the"block"for big$$ then.Families were quite often divided as they were sold.The best slaves sold for $5000.00 at times.Please read Stamp's"Pecular Institution" for more insght.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks for the info, Herb!

[Wild Bill]

I have read Stampp's book, Eva. Stampp's book was written in 1956 as assault of Brown v. Bd. of Educ. and as part of the coming Civil Rights movement and especially to counter the influence of UB Phillips' American Negro Slavery and his Life and Labor in the Old South, deemed racist by our modern standards. Stamp posited that blacks were nothing more than whites with a different color skin.

I suggest that if you wish to really understand American (US) Slavery read Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll. It sees blacks as having a different culture from whites, none of which denotes either race as being superior or inferior, just different. BTW, Genovese has an excellent essay in the paperback version on Stampp and Phillips and asserts that Philips, for all his racism, is a more accurate account.

Genovese was a Marxist when he wrote and lived in exile in Canada during the Viet Nam War. Then he moved to South Carolina and became a Conservative. Stampp taught at U Cal Berkley his whole career. It gets so that you cannot trust anyone, anymore! Especially me, from Louisiana St U.

[HerbS]

"Roll Jordan Roll"is a great read! I trust you Wild Bill.It is always fun to hear your point of view.

---

Eva-Thank you!

[Eva Elisabeth]

(11-12-2014 07:56 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  It sees blacks as having a different culture from whites, none of which denotes either race as being superior or inferior, just different.

I consider this a very important point in general when whatever different ethnic etc. groups get involved in conflicts. Thanks for the recommendation!