These distressing scenes I
found myself obliged frequently to witness, for I was no less than
nineteen times occupied in making these hateful rounds; and I can say
from my own experience, and all the information I could collect from
Thompson and others, that no such practices were in use to obtain seamen
for other trades.
The treatment of the seamen employed in the Slave Trade had so deeply
interested me, and now the manner of procuring them, that I was
determined to make myself acquainted with their whole history; for I
found by report that they were not only personally ill-treated, as I
have already painfully described, but that they were robbed by artifice
of those wages, which had been held up to them as so superior in this
service. All persons were obliged to sign articles that, in case they
should die or be discharged during the voyage, the wages then due to
them should be paid in the currency where the vessel carried her slaves,
and that half of the wages due to them on their arrival there should be
paid in the same manner, and that they were never permitted to read over
the articles they had signed. By means of this iniquitous practice the
wages in the Slave Trade, though nominally higher in order to induce
seamen to engage in it, were actually lower than in other trades.
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