Slave ships deliberately separated women for sexual exploitation

Evidence

John Newton, a slave trader turned abolitionist who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” described this in his memoir: “they are often exposed to the wanton rudeness of white savages.” Another ship’s crew referred to the area where women were held as the “whore hole.” Instances of sexual violation on these voyages are impossible to count definitively. But from ship logs, journals, and testimonies it is evident that they were numerous. On the British vessel African in 1753, William Cooney raped a pregnant woman; she was listed in the log as “number 83,” following a common practice for a kind of deadnaming of captives. He took her “into the room and lay with her brute like in view of the whole quarter deck.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 283

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to The 1619 Project’s broader claims about how foundational slavery normalized violence used on American plantations.