Why did many slaves die during the journey on the slave ship?
Slaves died on slave ships for many reasons. First, these people were packed into a ship with hardly any room between them. In such conditions, bacteria and germs spread rapidly and many died from illness passed from person to person. Second, on the slave ships, slaves were denied many common necessities. They were not regularily fed or given fresh water on the boat. Those who died sometimes weren’t discarded from the ship for days so a rotting carcass was among the living people, spreading disease even quicker. For those who did get sick, there was no doctor or medication to treat them. the people taking them over (French, American, european…I don’t know which country you mean) have different types of illnesses the slaves were never exposed to, making it much more dangerous as their bodies had no defense toward it.
