A German Barber-Surgeon in the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Seventeenth-Century Journal of Johann Peter Oettinger by Johann Peter Oettinger

Author:Johann Peter Oettinger [Oettinger, Johann Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS015000 History / Europe / Great Britain, social history, history
ISBN: 9780813944456
Google: Cod4zQEACAAJ
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:10:53.618522+00:00

Description of the Voyage from Fida to São Tomé

On the 5th of April we raised our <89> anchor and set sail with our snow and an English brigantine;160 the wind SW.

On the 6th of the same month fine weather with little wind; ran toward ESE; in the afternoon S to W. Five Moors who died were thrown into the sea.

From the 7th to the 10th of April we had all sorts of variable wind; many [on board] sick with filthy sores; some dead Moors and a sailor were buried at sea. We came through many tempests and thunderstorms and along the way [we saw] the island of Ferdinando [Fernando Po] (which is very tall).161 A Mooress kills her small child and throws it into the sea.

On the 19th of April we were still below land. The cook’s Moors, who helped him serve, reported about the old rascal who had at <90> Grossfriedrichsburg offered so many pounds of gold as his ransom. This [man] had through his friendly words progressed so far, that his shackled feet were freed from the irons and [they] made him a bomba.162 There are ten or twelve of these on the ship, who punish the other Moors and report when one is ill or a quarrel arises. He had brought these other bombas onto his side—but not all of them—and conferred with them. They planned that at night or in the morning, when the Christians slept or were at prayers, they would take the cannon balls and hurl them, killing the Christians. After that they wanted to land the ship and set themselves free. <91> The Herr Commander, first mate, factor, the helmsmen, and the officers met in the Herr Commander’s cabin and ordered all the soldiers to have their rifles ready if a revolt should occur. The old fellow [i.e., the suspected leader] was brought, questioned, and then confessed along with two more bombas who had also planned it. A council of war was held, and the old caboceer received his sentence in the following way: because he was the instigator, a rope was immediately bound around his body under his arms. With this he was hoisted up and hung from the yardarm, i.e., the outermost part of the spar. And as he hung at the height of a house between sky and the water, six soldiers were ordered to open fire on him. <92> But all missed; the old fellow imagined that it was done deliberately [i.e., that the shots were intended to miss him], just to scare him. And so he begged anew for mercy very graciously until our steward or purser shot right through the thick part of the thigh so blood ran out from the back and the front; then he got seven or eight more bullets, with which he gave up the ghost and was thrown into the sea. This all the other Moors had to watch. They then clapped their hands [to say] it was rightly done. But everyone

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