Remembering Our Ancestors

Remembering Our Ancestors. African Presence and the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage, part of a larger trade route known as the Triangular Trade, is the route which was used in the trafficking of captive Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas., From the 16th to the 19th centuries, approximately 12 million African people were trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean and sold into slavery at various ports throughout the Americas. Between 1700 and 1808, the most active years of the Transatlantic Human Trade, roughly 40% of these African people were trafficked in British and American ships., Captive Africans were forced into the holds of ships, where they would remain until they reached their intended ports. Without space to sit up or move around, the captive people were forced to lie in their own waste, and the waste of others, for the duration of the roughly 80-day journey to the Americas., Approximately 2.5 million children, women, and men died on the journey of the Middle Passage as a result of the unsanitary conditions, the lack of sufficient food and water, and acts of physical, emotional, and psychological torture infliction upon them by the captains and crews. The largest forced migration in human history, the United States has yet to recognize the Transatlantic Human Trade as a crime against humanity., Portsmouth, North Carolina, was involved in the Transatlantic Human Trade. Documentation shows at least 258 captive Africans disembarked at Ocracoke Inlet/Portsmouth, in 1759. In addition, at least 343 more passed through the inlet and were sold into slavery at nearby towns such as Bath, Edenton, and New Bern., In 1759, the Hannah left Sierra Leone, headed for Charleston, South Carolina. While at sea, the ship ran into bad weather, and the voyage was delayed. The crew brought the vessel into Ocracoke Inlet for provisions, and while there, 258 of the captive Africans on board disembarked at Portsmouth Village., Enslaved people piloted these waters and lightered ships coming into and out of Ocracoke Inlet. It was their unpaid labor that made this place a once thriving maritime trade center. Because the island and inlet were heavily dependent on enslaved people and their unpaid labor, it was only after emancipation that the island and the maritime trade industry began to decline., Over the centuries, these men and women, and their descendants, built unimaginable wealth in this country, and made possible the agricultural and maritime commercial development of the region; with special emphasis on the naval stores, turpentine, whaling, and fishing industries.