UK stored up to 1000 captured African slaves in dungeons awaiting export in what is now Ghana. UK needed constant supply of new slaves for Jamaica sugar death camps 1655-1809 since a third of each new shipment died from overwork within 3 years-BBC

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Map: UK African slave routes to Jamaica, 1655-1809. Source: Slave Voyages Database-Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade-Estimates, via JamaicaGreatHouses.com…UK “merchants” needed 10,000 new African slaves every year for Jamaica sugar death camps. The labor was so hard that a third of each new shipment of slaves died within 3 years, creating a constant demand for new slaves. “Every slave was expected to work-even women, children and the elderly.” (BBC)

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“The triangular trade,” bbc.co.uk, “The slave trade brought vast wealth to British ports and merchants but conditions were horrific. Slaves were moved on the ‘Middle Passage’ of the triangular trade route. Many did not survive.”

(p. 7): “Slave factories on the African coast"

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“At first, European slavers simply went ashore to capture as many Africans as they could.…Later Europeans found it easier to trade with the local African chiefs. In exchange for manufactured European goods such as cloth, alcohol or iron tools, African chiefs would trade slaves captured from rival Kingdoms or tribes.Other Europeans set up permanent trading camps or forts on the West African coast. They lived there themselves, collecting slaves to sell to passing slave ships. These slaver outposts became known as ‘slave factories.’

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[Image: Cape Coast Castle slave factory seized by UK in 1662, captured slaves were held in dungeons, BBC]

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In 1662 the British seized the Cape Coast Castle slave factory in what is now modern day Ghana. Its large underground dungeons could hold up to 1,000 slaves awaiting export.

In 1672 the British Royal African Company established a base at Bance Island in the Sierra Leone River. Bance Island became a major centre for the transatlantic slave trade. It remained in use for nearly 140 years.

Life in the slave factories…

The slaves passed as fit were branded on the chest with a hot iron to stop the African traders from switching bought slaves for unfit ones. The purchased slaves were kept locked up in the slave factory’s cells or compounds until a slave ship arrived to take them across the Atlantic.”…

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