Scramble (slave auction)

" which was used to hold slaves before the auction. The scramble was first done as a form of slave auctioning in the West Indies, during the late 18th century. The scramble would take place on a ship, in a pen, or an enclosed area. The reason captains would sell their captives in a form of an enclosed area was to prevent a revolt against the ship crew and/or to quickly sell off the enslaved. Once enslaved people were docked and brought onto land they would be herded into the designated area, surrounded by eager buyers who were often pushing and shoving to position themselves to the front of the pen's doors. The scramble was started by signal, either a gunshot or a drum beat, and once this was heard, the buyers swarmed into the pen to collect as many individuals as they could. During the scramble, fights often broke out among the buyers. Olaudah Equiano, an African captive who was able to gain freedom, describes the scramble as starting from a signal, the beat of a drum, and then the buyers rushed into the yard, where Equiano and the other enslaved people were kept, to grab the enslaved peoples they liked best. Anna Maria Falconbridge and Alexander Falconbridge were a married couple from London who lived during the 18th century. Anna Maria was one of the first European women to publish an eyewitness account of her experiences in West Africa with her husband, a previous surgeon on a slave ship who later became an abolitionist. Anna Maria's writing of the two voyages were used in the campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. She defended the slave trade in her own narrative called the Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during the Years 1791–1792–1793. Specifically relating to the type of slave auction called the scramble, Christopher Fyfe, a Scottish historian who specializes in West African history, gives a description of it from Anna Maria Falconbridge's perspective. The scrambles witnessed were in Jamaica, one in Kingston, and the other in Port Maria. For the scramble in Kingston, the slaves were all collected upon the main deck and quarterdeck of the ship, where it was darkened (in order to prevent potential buyers from clearly seeing the slaves). Once the signal was given for the scramble to commence, the buyers rushed in. Slaves were so terrified that almost thirty of them jumped ship. The scramble in Port Maria was conducted similarly to the one in Kingston. Only this time, the situation of the slaves was more described. Fyfe describes the women as being terrified, clinging to one another in protection, and in great agony. The buyers are described as savages because of the brutal way they rushed on the slaves to grab and eventually purchase them. == Preparation ==

Commonalities of prepping the enslaved The enslaved were "prepared" for the auction by, "experts" (loose translation to connoisseurs), surgeons, or the common crewmen. Before the enslaved were examined as individuals, the crewmen would strip them down, and herd them together in a small open space so the surgeons could examine their health and youthfulness. The captains, surgeons, or crew members would wash the enslaved men, women, and children, usually with sea water, and shave the adults to get rid of grey hair in hopes they would look younger. The major problem crewmen had to tackle was to create the illusion that the enslaved peoples were healthy. One way crewmen were able to do this was to give enslaved people rum so their eyes would seem alive as well as slathering them in oil or animal fat to accentuate their muscles. There are even reports of the "experts" and crewmen fixing up the enslaved wounds with gunpowder and/or iron rust, and their anuses would be closed to stop leakage with a makeshift cork. Palm oil, aside from gunpowder or iron rust, was also rubbed on the captives to cover up their bruises, sores, and cuts. buyers would examine the enslaved people by opening their mouths to see their teeth, touching their arms and legs to feel how muscular they were, making them walk to see any "lameness", and making them bend in a variety of ways so buyers could see any wounds that were possibly masked by oil, animal fat, iron rust, etc. The process of seasoning is seen as a way to break the African captives by taking away their identity, so they would be less likely to revolt and get their work done on or off the plantation. In order for the enslaved people to be conditioned correctly traders and merchants would "Creolize" (the act of changing the attitudes of an African-born captive into an American-born bondsperson) by shaving off all of their hair, washing them, oil them down, and then feed them very little. The last part of "Creolizing" an African captive dealt with sending enslaved peoples to the West Indies before being sold in the American South so they knew what it was like to work on plantations. Other forms of seasoning included branding the enslaved with the mark of their new owner, renaming the enslaved in order to strip them from their African identity, and torturing them. During these processes women in particular were subjected to many harsh and unwanted sexual acts that were advanced by the white merchants, and sometimes captive African men. == Women's experiences ==

The accounts of enslaved peoples are already difficult to find within historical research and recordings. The stories of women are even more difficult to account for in terms of their point of view within a scramble sale. We must rely on the fact that slaves were selected upon the surface level set of appearance that buyers were presented and the accounts primarily of those buyers. As well as the accounts of others, such as John Josselyn, a traveller that reported what he saw on his voyages. When Josselyn headed to New England he was provided lodging at Samuel Maverick's home. Maverick was one of the first slave owners in Massachusetts and by 1638 he owned at least three slaves, two of which were non-English speaking women. Both of these enslaved women are thought of being bought in a scramble, being sold for a lesser amount than the young men. One young girl, sixteen to seventeen years of age, was forced to show off her limbs and teeth by smiling to prospective buyers. While smiling one interested buyer moved her lips around so he could look at every crevasse up close. Female slaves were used as wet nurses for their white slave owners. They were also kept to produce more slaves resulting in cheap labor and generational servitude. In Stephanie Jones-Rogers' book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South mentions many of these enslaved women's experiences, such as those of Mary Kincheon Edwards. Edwards' only job while she was enslaved was to nurse the white children, strongly suggesting that she and many other women who performed this task were constantly conceiving. == First-hand accounts of scramble auctions ==

In Olaudah Equiano's book The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he mentions his experiences while being prepped for a scramble slave auction. While still on board, Equiano states that they were separated into different parcels, men and women, where they were "examined" by having to jump. The traveler recalls that the captive was forced to strip naked so buyers could see if there were any signs of damage from cuts, wounds, and/or bruising, and disease; he states that there was not any part of the captive's body that was untouched. Before going on land to the sale site Tailyour would separate his captives into two categories: "prime" and "refuse"; prime slaves were young men and women, ranging in the ages from the late teens to thirty, were in good health, and free of injuries, wounds, and sickness while "refuse" slaves were either very old or very young, sick, and/or covered with wounds. Alexander Falconbridge, husband of Anna Maria Falconbridge, who were both surgeons for five different voyages, recounts the scramble slave auction in his book, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. He states that buyers would pay a fixed price for the captives that was negotiated among the ship's captains and the purchasers. Falconbridge relates that at the agreed start hour the doors of the yard where the captives were held were thrown open and the buyers instantly ran in to gather enslaved people. Some buyers came prepared by bringing handkerchiefs or ropes so they could tie the slaves together without losing them while grabbing others. Falconbridge calls the buyers "brutes" who had no form of sympathy for the captives; because of this, he recalls some of the enslaved being so frightened that they would jump over the walls to escape. On the ship , Falconbridge records the selling of 503 captives in two days in December 1784 at Port Maria, Jamaica. == Notes ==