The Slave Ship: A Human History gives accounts of human suffering and terror underwent by African captives and seamen as they sailed on slave ships during the eighteenth century. Rediker incorporates naval records, chronicles, and references to recreate and explicate in detail the account of the British slave ships during the slave trade. Through the records on the Middle Passage, the book offers a significant point of view in the description of the realities to express the extent of cruelty inflicted upon African captives. Moreover, uses the slave ship as an emblem of ruthless pursuits of thoughtless greediness. The horrors of the slave ships were realities that were obscured from the general public and only through first-hand depictions can the contradictions of the slave trade be exposed.
The human dramas reveal the multi-layered and harsh interactions between the ship captains, the seamen, and the captives. Through the captain-sailor dramas, Rediker portrays sailors also as victims of the floating dungeon as they were a part of a hierarchical and classist construct that existed on the ships. Rediker illuminates that the Western hemisphere depended greatly on the slave trade in acquiring its vast wealth and political power. The book illustrates inexcusable violence and horror on ships during slavery that were central to the cultivation of modern capitalism. The harsh and unsettling accounts of slavery are to illustrate the magnitude of human cruelty in the pursuit of capitalistic endeavors and to extend compassion to the victims of the ordeals.
