Short plain summary (Main idea):
Captain Thomas Phillips records that on the 1693 voyage of the Hannibal from São Tomé to Barbados many people died — he reports 320 enslaved Africans and 14 crew — mostly from severe diarrhea (which he calls "the white flux") and smallpox. He explains how these deaths damaged the voyage financially for the Royal African Company and the ship's owners. He also describes the sickness, the poor smells and overcrowded conditions, and his own efforts to care for the sick.
Source analysis — Point of view, purpose, audience, and historical situation (why this matters):
- Point of view: Written by a white English ship captain and agent of the Royal African Company. He writes from the perspective of a businessman worried about profit and the health of his crew and cargo.
- Purpose: To record the voyage and losses, explain causes of death, and justify or explain financial loss to company owners and others involved in the trade.
- Audience: Company officials, ship owners, and other merchants. It is not written for the enslaved people, and the language treats them as property or cargo.
- Historical situation: 1693, during the transatlantic slave trade. The Royal African Company organized and profited from transporting enslaved Africans to Caribbean colonies. Disease, overcrowding, and long sea journeys made the Middle Passage deadly.
How you could use this document in an argument about the Middle Passage:
- To support the claim that the Middle Passage caused high mortality: Phillips gives concrete numbers (320 enslaved deaths, 14 crew), showing that many people died on some voyages.
- To show the role of disease and poor conditions: He blames violent diarrhea and smallpox and describes the ship as dirty and smelly, which supports arguments that illness and overcrowding were major causes of deaths.
- To show economic motives and consequences: He explains the financial loss per dead enslaved person, showing how the trade treated humans as cargo and how profit concerns shaped how voyages were run.
- To show how contemporaries explained or misunderstood disease: His medical explanations reflect 17th-century knowledge and can be used to show limits of contemporary medical understanding.
Limitations — what this source does NOT tell us or might get wrong:
- Bias: Phillips writes as a slaver and businessman. He uses dehumanizing language and does not give the enslaved people their own voices or perspectives.
- Partial view: He focuses on economic loss and crew experience. He understates or ignores the physical and psychological violence of captivity, forced labor, and abuse that enslaved people experienced.
- Medical errors: Some claims (for example, that smallpox never infected white men aboard) reflect misunderstanding or selective observation, so medical details should be checked against other evidence.
- Possible under- or over-counting: While ship logs and captain's journals often list numbers, they can contain mistakes or motivated misreporting; use with other records for accuracy.
Overall evaluation — how well does this account describe the Middle Passage?
It is a valuable primary source showing that sickness, high death rates, and inhumane conditions were real and had economic consequences. It accurately documents that disease and overcrowding made voyages dangerous. However, because it is written by a slave trader, it fails to fully describe the human experience of the enslaved, neglects violence and resistance, and reflects contemporary misunderstandings. To accurately describe the Middle Passage, historians combine documents like this with slave narratives, legal records, ship logs, archaeological evidence, and African and Caribbean sources to get a fuller, more balanced picture.
Simple conclusion: Use Phillips' journal to show that the Middle Passage was deadly, disease-ridden, and treated people as cargo, but remember it is only one viewpoint. It is strong evidence for mortality and economic motives, weaker for understanding the lived experience and voices of the enslaved.