James Stout

nor had i the least desire to taste anything i now wished for the last friend death to relieve me but soon to my grief two of the white men offered me eatables and on my refusing to eat one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across i think the windlass and tied my feet while the other flogged me severely i had never experienced anything of this kind before

And although not being used to water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it.

Yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side.

But I could not.

And besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down on the decks, lest we should leap into the water.

And I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so and hourly whipped for not eating.

Now, he is, again, 11 as this is happening to him.

This is about 1756 when he's transported first to the West Indies where he witnesses the auctioning of slaves to plantation owners.

But he's not sold himself because he's really sick.

Like, he's just not worth anything in the eyes of these people because it seems like he's dying.

So the Dutch take him back on board the slave ship and take him to America.

And he gets better enough during that time that he's sold to a Virginia plantation owner.

Yeah.

He gets kind of within this horrible situation one of the better jobs you can get where he's working as a house slave.

So he's able to kind of – he's not laboring in the field.

He's able to recover his strength more effectively, right, because it's less physically nightmarish work.

And he gets better enough, and he just proves to be very intelligent too.

So he's got a lot of value to him, and he's sold again to the captain of a British merchant vessel named Henry Pascal –

it's pascal who gives him his european name gustavus vasa and sometimes you'll see him and he would go by vasa periodically throughout his life as well as uh equiano right but yeah pascal gives him this name and takes him to england and for a while things seem to be going really well he's taught about christianity he makes like a friend with a local boy who's about his age like a white boy um

And they're actually very good friends.