My Cape Coast Castle Essay

I wrote this essay as a (home) school assignment. Visiting the castle and writing about it was pretty amazing. Here it is:

Cape Coast Castle

During the Atlantic Slave Trade, over twelve million slaves were shipped from Africa to North and South America and Europe. That is almost like filling the state of Ohio with all the slaves that made it across the Atlantic over many generations. How did they get that many slaves out of Africa to Europe and the Americas?

Slave castles on the coast of West Africa played an important part in the slave trade. The Cape Coast Castle, one of these castles, held many slaves during the trade. The Cape Coast Castle was not originally a castle to begin with. It was a fort constructed by the Swedes in 1653. It was built on a big rock right by a fishing village that would become Cape Coast, Ghana. In 1665, the British took over and developed the fort into a castle. This process took over sixty years.

Achibold Dazel was the first merchant governor of the Cape Coast Castle. During 1667-1750 the British further enlarged the castle and made huge profits from the castle’s trading. The most slaves they would have in the castle at a time was about one thousand men and three hundred women. The slave trade ended in the 1850’s, but Ghana was still controlled by the British until July 1^st 1960, when Ghana became a republic.

The Europeans got slaves through war: when the Europeans won they captured living soldiers as prisoners/slaves. They would also kidnap during the night. Sometimes they got slaves through money bribes, for example they would say something like this:  “I will give you this much gold for 15 strong men from your village.”

 When the slaves got to the castle they would put them in dungeons. There were five male dungeons with about 200 men in each. There were two female dungeons with about 150 in each. If a slave tried to escape from the castle and the guards caught him, he would be put in a sealed cell with no food, water or light until he died. With the female slaves, if they refused to be raped, they would put her in a small area for five to seven days with little food and water. When the seven days passed, they would try to rape her again. If she refused again, she would go back in the small area for seven more days.

This past week my mom, my brother and I visited the Cape Coast Castle. Like any person who would go there, I had many negative feelings. I was sad when our tour guide talked about how right above the male dungeon there was a church. Our guide (and probably the men in the dungeon) referred to it as “heaven above hell”. The British would also not let them worship or make noises (unless a guard or someone in charge asked them to speak) while they were in the castle. Another thing that disturbed me was the female raping. “The Door of No Return” also bugged me because the slaves could have met friends at the castle and they might never see them again. I also got mad when our guide told us that because they were right on the coast any dead bodies would be tossed into the ocean so they did not have to deal with the odor.

My visit to the slave castle was quite amazing - and horrible at the same time. I really hope that people will never treat another person like this again.