The bleeding negro was then drawn up, shot in the breast and thrown overboard.

The legs of about one dozen were chopped off this way.
"When the feet fell on the deck they were picked up by the crew and thrown overboard, and sometimes they shot at the body while it still hung, living, and all sorts of sport was made of the business." Forty-six men and one woman were thus done to death: "When the woman was hung up and shot, the ball did not take effect, and she was thrown overboard living, and was seen to struggle some time in the water before she sunk;" and deponent further says, "that after this was over, they brought up and flogged about twenty men and six women.

The flesh of some of them where they were flogged putrified, and came off, in some cases, six or eight inches in diameter, and in places half an inch thick." This was in 1839, a time when Americans were very sure that for civilization, progress, humanity, and the Christian virtues, they were at least on as high a plane as the most exalted peoples of the earth.
Infectious disease was one of the grave perils with which the slavers had to reckon.

The overcrowding of the slaves, the lack of exercise and fresh air, the wretched and insufficient food, all combined to make grave, general sickness an incident of almost every voyage, and actual epidemics not infrequent.

This was a peril that moved even the callous captains and their crews, for scurvy or yellow-jack developing in the hold was apt to sweep the decks clear as well.