Editing Middle Passage (section)

===Sailors and crew===
While the owners and captains of slave ships could expect vast profits, the ordinary sailors were often inadequately paid and subject to brutal discipline. Sailors often had to live and sleep without shelter on the open deck for the entirety of the Atlantic voyage as the entire space below deck was occupied by enslaved people.<ref name="Hochschild114">{{Cite book |title=Bury the Chains: Prophets, Slaves, and Rebels in the First Human Rights Crusade |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |date=2005 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0618104697 |page=[https://archive.org/details/burychainsprophe00hoch/page/114 114] |url=https://archive.org/details/burychainsprophe00hoch/page/114 }}</ref>

A crew mortality rate of around 20% was expected during a voyage, with sailors dying as a result of disease (specifically [[malaria]] and [[yellow fever]]), flogging or slave uprisings.<ref name="Hochschild114" /><ref name="Edwards(Captain.)2007">{{cite book|author1=Bernard Edwards|author2=Bernard Edwards (Captain.)|title=Royal Navy Versus the Slave Traders: Enforcing Abolition at Sea 1808–1898|year=2007|publisher=Pen & Sword Books|isbn=978-1-84415-633-7|pages=26–27}}</ref> A high crew mortality rate on the return voyage was in the captain's interests as it reduced the number of sailors who had to be paid on reaching the home port.<ref name="Hochschild94">{{Cite book |title=Bury the Chains: Prophets, Slaves, and Rebels in the First Human Rights Crusade |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |date=2005 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0618104697 |page=[https://archive.org/details/burychainsprophe00hoch/page/94 94] |url=https://archive.org/details/burychainsprophe00hoch/page/94 }}</ref> Crew members who survived were frequently cheated out of their wages on their return.<ref name="Hochschild114" />

The sailors were often employed through coercion as they generally knew about and hated the slave trade. In port towns, recruiters and tavern owners would induce sailors to become very drunk (and indebted) and then offer to relieve their debt if they signed contracts with slave ships. If they did not, they would be imprisoned. Sailors in prison had a hard time getting jobs outside of the slave ship industry since most other maritime industries would not hire "jail-birds", so they were forced to go to the slave ships anyway.<ref name="Rediker2007">{{cite book|author=Marcus Rediker|title=The Slave Ship: A Human History|year=2007|publisher=Penguin Publishing Group|isbn=978-1-4406-2084-3|pages=138}}</ref>