Slave factories on the African coast
At first, European slavers simply went ashore to capture as many Africans as they could. Later, Europeans found it easier to trade with the local African leaders. In exchange for manufactured European goods such as cloth, alcohol or iron tools, African chiefs would trade enslaved people captured from rival kingdoms or tribes.
Other Europeans set up permanent trading camps or forts on the West African coast. They lived there themselves, collecting enslaved people to sell to passing slave ships. These slaver outposts became known as slave factories.
In 1662 the British seized the Cape Coast Castle slave factory in what is now modern day Ghana. Its large underground dungeons could hold up to 1000 enslaved people awaiting export.
In 1672 the British Royal African Company established a base at Bance Island in the Sierra Leone River. Bance Island became a major centre for the transatlantic slave trade. It remained in use for nearly 140 years.
Life in the slave factories
People who had been captured were often brought to the slave factories by local African chiefs or rulers. There they were examined by a surgeon and those who were judged fit were bought by the factory鈥檚 owning company. They were branded on the chest with a hot iron. This was intended to stop the African traders from switching healthy enslaved people who had been bought for unfit ones. They were locked up in the slave factory鈥檚 cells or compounds until a slave ship arrived.