For the African, slavery meant torture, whippings, sexual humiliation and appalling hardship. A few, a tiny minority, fought or ran for their liberty. The remainder rarely had long to wait for their own freedom - an early and often agonising death.

For the slavers themselves, the trade brought its own peculiar kind of death. By dealing in human suffering, by wading thigh-deep in death, their humanity diminished and swiftly died. They lived, but only as corrupt and brutalised shells of men.

The only people who prospered were the slave merchants. They never saw blood on their own hands. They never had to smell the charnel-taint of a loaded slaving-ship. They simply grew fat on the enormous profits of the trade in "Black Ivory".