Cape Coast Castle

Tony and I set off for a weekend trip. We left early in the morning on Friday to make the most of our day. We arrived at Cape Coast around 9AM and looked for the castle, which wasn't hard to find. We walked towards the coast and stumbled upon the fish market.

Fishermen at Cape Coast

All of the fishing boats at Cape Coast

Then we looked to our right, and there it was!

Cape Coast Castle

The entrance

Cape Coast Castle was built for the trade of timber and gold but eventually became one of the biggest and most well-known sites of exportation in the transatlantic slave trade. It was the main slave trading fort used when Ghana was still a British colony in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. 

Ghana's coastline was termed the "Gold Coast" by the Swedish traders for its mineral resources

The courtyard

The courtyard and canons

First, a tour guide led us through the male slave dungeon.

Entrance to the male slave dungeon

This door takes you down a tunnel system underneath the courtyard where hundreds of thousands of male slaves were kept before they were exported--most of them to the Americas. At any given time, the castle held about 1,000 men who were separated into groups of roughly 200 into five 30-by-15-foot holding cells.

The dungeon chambers

The light at the end of the tunnel

This is the main dungeon. The small trench that you can see in the middle of this room was a sewer line that carried human excrement out to see. They've installed some lights in the room now to illuminate the room for the tour groups that pass through, but when the slaves were held here, the one small opening that you can see in this picture was the sole point of entry for sunlight and fresh air. I looked around the dungeon and noticed what looked like the water marks made so familiar to me after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. The tour guide told us that these marks were not water marks at all, but the mark left by the human feces that built up from over 400 years of men being tortured and subjected to the worst kind of hell in this room. It was about two-and-a-half feet high. That's about where I lost it. The full weight of what the experience of being held in that dungeon must have been like. Hundreds of men pissed, shat, ate, and slept in this room for weeks at a time, waiting for their turn to go. 


The women's dungeon was slightly more "livable." It was smaller, as not as many women as men were exported to the Americas. It was also better lit and ventilated. On any given day, there were about 300 women held here in two chambers. Women often served as domestic servants and on call mistresses for the British soldiers and government officials stationed at the castle. 

Female slave dungeon chambers

I couldn't help but think, "How many women were raped in this room? How many women died in labor here?" The women (and the men) were only let outside once a day. They were led out to the courtyard in shackles, blinded by the sun, and were fed what was often their only meal for the day. Menstruating women were left in the cell to simply bleed where they sat.


Any slave that rebelled was thrown into the condemned cell which held as many as 50 men at a time but was no bigger than some of the walk-in closets I've seen. The men in the condemned cell were deprived of food, water, light, and air, and they were held there until they died.

The condemned cell

Before those that survived these conditions left Cape Coast, all of the men and women passed through "the door of no return"--aptly named as none of the men or women that passed through it were able to live to return back to their homeland.

Placard

The door of no return

Right above the male dungeon was the chapel, where the British worshipped not 30 yards above where enslaved men lay sick, shackled, and starving. On the wall was a plaque with "Psalm 132" inscribed on it.

Sign in the Cape Coast Castle chapel

Psalm 132 tells of the search for a resting place for the ark of the covenant and all of the promises that God made to his people thereby. In it the Lord promises to privilege David and all of his descendants over others. To them alone he will give protection and might and fulfill the needs of their bodies and minds. 


"11. The LORD swore an oath to David, a sure oath he will not revoke: 'One of your own descendants I will place on your throne. 12. If your sons keep my covenant and the statutes I teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne for ever and ever.' 13. For the LORD has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling, saying, 14. 'This is my resting place for ever and ever; here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it. 15. I will bless her with abundant provisions; her poor I will satisfy with food.'"


Could this psalm that tells of a man chosen by "God," "placed on the throne" to be privileged over all the rest and protected and provided for "for ever and ever" be any more appropriate? The repetition of the phrase "for ever and ever" in this psalm echoes the profound sense of powerlessness and defeatism that emanates from the castle's pores. You can see both the sense of worthiness and entitlement and the promise of transgenerational passage of privilege once preserved in the scripture, now codified into law.


Unlike the African slaves, the British were set up quite nicely, especially the governor.

The governor's spacious apartment 

The hallway that wrapped around two sides of the governor's apartment.

The staircase where the slave woman of his choice was taken up to bed with him

I remember standing at the window in the governor's apartment looking out over this beautiful view of the coast and trying to imagine what it must have felt like for the governor to stand there--the wind at his face, the king of the castle. He was the ultimate alpha-male: rich, powerful, free to have any slave woman he chose. I suspect that the source of his pride and masculine sense of efficacy came more from the guns that he stood on, the money he was making, and the view of the ocean with no enemies in sight than the women he had and could have. Ruling over the Africans housed at Cape Coast Castle was probably not a source of pride for him. He slept above them; he slept with them; but it's unlikely he thought about them.

The view from the governor's window