ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ghosts and phantasms of the slave ships and the slave plantations of the Americas. It focuses on the idea of the slave ship as ghost ship – specifically the Brookes and problems of their representations and the representations of the dead. The chapter also focuses on the historical metrics of the dead and how the slaves were 'ghosted'. It also aims to progress the Zong slave ship and to the 'spectrics' of the dead, for examining ways in which haunting experiences have reflected the traumas of the middle passage and plantation experiences. The chapter reviews the textile metaphor for hauntings and illustrates how this might help to think about identity and haunting in African-American cultures. The slave trade and the middle passage specifically led to the emergence of the new syncretic cultures of the new world and are of huge significance for understanding the cultures of captivity and oppression that are still present in contemporary struggles.
