"When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars", goes the rhyme from the 1960s musical Hair. At the moment we are lucky we have Saturn with us as well. We have pretty much lost the Southern Cross now as we make more westing and a little more northing. We have a Bermudian aboard in Tugboat Mickey, it has been said that if the course steered becomes less true we could finish up at his home Island.

Back to the moon and stars. Sitting high above us as I came on watch at 2300 was the moon, which by midnight, was overhead casting its glow all around. When the clouds permitted, it shone down, setting the rig of the Schooner and her sails against the night sky. It is glorious to just look up and dream with all that in silhouette, above being driven only by the timeless winds that help us across the middle passage. We are in the phase known as full moon, which means that many of the stars diminish in their brightness. Stars to guide us are found by our navigators in their celestial observations. Capella is a first magnitude star in the constellation of Auriga. Sirius is the Dog Star usually the first seen in early evening. Rigel another first magnitude star is one of the two stars that make up the foot of the Hunter, Orion. Not to go into overload, that is the sense of how we make our dead reckoning, which will take us through to Barbados. We have a group of Africans aboard for whom this passage means so much.

The triangular trade, as it was known, was goods out to Africa to the slave coast of Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Ghana, among others. The latter being known as the gold coast and the whole area known as a white man's grave or, the flaming coast; many a European seaman died on this coast.

As we near the middle part of the middle passage: I came up on deck at 0830 to hear a deck wash being prepared, we do a daily salt water wash to preserve our decks and make them cool and less hot to the feet. I listened to Johnny and Sia from Sierra Leone singing, the harmony in their song so great, but I wonder about the poor souls that were shut below in the slavers and were they allowed to sing? I am saddened that the British, along with other European nations, could enslave another race of people mostly because they looked different. But, and it has to be said, I am extremely proud of the fact that, it was a British government that made the `Atlantic Slave Trade’ illegal and then set about stopping this illegal trade in people over the next fifty years or so from 1807. Much of this naval power came following the end of the wars with France after Trafalgar and Waterloo, when the British rode a power supreme across the oceans of the world. Supreme for one hundred years.

I sing. there are few songs about or even related to the trade. One such that Sam, another of the Sierra Leoneans, likes is the sailor shanty "Congo River". Another, found in a trunk in Philadelphia around 1860, is "Time For Us To Go". I know of but do not sing a ballad called the "Flying Cloud". This latter ballad is very descriptive of an incident, when a former pirate but now a slave ship, was approached by the British Royal Navy and taken. Back home Louis Killen sings this about the best of anybody. Captain Eliza would like a set of words: Anyone sending them, your help will be appreciated!!
 
Chris Roche.
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