Anywhere up to 1,000 male and 500 female slaves were chained and crammed into the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. A castle which contained dank, poorly ventilated dungeons. Captured slaves were never allowed to lie down with any space around themselves, and had very little light. Slaves alao lived without water or proper sanitation; the floor of the dungeon was so strewn about with human waste that many captives fell seriously ill in the wretched living conditions.
The men were separated from the women. All the while the captors regularly raped the helpless women. The castle also featured confinement cells — small pitch-black spaces for prisoners who revolted or were seen as rebellious. Once the slaves set foot in the castle, they could stand in ruin for up to three months in captivity under these negligent conditions before being shipped off to the New World.
An environment of harsh contrasts, the castle also had some extravagant chambers – devoid of the stench and misery of the dungeons that were contained only a couple of meters below. For example, the British governor and officers’ quarters were spacious and airy, having beautiful parquet floors and scenic views of the blue waters of Atlantic. The castle also contained a chapel enclosure for the officers, traders and their families. Oblivious to the injustice they inflicted these people went about their normal day-to-day life completely detached from the unfathomable human suffering.
The roots of the castle lie with the Portuguese who originally built it as a trading post in 1555 named Cabo Corso. It stayed that way until 1653, when the Swedish Africa Company built the first timber lodge after permission from the local King of Fetu to do so. After the King of Fetu died in 1663 the Dutch West India Company was able to occupy and control the fort. A year later, the timber lodge is captured in a skirmish that leads to the Second-Anglo Dutch war by the English, who aptly strengthen and fortify the fort with stone turning it into, and renaming it the Cape Coast Castle. Since the Dutch had captured a the former English headquarters, the Cape Coast Castle turned into the capital of all English possessions in The Gold Coast of Ghana.