The castles were the ultimate stop in many ways. They provided the last experience that men and women had in their homeland before their final departure. For those who didn’t make it to the new world, the castles were the last place they ever saw on dry land.
The last shreds of hope would wither away with every day of captivity in the castle. On the seaboard side of the coastal slave castles, was ‘the door of no return’, a portal through which the slaves were lowered into boats, and then loaded like cargo onto big slaving ships further out to sea. Never to set foot in their homeland again. And, with a final goodbye, to the freedom they once knew.
One of the most famous castles in Ghana’s dark episode of slavery is the Cape Coast Castle. It began as a trade lodge constructed by the Portuguese in 1555 on a part of the Gold Coast, which later became known as the Cape Coast.
In 1653, following Sweden’s conquest of the Cape Coast, the Swedish Africa Company constructed a permanent wooden fortress for trade in timber and gold. A decade later, the fort was reconstructed in stone when the Danish seized power from the Swedish.
The fort then passed through the hands of the Dutch and even into the hands of a local Fetu chief at some point, before being conquered by the British in 1664. Over the years the fort was increasingly used for the developing slave trade, which came to a peak in the 18th century. By the 1700s, the fort had been transformed into a castle and also served as the headquarters of the British colonial governor. The El Mina Castle served as a slave trade hub for the Gold Coast of Ghana for 300 years.