Southey's "The Sailor"

In his poem "The Sailor, Who Had Served in the Slave Trade," Robert Southey makes a vehement and effective appeal to his audience's pathos. Firstly, although the event very well may have taken place, Southey presents this dialogue between the sailor and the minister as if it is entirely true, saying he has not added "the slightest addition or alteration." Also, he highlights the sailor's extreme anguish by utilizing several superlatives, such as, "He follows, follows every where,/And every place is Hell!/O God...and I must go with Him/In endless fire to dwell!" Southey's most effective means of swaying his audience comes with the anecdote of the sailor flogging a female slave while the demanding captain looks on. His imagery here is masterful, especially in his mention of the slave's child and the imagery of his mother's body being thrown overboard. Imagining that such atrocities were commonplace at the time is quite difficult to accept to modern readers and perhaps even to Southey’s contemporaries. Thus, Southey ends the poem with a cry for help from all of his readers in praying for the sailor's tattered soul and, thereby, those of all people affected by the gruesome institution that was the slave trade.