Silas Told's life as an ordinary sailor on a slave ship was a hard one. Told was apprenticed at the age of 14, and badly treated by the captains he sailed under. Sailors not only worked hard managing the ship, but when the captain began to buy enslaved Africans, they also became prison guards whose job was to look after the 'cargo'.

Slave ship captains had a reputation as hard men. There are many stories of their bad treatment of the crew. The crew members often joined a slave ship under duress, and the abolition movement used the high mortality rate amongst the crew as another reason for ending the slave trade. The experiences of the crew members were all different: some men seemed to enjoy their work, others suffered terrible treatment, many died of disease.

Silas Told was an educated man, who ended as an ordinary seaman on a slave ship due to family debt. He sailed under Captain Tucker on the Royal George in the 1750s.  Tucker was known as a cruel, hard man, and Told suffered whippings and beatings for minor transgressions, as did other members of the crew. His biography records the terrible treatment he and others suffered. The whipping described above, which cut his clothes and his flesh, was because Told took too much bread from the stores for dinner one day.