Ever sins the eldest times, Europeen prisoners have been a natural part of the workforces
in the hot and dry countries in North Africa. 
Male prisoners went to the war and pirat galleys, while the females were used to row the heavy cargo galleys, 
and to breack rocks in the scorching hot mines fare out in the dessert. 
 

Private persons could also lease women very cheaply from the state´s slave prisons.
This ferry man had to compete with the new bridge. 
He succeded doing so, by leasing two girls to haul his boat back and forth across the river. 
He didn´t even have to feed them.  They ate the garbage which drifted down the river.
  

Tina from Germany has become one of them.  
The 28 year old woman weeps in despair in one of the holding cells under the courthouse, for the next transport to the zinc mines. 
What should have been a weeks vacation on a sunny beach, was today at a brief trial, where she couldn´t understand anything, turned into a life sentence with hard labour. 

19 year old Patricia from Italy is also destined for transport to the zinc mines.  She has spend all 3 weeks, since she was picked up by the police, while going shopping alone in the bazaar, locked up in the basement cell, where she in the long waiting time has found herself a little pet .
 

After having arrrived to the mine, the women no longer are individuals, but are only nameless slaves determined to be used to the utmost. 

The work days begines before the sun rises,
 and don´t end before it sets again. 
7 days a week, with never a day off, not even in the hottest time of the year. 
 

Not all are so "lucky" to work outside in the sun. 

Keeping the melting furnaces going, is an inhuman job.  That´s another good reasone for using slaves to do the work.  Because of the intence heat it is necessary to whip the girls working here nearly continuously. 
 

Nothing here works automatically. 
Even the pumps pumping air into the ovens, are  operated manually. 

Machines cost money.  Women don´t cost much to feed, and and as long as new females are so cheap to acquire,  as they always have been, there is no reasone to do anything in a different way than usually. 

One of the worst places to be placed, 
is in the treadmills on top of the melting ovens.

The heat here is so intence and the air so pollutet with toxic smoke, that the slaves working here seldom last longer than a few months. 
 

But the worst place of all, is to work in the steamy hot underground mines . 

Lisa, a young turist from Sweden, tried to run away, and even slapped one of the policemen in his face, 
when they randomly grabbed her and  forced her into a paddy wagon, 
as she was on her way back from the beach to her hotel. 
As punishment she was sentenced to go directly to the underground mines. 

First they shaved all hair off her head and body.  Then she was heavly thrashed. 
 Now she has to work 18 hours a day in the dark mine for the rest of her life. 
 

Very early the next morning, a new life begines for Natasha. 
From now on her adress will be work camp nr. 55.  
The cold morning air soothes her hangover, but gives her goose pimples. 
She will have to work very hard not to freeze. 

The cargo galleys of Thalios of Darini. 

Suspended from the prow is the banner of the vessle´s owner, Thalios of Darini, 
a living figurehead - A girl who´s skin has been dyed in acid paint to match the colour of the ship. 

The Irish deck slave strains at the windlass
 to hoist the anchor. 
 

At the benches the chained slaves sits at attention 
waiting for the order to start rowing.  
 

For one of the rowers it´s her first vojace. 
Servila is the wife of a merchant, who has become in debt to Thalios.   The deal is that she has to stay as a hostage on the ship, until the debt is payed. 

However, if it is not payed within 6 months, she will become a slave and will be permanently riveted in heavy chains, as the other oarswomen on the ship. 

 The poor woman knows it is very unlikely her husband can or will pay. After all, it will be much cheaper for him to find himself a new wife! 
 

For Augustina and her pretty daughter Juliana 
the vojace is nothing new.  

They have been toiling at the oars for seven months, 
and knows to well, what is in store for them.  



 

Augustina was the widow of a very rich man and had inherited a large estate in the hills above Messana. 

A new governor wanted to take over all her properties, and accused her for tax fraud. 

One night Augustina and her beautiful young daughter Juliana were dragged from their villa and imprisoned in the sewer beneath the governor´s mansion. 
For almost half a year, the two desperate women survived by fighting the vicious rats for scraps of rancid food dropped though the grate above.  
At last they confessed! 
 

At night if the galley is in port, and very careful not to be seen by the overseers, Augustina feels her daughter´s more and more swelling belly. 
  
Before being send to the galley, they had been dragged to the town´s square, where they had been lawfully declared slaves, and had all their property confiscated.  

After that the town´s rabble for an hour had been allowed to use both women as they pleased, 
resulting in Juliana´s belly has grown a little larger every day.  
 

Of course they are seen by a guard,
and first Juliana is hung up for a whole day 
with no food nor water.  

The next day it is her mother´s turn. 

But they are very lucky, they are 
allowed to stay together on the galley. 

Troublemakers among the galley slaves 
are usually transferred to the gargage barges. 

These poor women and girls are condemned to spend the rest of their lives chained to the lower rowing tiers of one of the heavy garbage barges, which every day sails the hughe amounts of trash from the big city fare out to sea, where it is dumped. 

They toil under the lash at the oars for 18 hours every day for a hand-full of maggoty rice.  

These poor women will never see the sun again. 

Only scum will take the jobs as overseers on these stinking barges, so they are  particularly sadistic.  

 Adrianna was a rich Greek aristocrat who was too proud to accept the advances of a Roman general.  Now she is not so proud as she waits for the overseer to turn away so she can grab a bloated corpse of a rat floating in the vile bilge water. 

Tonight she might not be as hungry as usual when she slumps over the oar for a few hours of precious sleep.
 

"Juli-  He is looking the other way. 
Quick - get into the sewer !" 

The galley has made landfall at a small port 
on the African coast.   There will be no local slaves 
available to unload the ship before the next morning, 
so to save time, some of the rowers incl. 
Augustina and Juliana are released from their 
benches for the first time in months 
to unload the cargo. 

Suddently Augustina eyes an opportunity 
for escape. 
Another slave girl has stumbled as she 
carried a heavy barrel, and the overseer is 
bussy whipping her. 

Quickly and silently the two slaves slips into the murky waters and wade beneath the wharf towards the stinking opening...
 

The freedom don´t last long for Augustine and Juliana. 
With no clothes and wearing collars and manacles, 
they couldn´t hide for long, but long enough for the galley 
to sail without them.  

Until the galley returns, the port authorities make good use of the poor women.  The first month they are chained to a heavy cargo cart, which they have to pull all day long between the warehouses and the docks.  They are put under the control of a cruel Carthaginian slave girl who enjoys making the former Roman aristocrats suffer.

For the young woman and her pretty daughter, it feels very humiliating working naked in the streets. 
On the galley and in the port, they were
only two naked slaves among a lot of others.
But here they are the only ones among a lot 
of well-dressed people both free and house slaves, 
and must constantly hear remarks about how 
bad they smell and how slow they work. 

Later, after Juliana has given birth, 
she and her mother are put to work in the harbour,
 loading and unloasing ships, 
and making repairment works on the breakwaters, when 
no other work is to be done. 

Her offspring is naturally a slave, and 
was at once taken away from her. 
 

As soon as the galley has docked Augustina and 
Juliana are taken aboard.  

Augustina is at once taken below the deck, to recieve
the first of a large quantity of  severe punishments. 

  Her daughter Juliana  has a heavy stock 
rivetted around her neck, and is 
chained permanently to a bench. 

A ring through her vagina prevents 
her in ever standing up again. 

Surviving on half rations, she is going to spend 
the rest of her life on this bench. 

She will never try to run away again. 
 

The young and very beautiful Princess Dahlia, 
is furious about she and her black servant girl,
 have been chained naked among the bad-smelling 
simple slave girls on the galley.  

She hasn´t yet realized, she in a few days 
will smell just as bad as the girl in front of her, 
and she in a few months, only will be 
one more unthinking slave among all the others. 

She is never told, her father had got a large 
long-termed loan from Thalios, and the security 
for the loan, was that the youngest of his 
pampered daughters, Dahlia, 
was to become a slave on one of Thalios ships. 
 

Three days after, fare out to sea, Augustina is set adrift. 
Branded deap into her skin with hot iron is written, she is a recaptured runaway slave, and 
it is forbidden anyone to help her.