Chapter XV: Some American Slave Ships

The first American-built slaver seems to have been a small ship, the _Desire_, built at Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1636. In the summer of 1637, she went on a trading voyage to the West Indies and part of her cargo was two women and fifteen boys, members of the Pequot tribe of Indians, who had been taken captive after the swamp fight at Fairfield, Connecticut. The _Desire_ came to anchor at “Providence Isle” and there the unfortunate Indians were sold into slavery. The return cargo was cotton, tobacco and negro slaves, and when the ship reached Boston, on Feb. 26, 1638, three of these negroes were sold to Samuel Maverick, who lived on the island in the harbor now known as East Boston. How many were brought to Boston at that time is not known, but it was not long before negro and Indian slaves were owned in all of the New England settlements, though in limited numbers.

Edward Randolph, the government agent, in a report made in 1676, states that a few slaves had been brought into New England from Guinea, Madagascar and the West Indies, and Governor Bradstreet, writing in 1680, said that “no company of slaves have been brought since the establishment of the Colony fifty years ago, except about two years ago, after a twenty months’ voyage to Madagascar, a vessel brought forty or fifty negroes.”[41]

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Footnote 41:

_Massachusetts Historical Society Collections_, VIII, 337.

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This seems to refer to a considerable importation,—a vessel whose principal cargo was slaves, for the frequent appearance of negroes in New England, in the latter part of the seventeenth century and in still greater numbers in the following century, shows that there must have been a constant influx, though never in large numbers. In 1742 there were 1,514 slaves owned in Boston and twelve years later the number had increased to 4,489. When the census was taken in 1764, there were 5,779 negro slaves and free blacks living in the town.

In 1708, Governor Cranston of Rhode Island reported that one hundred and three vessels had been built in that province between 1698 and 1708, all of which were trading with the West Indies and the Southern Colonies. They took out lumber and fish and brought back molasses in the direct trade, but “in most cases made a slave voyage in between.” Not infrequently these Rhode Island slavers, after having sold their prime slaves in the West Indies, brought home to New England the less salable remnants of their cargoes.

Here is the advertisement of one of these Rhode Islanders, taken from the July 3, 1758, issue of the _Boston Gazette_:

Just imported from Africa, and to be sold on board the brig _Jenney_, William Ellery, Commander, now lying at New-Boston [_i.e._, West End of Boston], A Number of likely Negro Boys and Girls, from 12 to 24 years of Age; Inquire of said Ellery on board said Brig, where constant attandance is given.

_Note._ The above Slaves have all had the Small-Pox.—Treasurer’s Notes, and New England Rum will be as Pay.—

This trade in Indians and Africans and in the ownership of slaves was a universally recognized economic condition until the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was like the belief in witchcraft or that the world was flat. It was accepted by all.

In 1641, Massachusetts adopted its first code of laws in which it was provided “There shall never be any Bond Slavery, Villinage, or Captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful Captives taken in just Wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us.... This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority.” It was under this authority that the Court at Salem directed that Daniel and Provided Southwick, the children of Quakers, should be sold to the English in Virginia or Barbadoes. But the ship masters at that time (1659) were more humane than the judges and no one would have anything to do with the proposed transportation and sale of white children and they eventually were released. Seven years earlier, in 1652, two hundred and seventy Scotchmen, taken prisoners at the battle of Dunbar, were sent to Boston and sold for a term of years, into servitude comparable with negro slavery. In London, the capital city of the realm, there were 20,000 negro slaves, as late as 1764, and these blacks were openly bought and sold on “Change.” It was then the swagger thing for a gentleman to put a silver collar about the neck of his body servant, and Matthew Dyer, working goldsmith at the Crown in Duck Lane, Orchard Street, Westminster, advertised that he made “silver padlocks and collars for Blacks or Dogs.”

There formerly was considerable noise and vituperation on both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line concerning “the Divine institution” of slavery and the trade in human flesh. As late as Mar. 26, 1884, a congressman from North Carolina, during a speech in Congress, saw fit to remark that “Massachusetts is a State more responsible under heaven than any other community in this land for the introduction of slavery into this Continent, with all the curses that have followed it; that it is the nursing mother of the horrors of the middle passage, and that after slavery in Massachusetts was found not to pay, her slaves were sold down South for a consideration, and then their former owners thanked God and sang the long metre Doxology through their noses, that they were responsible no longer for the sin of human slavery.”[42]

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Footnote 42:

_Congressional Record_, Mar. 26, 1884, p. 2284.

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It is as silly and futile to talk through one’s nose as it is inharmonious and unpleasant to sing through that organ. Slavery was largely a question of economic conditions and excluding the saints, the philosophers and the fanatics, men placed under similar conditions usually think and act very much alike.

American slave ships made their voyages to and from the African coast until the very outbreak of the Civil War brought on by that trade. During the three years ending December 31, 1807, two hundred and two slave ships entered the port of Charleston, South Carolina. Seventy of these were owned in Great Britain, three in France, one in Sweden, sixty-one in Charleston, fifty-nine in Rhode Island and eight in other American ports. Altogether, 39,075 slaves were brought in. Of the fifty-nine ships hailing from Rhode Island, Bristol vessels brought 3,914; Newport, 3,488; Providence, 556, and Warren, 280, mostly in brigs and schooners of two hundred tons or less.[43]

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Footnote 43:

Munro, _Tales of an Old Sea Port_ (Bristol, R. I.), Princeton,
1917.

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In this chapter it is proposed to narrate the adventures of certain of these ships concerning which exact information is now obtainable.

Among the vessels sailing from Charleston, during this period, was the brig _Tartar_, James Taylor, master, owned by Frederick Tavell of Charleston, a native of Switzerland. She cleared Nov. 22, 1806, bound for Pongo River, just north of Sierra Leone, for a cargo of slaves, and the owner instructed Francis Roux, the supercargo, to make his trade as much as possible at the Rio Pongo and not to trade at other places on the coast. The underwriters not allowing a stay on the coast of more than four months, any cargo not disposed of must be brought back to Charleston, and in case slaves were found to be scarce, he was authorized to trade for beeswax to the amount of one-third of the return cargo. All slaves taken aboard must be marked or stamped. “Those belonging to the Cargo must be marked F T, and those that may be shipped on board by James Taylor, Captain, for Returns of his Four Hogsheads Tobacco, shall bear his Marks, in order to have Mortality, if any, supported by property concerned.”

The brig measured 160 tons burden and mounted no guns. Her master, James Taylor, was born in Boston, but lived in Charleston, as did most of the crew. The ship’s doctor was a Frenchman. The cargo, for trade on the coast, consisted of tobacco, brandy, claret, tar, flour, five bales of dry goods, ten dozen of negro low pipes and a box of white hats.

CAPTURE OF AMERICAN SLAVE SHIP “MARTHA,” JUNE 6, 1850, OFF AMBRIZ,
BY U.S. BRIG “PERRY”
From a lithograph in Foote’s _Africa and the American Flag_, New
York, 1854
]

The brig arrived at the Rio Pongo, Jan. 24, 1807, and slaves being scarce, the lading was not completed until Jan. 9, 1808, notwithstanding the limitation of the underwriters. The slaves were all natives of the Windward Coast and bore various marks in accordance with their ownership, viz., an O on the right thigh; an O on the right shoulder; a pipe bowl on the left hip; an O on the left arm.

The _Tartar_ made the passage toward the American coast without any unusual event until Feb. 2, 1808, when near Martinique, she was overhauled and captured by H.M. ship of war _Ulysses_ and taken to Barbadoes, where she was condemned as a lawful prize because (1) she was proceeding from Africa to a colony of the enemy (_i.e._, France), under a false designation, _i.e._, to Charleston: and (2) because trade in slaves was contrary to the laws of America after Jan. 1, 1808. Captain Taylor deposed that he had laid a course for Martinique because he was likely to be in need of provisions, and had he received an advantageous offer he should have sold his slaves while there.[44]

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Footnote 44:

The briefs in this case were printed in London for the benefit of
the Lords Commissioners, sitting as a Court of Appeal, and from
one of these rare originals, owned by the Marine Research Society,
this account of the voyage has been abstracted.

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The schooner _Nancy_ of Charleston, South Carolina, sailed from that port on June 1, 1807, bound for Africa, on a slaving voyage. She was built at Great Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and was owned by John Gardner and John C. Phillips, merchants of Charleston. She carried a cargo of lumber and provisions, a small supply of trading goods, such as handkerchiefs and beads, and $6,000 in money. Her master, Joshua Viall, was a native of Warren, Rhode Island, and his crew consisted of six Americans and three Portuguese, one of whom died of the African disease, or slow fever, on the return voyage.

The _Nancy_ arrived at Senegal about the first of August, and there Captain Viall sold his lumber and provisions and with the proceeds and the cash he had brought with him, purchased eighty slaves at an average cost of $125 each. The _Nancy_ was only 67 feet long, 20 feet 6 inches wide and 9 feet deep, which did not allow much spare room for either crew or cargo, or for Thomas Bartholomew, a passenger. Four or five days out from Senegal, as the slaves were messing together one afternoon, the males and females apart, one of the males seized the master as he was pouring molasses into his victuals, whereupon the rest of the males rose and tried to seize Captain Viall, but he escaped from their clutches and with the aid of the crew drove the blacks below after small arms had been given out. One negro jumped overboard during the mêlée and a few were slightly wounded. This outbreak left the crew in a very nervous state, especially when the two mates and two of the seamen soon after fell sick of fevers, and not long after one of the seamen, in a night watch, imagining that the slaves were about to rise, shot and killed one of the slaves and the next night stabbed another.

Finding himself short-handed, Captain Viall decided to make for a neutral port in the West Indies—St. Thomas or St. Bartholomew—to obtain hands to navigate the schooner. About five leagues northward of St. Thomas he fell in with H.M. schooner _Venus_, and notwithstanding that he was in distress and asked for assistance, a prize crew was put aboard and the _Nancy_ was ordered to Tortola, where she was condemned for prosecuting a voyage from a French colony and actually intending for the Havana or some other port in the West Indies, hostile to Great Britain, instead of for Charleston, the port named in her papers.

From time to time, after the abolition of the slave trade in 1808, sporadic efforts were made by the United States Navy to suppress the “smuggling” trade in slaves, but it was not until 1819 that a squadron was sent to the African coast charged with the duty of suppressing the trade carried on in American vessels. A number of the officers in command were Southerners and the effectiveness of the work done by them may be judged from the fact that Captain M. C. Perry reported, “I could not even hear of an American slaving vessel; and I am fully impressed with the belief that there is not one at present afloat”; while Captain Trenchard reported that there were three hundred slave ships on the coast and backed up his opinion by capturing five American slavers. Beggarly appropriations by Congress made it impossible to keep American naval vessels on the African coast until the Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, in 1842, made it compulsory that the United States should maintain a “sufficient and adequate” naval force for the “suppression” of the slave trade and the following year Commodore Perry was sent to the African coast with four vessels under his command.

The slave coast was three thousand miles long and in playing the game of “hide and seek” the odds were always with the slaver, for he had only to run up a Spanish or Portuguese flag to be secure from attack or injury. Moreover, in following the orders issued by the Navy Department, only slavers with slaves actually on board could be seized. Consequently, fully equipped slavers would sail past the American fleet, deliberately make all preparations for shipping a cargo and then, when the English were not near, “sell” the ship to a Spaniard, hoist the Spanish flag, and again sail gaily past the American fleet with a full cargo of slaves.[45]

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Footnote 45:

DuBois, _The Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, Cambridge,
1896.

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In 1845, the U.S. brig _Truxton_, captured, in the Rio Pongo, the schooner _Spitfire_ of New Orleans, that had already run several cargoes. She only measured about one hundred tons but when captured had stowed 346 negroes, and the previous year had landed 339 near Matanzas, Cuba. “Between her decks, where the slaves were packed, there was not room enough for a man to sit, unless inclining his head forward; their food was half a pint of rice per day, with one pint of water. No one can imagine the sufferings of slaves on their passage across, unless the conveyances in which they are taken are examined. A good hearty negro costs but twenty dollars, or thereabouts, and brings from three to four hundred dollars in Cuba.”[46]

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Footnote 46:

Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, New York, 1854.

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From this time on, United States war vessels were kept on the African coast and slaving vessels were taken at intervals. One of the most important captures was the ship _Martha_ of New York, taken by the U.S. brig _Perry_, in June, 1850. The _Martha_ was a large ship with two tiers of painted ports and was standing in for the land towards Ambriz when overhauled. When within range of the guns of the _Perry_, she hoisted the American ensign, shortened sail and backed her main topsail. An officer was sent to board her and as his boat was rounding her stern, the people on board, recognized his uniform, and for the first time became aware that the brig was an American vessel. The American colors were at once hauled down and Brazilian colors hoisted in place. When the officer reached the deck, the captain of the _Martha_ denied having papers, log, or anything else; but it had been noted on the _Perry_, that something had been thrown overboard, and another boat was sent which picked up the writing desk of the captain, containing papers identifying him as an American citizen. When confronted with this evidence, he admitted that his ship was equipped for the slave trade. A slave deck was found already laid below, with ample supplies of farina and beans, four hundred wooden spoons, and necessary iron bars and woodwork for securing slaves. The captain had expected to ship eighteen hundred slaves during the following night and before daylight to have been clear of the coast. The _Martha_ was condemned at New York and the captain was admitted to bail for $5,000, which was afterwards reduced to $3,000, which he forfeited and eventually escaped justice.

As the clipper ship trade with California and China became less profitable in the late ’50’s, it is not strange that some of these fast vessels should have been used in the slave trade. One of the best known was the _Nightingale_, a beautiful ship built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1851. She was lavishly decorated and her first voyage was to accommodate a trans-Atlantic excursion to the World’s Fair in London; but her builder got into financial difficulties and the intended voyage never was made. After making several quick passages in the Australian and China trade she was sold in New York, in 1860, to unknown parties, and her history during the next eight months is veiled in mystery. It has been stated that she at once sailed for Rio and went under the Brazilian flag, but Commodore Perkins, while acting master of U.S.S. _Sumter_, on the African coast, wrote home on April 15, 1860:

“The clipper ship _Nightingale_ of Salem, shipped a cargo of 2000 negroes and has gone clear with them.... She is a powerful clipper and is the property of the captain, Bowen, who is called the ‘Prince of Slavers.’”

The _Nightingale_ returned to New York in the late summer of 1860 and loaded with grain for Liverpool. On Nov. 24, 1860, she sailed for St. Thomas, on the West Coast of Africa, and the _London Times_ remarked at the time, “It was well known in certain circles before she sailed that she was a slaver.” She was reported at St. Thomas, Jan. 14, 1861, and continued to dodge about the African coast until April 21st, when she was seized by the U.S. sloop-of-war _Saratoga_, Captain Taylor, who described her capture as follows:

“For some time the American ship _Nightingale_ of Boston, Francis Bowen, master, has been watched on this coast under the suspicion of being engaged in the slave trade. Several times we have fallen in with her and although fully assured that she was about to engage in this illicit trade she has had the benefit of the doubt. A few days ago observing her at anchor at Kabenda, I came in and boarded her and was induced to believe she was then preparing to receive slaves. Under this impression the ship was got under way and went some distance off but with the intention of returning under the cover of the night; which was done and at 10 P. M. we anchored and sent two boats under Lieutenant Guthrie to surprise her and it was found that she had 961 slaves on board and was expecting more. Lieut. Guthrie took possession of her as a prize and I have directed him to take her to New York. She is a clipper of 1000 tons and has _Nightingale_ of Boston on her stern and flies American colors.”

The slaves were landed at Liberia, but not before one hundred and sixty of them had died from African fever, which also attacked the crew. On reaching Monrovia, little surplus food was found and the mortality among the fever-stricken negroes must have been appalling.

The _Nightingale_ arrived at New York, June 13, 1861, where Lieutenant Guthrie reported that Francis Bowen and a Spaniard named Valentino Cortino, had made their escape while the ship lay at anchor at St. Thomas. John J. Guthrie was a North Carolinian and Bowen afterwards related that Guthrie had allowed him to get away. The _Nightingale_ was condemned and purchased for the government and afterwards used as a supply and store ship with the Gulf blockading squadron. She was abandoned at sea April 17, 1893, in the North Atlantic, at the time flying the Norwegian flag.[47]

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Footnote 47:

Howe and Matthews, _American Clipper Ships_, Salem, 1926.

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The _Sunny South_, another fast clipper ship, built at Williamsburg, New York, in 1854, was sold in 1859, at Havana, for $18,000 and renamed the _Emanuela_ and afterwards used in the slave trade. On Oct. 10, 1860, she was captured in the doldrums of the Mozambique Channel, with over eight hundred slaves aboard, by the _Brisk_, British screw sloop-of-war. When first sighted in a haze, her occupation was not suspected on account of her size and the unusually large number of staysails and studding-sails set, and when she hove to, she did so under full sail, without clewing anything up. She was sent in to Mauritius, condemned as a prize and sold to be used as a British cruiser.

“NIGHTINGALE,” 1060 TONS, BUILT AT PORTSMOUTH, N. H., IN 1851
From a lithograph by N. Currier, after the drawing by C. Parsons
made in 1854.
]

One of the last of the slave-smuggling fleet was the yacht _Wanderer_, built at Port Jefferson, Long Island, for a wealthy member of the New York Yacht Club. She was launched in June, 1857, and measured 260 tons burden. The next year she was sold to Capt. W. C. Corrie. Her sailing master, Semmes, was a brother of the man who afterwards commanded the Confederate cruiser _Alabama_. The _Wanderer_ cleared from Charleston for Trinidad, as if on a pleasure voyage, but made St. Helena and then went to the Congo. All the while she was flying the flag of the New York Yacht Club and when Captain Corrie fell in with the British warship _Medusa_, cruising on the Congo coast in search of slaves, he ran alongside and entertained the British officers with the best on board.

The supercargo afterwards told newspaper reporters that after a sufficient number of bottles had been emptied, the British officers were facetiously invited to inspect the _Wanderer_, to see if she was not a slaver—a good joke that was appreciated by everybody. After the _Medusa_ had proceeded up the coast, the _Wanderer_ quietly slipped into the Congo, to the crowded barracoons, where 750 young negroes from thirteen to eighteen years of age were taken aboard. She got clear of the coast with her cargo, which she safely landed on the Georgia coast about the 1st of December, 1858.

One of the owners of the _Wanderer_, Capt. A. C. McGhee of Columbus, Georgia, was aboard and many years after he told the story of the voyage.

“The most difficult part of the voyage was to get into port. The only way to enter the mouth of the Savannah river was under the black muzzles of the guns of the fort and it would have been madness to attempt to enter with the contraband cargo, in open daylight. Instead, Captain Semmes crept into the mouth of the Great Ogeechee, by night, and ascended the river to the big swamp and there lay concealed while he communicated with Charles L. A. Lamar, his Savannah owner.

“Lamar thereupon announced that he was going to give a grand ball in honor of the officers and garrison of the fort, and insisted that the soldiers, as well as their superiors, should partake of the good cheer. When the gayety was at its height, the _Wanderer_ stole into the river and passed the guns of the fort unchallenged in the darkness and made her way to Lamar’s plantations, some distance up the river. The human cargo was soon disembarked and placed in charge of the old rice-field negroes, who were nearly as savage as the new importations.”[48]

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Footnote 48:

John R. Spears, _The American Slave Trade_, New York, 1900.

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This venture was conducted on such a scale and so many were concerned in it, that it was impossible to keep the story a secret for long and before the month was over the United States District Attorney was on the trail and Lamar wrote to an associate that “hell is to pay.” Arrests followed, there were hearings and Congress heard of it; but the smugglers eventually escaped. The _Wanderer_ was condemned and sold at auction, when she was bid in by her former owners at a fourth of her value. It was afterwards said by one of the owners that the “slaves that had been purchased for a few beads and bandanna handkerchiefs [of course an exaggeration] were sold in the market for from $600 to $700 apiece. The owners of the vessel paid Captain Semmes $3500 for his services and cleared upward of $10,000 apiece on the venture for themselves.”

Not long after this the case of the _Wanderer_ was brought to the attention of the New York Yacht Club and on Feb. 2, 1859, Captain Corrie was expelled from membership and the _Wanderer_ no longer had the right to fly the flag of the club.

As slave trading at that time must be done “under cover,” it is not strange that exact information of the succeeding movements of the vessel is now difficult to obtain. One story relates that she sailed for the West Coast of Africa in the spring of 1859, under Captain Semmes, and again brought to the Georgia coast a cargo of slaves, many of whom were sent to New Orleans and there sold. In October, 1859, she went to sea, without papers, under command of a “Captain Martin,” and on Nov. 22d, when off the Canaries, the captain hailed a French vessel and went aboard to obtain a supply of provisions. The rest of the crew, having shipped without knowing the nature of the proposed voyage, seized the _Wanderer_ and setting all sail steered for Boston, where they arrived Dec. 24th and at once surrendered to the United States authorities. On board were two Portuguese women whom “Captain Martin” had carried off from one of the Azores with the intention of trading them on the African coast for negroes.

On learning of the arrival of the _Wanderer_, Lamar came to Boston, and entered a formal demand for the vessel, claiming that Martin had piratically seized her, and after a long hearing and appeal she was restored to him.[49] Early in March, 1860, she cleared from Boston and after reaching Savannah is said to have again made a voyage to the West Coast. After the war broke out she was seized by the Federal authorities and used as a revenue cutter. Later, she was in the Central American trade and eventually was driven ashore on Cape Henry, where her bones found a last resting place.

It was the fate of a New England sea captain, a native of Portland, Maine, to pay the extreme penalty for slave trading, as late as Feb. 21, 1862. In the summer of 1860, Capt. Nathaniel Gordon, master of the ship _Erie_, of 500 tons burden, and an experienced slaver, sailed from New York, via Havana, for the Congo River, where he took aboard 890 negroes, 600 of whom were boys and girls, and “thrust them, densely crowded, between the decks and immediately set sail for Cuba.” So reads the indictment. When only fifty miles from the African coast, the _Erie_ was taken by the U.S. warship _Mohican_, the negroes were carried to Liberia and released and Gordon and his ship were sent to New York. Gordon was brought to trial as a pirate, under the May 15, 1820, law, which made slave trading an act of piracy, and the outcome was a mistrial. The following November, he was again brought to trial and in two days a verdict of “guilty” was returned. He was hanged on Feb. 21, 1862, after attempting to commit suicide by poison,—a fate richly deserved but not attained by thousands of others who had traded in human flesh.

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Footnote 49:

Bradlee, “The Last of the American Slavers,” in the _Marine
Journal_, May 22, 1926.

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