The mammoth container ship disappeared under the Ravenel Bridge. The thrill-boat ride shot away. The sun sank into clouds and the mists came up. And out of the mist came the tall sails. It looked like something from another time.

"Sweet," said Logan Johnsen, first mate of the Amistad, as he got his first glimpse of the Spirit of South Carolina heeling by. "The trim, the sails, the way she's cutting through the wake. She's just a nice sight."  Around him the crew members from Sierra Leone took up the ship's Creole song, dancing and pattering the beat on deck barrels.

Charleston Harbor Fest 2008 opened Thursday evening with the Spirit, the Lowcountry's own tall ship, the Schooner Virginia and the Corwith Cramer ceremonially escorting the Freedom Schooner Amistad into port. The spectacle told a sea tale, one that carried centuries of significance, not only for the port city that made its name with sailing ships but also for the freedom ship and the Gullah nation performing a sacred libation ceremony on Sullivan's Island as it passed.

The Amistad is a replica of the famous 19th century sailing ship commandeered in 1839 by captive Africans en route to being sold as slaves in Cuba. They would win their freedom in the United States and eventually return home to Sierra Leone. It's completing its first trans-Atlantic trip, retracing the infamous Middle Passage that slave ships took from west African nations such as Sierra Leone, a dream of the sailors who launched it in 2000.

Asked how she felt to make that history and be greeted by tall ships, Capt. Eliza Garfield smiled, put her hand over heart and nodded.

"It's a celebration in spite of incredible sadness. If you come out of (the Middle Passage) singing, with people calling you to be in spirit with their ancestors, that changes you. You are a different person," she said.

"Sometimes when I sit and think of the enshacklement of the Africans, my emotions get conflicted. So many emotions, really," said Sam Yokie, a crewman from Freetown, Sierra Leone. He looked over at the ceremony on Sullivan's Island. "I think about our people taken without their will, to be in a whole new world, and I feel a connection to these people. I come to this place and I feel home also."

The Spirit of South Carolina fired its cannon and the tall ships trailed each other in, flags streaming like the seas beneath them. From the rails, the steepled port city in the mist looked much like it did two centuries ago. The motorboats, the container ship, looked strangely out of place.

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Read the original article and more information about Charleston Harbor Fest published on May 16, in The Post and Courier

Ex-executive now master of Amistad replica

The old sea captain is a man in love.

Bill Pinkney strides down the dock, grabbing the newly arrived crew one by one in a massive bear hug. His eyes come back to the Freedom Schooner Amistad, its Douglas fir masts, its graceful, dark lines of iroko and angelique wood from Africa, live oak from South Carolina. This is his.

"I was with this boat when it was logs from places like Sierra Leone, up in Washington state, Lagos. The wood that came from Surinam. The keel came Guyana," he says. "I have splinters still in me somewhere from it."

The Amistad is a replica of the famous 19th century sailing ship commandeered in 1839 by captive Africans en route to being sold as slaves in Cuba. They would win their freedom in the United States and eventually return home to Sierra Leone.

It's in Charleston for Harbor Fest 2008 this weekend and will stay to take part in Spoleto Festival USA 2008 at the end of the month, during which an opera about the original Amistad odyssey will be performed. Pinkney is here with it.

Bill Pinkney is the former captain of the Amistad, and now its storyteller.

He is "a 73-year-old ex-limbo dancer," he says playfully. He was the first captain of the replica when it was launched in 2000; today he is its master, its storyteller. He is descended from captured west Africans like the rice farmers who pulled loose a spike on that trade boat 180 years ago and pried off their shackles.

He has the rollicking manner of a sailor, swinging easily back and forth between humor and philosophy. His two favorite philosophers, he says only half teasingly, are Winnie the Pooh and Satchel Paige.

Pinkney is a former corporate executive who learned how to sail on treacherous Lake Michigan in a boat not much bigger than a bobber. He gave up corporate life in 1992 to take a 47-foot boat across the endless, merciless Southern Ocean, then around Cape Horn in hurricane-force winds and 25-foot seas. He became one of those singled-out firsters — the first black man to sail solo around the world.

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Read the original article and more information about Charleston Harbor Fest published on May 14, in The Post and Courier

The romance of the sea has its moments. The Freedom Schooner Amistad rode out Sunday's storms 40 miles out in the ocean, "hove to" and pounded by waves, gale force winds and gusts.

The tall ship, a replica of the famous 19th century sailing ship commandeered by enslaved Africans, was supposed to make Charleston on Monday, to prepare for its role in Charleston Harbor Fest 2008 this weekend. But a sailing vessel floats on the vagaries of the deep.

Amistad was 70 miles away when the Gulf Stream began "lumping up," in the words of co-captain John Beebe-Center. Big swells started slamming one after another, pushing the ship into storm winds that were pushing back. The design of the Amistad includes a long bowsprit and beam.

"As we jokingly say, 'You can only put that under water so many times before it doesn't come back up,'" Beebe-Center said. The battered ship and crew faced headwinds to get to shore. Sailboats don't go very well into the wind, especially the old ones, as Brad Van Liew, South Carolina Maritime Heritage Foundation executive director, explained.

The crew has been out at sea for 12 months on a transatlantic voyage to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom in 1807 and the United States the year after that. This storm "was nastier than they've seen in quite awhile," said Beebe-Center, who has been monitoring the ship's movements from Charleston.

The crew maneuvered the Amistad into the wind, tied it down tight and stayed put. Two other tall ships on their way for the festival, the Schooner Virginia and Corwith Cramer, also had to ride out the storm in the waters between Charleston and Florida.

But all three are expected to arrive in time for the Parade of Sail at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The Schooner Virginia and Corwith Cramer will accompany the Lowcountry's own tall ship, the Spirit of South Carolina, out to Sullivan's Island to greet the Amistad and bring it into port. The ships will be open for tours at the Charleston Maritime Center throughout the festival.

The Amistad is returning to Charleston after a 2002 visit. Its heritage is one of the themes that will be woven into festival activities this weekend. Two of every five slaves brought into the United States in its Colonial days came through Charleston; many of them were brought to a quarantine station at Sullivan's Island.

"The Freedom Schooner Amistad's arrival highlights the story and it also gets some information about African-American history out to the general public," said Leila Potts-Campbell, associate director of the Avery Research Center for African-American History and Culture at the College of Charleston. The center specializes in the artifacts and experiences from black history in America.

"I don't think a lot of people realize slavery lasted a very long time here in Charleston, well over 200 years, and actually we had been slaves longer than we have been free."

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Read the original article and more information about Charleston Harbor Fest published on May 13, in The Post and Courier

Freedom Schooner Amistad, will arrive in Charleston for Harbor Fest and Spoleto Festival USA on May 15th. Charleston, SC will be the first US port called by the ship since her departure from New England in June 2007. Since then, Amistad visited many ports during her Atlantic Freedom Tour, allowing many communities to interpret the Tour's motto : "Confronting The Past - Transforming  The Future".

Amistad's visit, together with the premiere of a newly-revised version of Anthony Davis' opera "Amistad" at Spoleto Festival USA, will give another chance for Lowcountry and Charleston to confront its history as a slave-trading city in a slave-owning state.

Here are more events related to Amistad, the ship, and "Amistad," the Spoleto opera:

• -- Amistad (the ship) will be anchored off Sullivan's Island during an afternoon remembrance ceremony there May 15. It will then be escorted to Charleston Maritime Center by three tall ships, including Spirit of South Carolina, and will be open for tours May 16-18, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tickets are $5-$15.

• -- Amistad (the ship) will be at dock for the Spoleto opera premiere and remain here until May 27.

• -- Thursday, May 22:  "Amistad" (the opera) composer, Anthony Davis, and director, Sam Helfrich, will talk with College of Charleston music professor, Trevor Weston; 5:30 p.m. Recital Hall, College of Charleston. Free.

• -- Sunday, May 25:  Martha Teichner will interview Davis and "Amistad" librettist, Thulani Davis. 5 p.m. Recital Hall, College of Charleston. Free.

• -- Monday, May 26:  Anthony Davis and Thulani Davis, along with author Josephine Humphreys and historian Bernard Powers, will talk about creating works of art based on historic events; Noon, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, 125 Bull St. Free.

• -- Saturday, May 31:  attorney Robert Rosen will lead a round-table discussion of the Amistad (the ship) court case; 3 p.m. Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, 125 Bull St. Free.

• -- Gibbes Museum of Art will mount "Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art."

• -- Saturday, May 24

• -- Saturday, May 31
• -- Monday, June 2
• -- Saturday, June 7

• Tours of the Old Slave Mart Museum and walking tours will be led by historian Harlan Greene at 10 a.m. $10. Call 579-3100.

• -- Charleston County Public Library's Main Library will show a series of films related to Amistad (the ship) on the big screen. Free.