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WASHINGTON — Days from now, a stately black schooner will sail through a narrow channel into Havana's protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights — the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby.

The ship is the Amistad, a U.S.-flagged vessel headed for largely forbidden Cuban waters as a symbol of both a dark 19th century past and modern public diplomacy.

The Amistad is the 10-year-old official tall ship of the state of Connecticut and a replica of the Cuban coastal trader that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives, only to become an emblem of the abolitionist movement.

Its 10-day, two-city tour of Cuba provides a counterpoint to new and lingering tensions between Washington and Havana and stands out as a high-profile exception to the 47-year-old U.S. embargo of the Caribbean island.

For the Amistad, it also represents a final link as it retraces the old Atlantic slave trade triangle, making port calls that are not only reminders of the stain of slavery but also celebrations of the shared cultural legacies of an otherwise sorry past.

When it drops anchor in Havana's harbor on March 25, the Amistad will not only observe its 10th anniversary, it will commemorate the day in 1807 when the British Parliament first outlawed the slave trade.

The powerful image of a vessel displaying home and host flags docking in Cuba is not lost on Gregory Belanger, the CEO and president of Amistad America Inc., the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the ship.

"We're completely aware of all of the issues currently surrounding the U.S. and Cuba," he said. "But we approach this from the point of view that we have this unique history that both societies are connected by. It gives us an opportunity to transcend contemporary issues."

It's not lost on Rep. William Delahunt, either. The Massachusetts Democrat has long worked to ease U.S.-Cuba relations and he reached out to the State Department to make officials aware of the Amistad's proposal.

U.S.-flagged ships have docked in Havana before, but none as prominently as the Amistad. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has periodically approved Cuba stops for semester-at-sea educational programs for American students, and the Commerce Department has authorized U.S. shiploads of exports under agriculture and medical exemptions provided in the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000.

"Obviously we have serious differences, disagreements," Delahunt said. "But in this particular case the two governments, while not working together, clearly were aware of the profound significance of this particular commemoration."

The original Amistad's story, the subject of a 1997 Steven Spielberg movie, began after it set sail from Havana in 1839. Its African captives rebelled, taking over the ship and sending it on a zigzag course up the U.S. coast until it was finally seized off the coast of Long Island. The captured Africans became an international cause for abolitionists; their fate was finally decided in 1841 when John Quincy Adams argued their case before the Supreme Court, which granted them their freedom.

Miguel Barnet, a leading Cuban ethnographer and writer who has studied the African diaspora, said it is only appropriate that the new Amistad would call on the place of the original ship's birth. Indeed, he said in an interview from Cuba on Wednesday, it is the horror of the slave trade that left behind a rich common bond — not just between the United States and Cuba, but with the rest of the Caribbean — that is rooted in Africa.

"That's why this is an homage to these men and women who left something precious for our culture," he said.

The new Amistad has crossed the Atlantic and wended its way through the Caribbean since 2007. It has worked with the United Nations and UNESCO's Slave Route Project. Using high technology hidden in its wooden frame and rigging, the ship's crew of sailors and students has simulcasted to schools and even to the U.N. General Assembly.

It will do so again — with Cuban students — from Havana.

Read original AP News

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

March 16, 2010 -- The Freedom Schooner Amistad will visit Cuba next week as part of the United Nations commemoration of March 25 as the global Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Atlantic slave trade.

The Amistad will enter Cuban waters on March 22, 2010 for a 10-day, two city Cuba tour that will culminate its recent Caribbean Heritage Voyage.  The ship will first visit Matanzas, site of a new UNESCO-affiliated slavery museum. On March 25, the Amistad will sail into Havana Harbor to commemorate the historic “triangle of trade” connections between America, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. The next day, the vessel will host a three-hour simulcast about the shared slave trade heritage, connecting Cuban students to classrooms across the Atlantic Ocean and at the UN in New York.  In addition to public tours of the boat and academic panels on its history, the Cuba visits will focus on the impact of the slave trade on our transatlantic cultural heritage – including religious ritual, film, music, dance, poetry and visits to former plantations.

“The sale of the Amistad captives in Havana was a small transaction in the thriving international slave trade,” said Gregory Belanger, president of Amistad America Inc.  “But the resulting events arguably turned the tide against slavery itself – and the historical connections across the modern African diaspora are direct and profound.”

“This visit is especially poignant because Amistad’s own story began in Cuba,” said Belanger, noting the original ship was built in Cuba.  In 1839, the Amistad sailed from Havana, the center of the illegal slave trade.  This will be the replica’s first visit to Cuba – and it coincides with the tenth anniversary of its launch at Mystic Seaport Museum on March 25, 2000.

The Amistad is a 140-foot replica of the two-masted black schooner that was at the center of the 1841 slave rebellion case argued successfully by John Quincy Adams, leading to the first US Supreme Court case freeing African captives.  The replica Amistad has visited 70 domestic and international ports as a symbol of this human rights milestone.

In 2008, the Amistad undertook a 14,000-mile transatlantic sail to Africa. On March 25 of that year, the Amistad was linked via satellite directly to the UN as the General Assembly voted to commemorate that date as the bicentennial of the pioneering British act that first outlawed the slave trade.  Students from six countries sailed legs of the Africa voyage.  Soon thereafter, the Amistad was designated as floating ambassador for the UN Permanent Memorial to Honour the Victims of Slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade.   The vessel’s most recent port of call was Santo Domingo, for a week of programs for youths from the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Following the current Caribbean tour, the vessel will visit five cities historically linked to the 19^th century slave trade: Savannah, Charlestown, Norfolk, Washington DC and Baltimore.  The next heritage tour will include visits this summer to Boston, Halifax and seven Great Lakes ports, culminating in Chicago.  In December, the Amistad sails back to Africa. 

Note: for photos of the Amistad under sail, see http://amistadamerica.org/cuba-2010-info

For more information:

Steve Schwadron

202.463.2514

Amistad was launched from Mystic Seaport on March 25th 2000 after more than two years of construction in the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard.  Stay tuned for information about upcoming events to mark her 10 year anniversary....

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of her launch, take a look back at the archival Mystic Seaport video and see the vessel being built – and launched!