La Amistad was a coastal trader doing the same work that tractor-trailers do for us today. Generally, she carried sugar-industry products from Guanaja, her home port in Cuba, to Havana, making a round trip about every two months. She often carried people: Spanish ladies and gentlemen and sometimes she carried people bound for lives as slaves on sugar-cane plantations. At the same time that La Amistad sailed, there were vessels known as slave ships, such as Tecora, that were engaged in trafficking illegally captured African people from Africa to the Americas. La Amistad was not such a vessel.