Slave Ship?

The collective organizations that formed AMISTAD America, Inc. (Connecticut Afro-American Historical Society, the Amistad Committee, the Amistad Affiliates, and Mystic Seaport) conducted exhaustive research on the Amistad Incident of 1839 in anticipation of the construction of Freedom Schooner Amistad. The research began with a thorough examination of secondary resource materials and grew to include nineteenth century newspaper accounts, government records, court documents, and manuscript collections, both public and private.

The nineteenth century vessel implicated in the Amistad Incident of 1839 was named La Amistad. The vessel was a licensed Spanish coastal trader operating on the north coast of the island of Cuba and owned by her master, Captain Ramon Ferrer. Like literally thousands of similar craft operating in that era, she did the work that tractor-trailer trucks do today, hauling every commodity of household life. This occasionally included the transportation of captives bound for enslavement on the sugar plantations.

This report is corroborated in testimony given by Antonio, the 16-year-old slave and cabin boy to Captain Ferrer. The nature of her trade is evidenced by an advertisement taken by Captain Ferrer in the Havana newspaper Noticioso y Lucero announcing the very voyage that was to carry La Amistad to international attention. In this notice, Captain Ferrer sought passengers and cargo bound for his home port. The ad ran daily for a week prior to her sailing on June 28, 1839. This ad demonstrates the legitimate trade in which La Amistad was normally engaged, and that carrying enslaved people was incidental to this trade.

La Amistad did possess kettles for cooking set in brick; sweeps, long oars for rowing when becalmed; and a large midships hatch—all features commonly found aboard slave ships. There is, however, no indication from any source that she was fitted with "slave shelves," the half deck accommodations for slaves that helped create the unbearably cramped and unsanitary conditions found aboard true slave ships. In addition, because of her relatively small size, and because the vessel was in the business of trucking cargo, space aboard La Amistad allowed accommodations for four crew; a significantly larger crew would have been necessary for the much larger slave ships of the era.

While aboard La Amistad, the captives were divided into two groups: about half were confined below and the others were held on deck. The fact that the captives were able to move relatively freely and were able to access and secure sugar cane knives by which they ultimately freed themselves speaks to the fact that they were not aboard a slave ship.

While there is no doubt that La Amistad engaged in carrying enslaved people on this voyage and many others, to call La Amistad a slave ship is to oversimplify the issue and risk misunderstanding the complex nature of the dependence of the global economy on slave labor through the middle of the nineteenth century.