As I lay in my bunk in the foc's'le during the early hours of today, Easter Sunday, I thought the following: Amistad is a schooner of approximately 79 feet between her perpendiculars, and 129 feet over all; with a beam (width) of 23 feet; and a draft (depth) of 11 feet. This is not too dissimilar to many of the ships used in the merchant fleet of the 1790s. A vessel of 129 feet between her perpendiculars, with a beam of 30 feet, and a depth of hold of 18 feet, would produce a tonnage of around 350 tons; a good average for a brig of her day and perhaps a slave transport.

We had remembered (rather than celebrated) the mid-point of the middle passage the previous evening, floating off a basket full of things the millions of captured Africans might have remembered, along with gifts to the past of our own. We concluded the ceremony with Samuel Yokie leading us all in singing Amazing Grace, the hymn written by the Englishman and former slaver, John Newton. This might have had something to do with how I felt in these early hours.

I was awakened by Sia singing above the foc's'le hatch at 0400. I lay there under a sheet naked; I choose to sleep that way. I lay a-while and the pondered my bunk and a song. In the ballad The Flying Cloud, there is a line, "Scarce eighteen inches to a man did go".

We all have to keep all our gear in our bunks, that is a ship's order and it made me think. My personal sleeping space is not much more: it tapers because of my rucksack, making it narrower at the foot. I lay looking up at the hatch with the glint of the full moon coming through. I rolled back my sheet and exposed my body to the cool air. The thought of a man, woman, or child lying naked and in chains, in an otherwise dark space around the hold of a ship in tiers of perhaps two or three, on maybe two decks: between 300 and 500 souls trying to sleep, wondering where they were being taken.

In a different time and of a different colour I imagined that it could have been me in that situation. It appalled me. I shivered!

After an hour's pondering, I covered up and slept fitfully until awakened for watch. Perhaps I had just remembered the Buffalo Soldier Stolen From Africa.

Chris Roche

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