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14 February 2008
The Amistad Sails Again – This Time for Freedom
Replica of historic schooner recalls 1839 slave revolt, banning of slave trade
Washington -- “Weather is African beautiful -- hot, hazy and humid,” said a February 6 posting by a blogger aboard the Freedom Schooner Amistad as it sailed the Atlantic just a few hundred kilometers off the coast of Sierra Leone.
Just three days prior, the schooner -- a replica of the vessel that in 1839 was the site of a famous slave revolt -- departed Freetown, Sierra Leone, where it had been anchored for nearly two months.
The modern Freedom Schooner Amistad is on a 22,500-kilometer journey that began in June 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut. It sailed to Canada, Europe and Africa and will stop in the Caribbean before returning to New Haven in late August of this year. The voyage commemorates the Amistad incident as well as the anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the U.S. ban on the importation of slaves (although not slavery itself) in 1808.
“This tour represents an opportunity to share the values of Amistad -- freedom, collaboration, and justice -- with communities around the Atlantic Basin with a particular outreach to linking students of all ages,” said William Minter, chairman of AMISTAD America Inc., a U.S.-based nonprofit group that promotes improved relations between races and cultures through educational programs and Amistad port visits.
THE AMISTAD INCIDENT
In 1839, 53 Africans were kidnapped from West Africa by Spanish slavers. Led by 25-year-old Sengbe Pieh -- or Joseph Cinque, as he was known in U.S. historical accounts -- the Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and ordered the crew to return to Africa. Instead, the vessel ended up off the northeastern coast of the United States and was taken into custody by a U.S. Navy brig; the Africans were charged with murder and jailed in New Haven.
The Amistad case unified American abolitionists, who were often at odds with each other about their goals and methods. Abolitionists from New York and New Haven formed the “Amistad Committee,” which launched a campaign to defend the African captives. This defense was put forth in an “Appeal to the Friends of Liberty” that asked for contributions and donations on behalf of the captives.
The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Amistad Committee turned to former President John Quincy Adams to defend the Africans. Reluctant at first, Adams eventually took the case and successfully argued for the captives’ freedom. Abolitionists raised money to charter a ship that returned the 35 surviving slaves to Africa early in 1842.
The Amistad incident became the subject of a 1997 film by Stephen Spielberg.
TRANS-ATLANTIC FREEDOM TOUR
The voyage of the modern Amistad is intended to “engage millions of people in recognizing the strength, survival, and contributions of slaves to the countries of the Atlantic Basin,” according to the AMISTAD America Web site.
Having departed Sierra Leone on February 3, the Freedom Schooner Amistad is sailing to Senegal and Cape Verde before retracing the slave trade route that took kidnapped Africans to the plantations and mines of the Caribbean and South America. There are nearly 20 ports in the Amistad’s itinerary.
With education being a key component of the Atlantic Freedom Tour, some 50 students from a number of countries around the Atlantic Basin have the opportunity to be a part of the voyage at different times. They are able to share their experience with other students through live webcasts, blogs and e-mail.
Reflecting on the Amistad revolt, one student wrote in his blog entry, dated August 2: “After having sailed here to Halifax from New Haven I can already see some of the hardships of sailing. … I could not imagine what it would be like to spend months below deck all day, chained together with the smell of death surrounding you. Th[e] revolt proves the age-old saying, ‘desperate times call for desperate measures.’”
Captain Bill Pinkney, who also keeps a blog, wrote about “the joy of being part of making dreams come true for Sierra Leone and AMISTAD America. The dream of seeing 'Sengbe’s Boat' anchored off the Portuguese Steps where so many sons and daughters of Africa came home from the pain of bondage across the sea; the dream of a small group in the United States who longed for the story to be told on the shores of Sierra Leone.”
Pinkney, an African-American, said about sailing into Freetown: “As a descendant of slaves and people who were brought from Sierra Leone and other countries in the Atlantic slave trade, this [was] … an incredible return home.”
As the Amistad sails up the East Coast of the United States on the last leg of its journey, the ship will stop in Baltimore, Washington and New York before its final homecoming in New Haven in time to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the ban on the importation of slaves to the United States.
For more information on the history of the 1839-1841 Amistad events, see the IIP publication The Amistad Revolt: An Historical Legacy of Sierra Leone and the United States.
For more information on the 2007-2008 Amistad Atlantic Freedom Tour, visit the AMISTAD America Web site.
