Complicity by Anne Farrow

Author:Anne Farrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307414793
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

The rebellion aboard the Spanish vessel Amistad, depicted here, is remembered as a victory in America’s fight against slavery. The Amistad incident, however, occurred at almost the same time as a similar revolt on the Creole, a U.S. vessel transporting slaves from Virginia to Louisiana. Death of Capt. Ferrer, the Captain of the Amistad, July 1839, The Connecticut Historical Society Museum, Hartford, Connecticut

The ugly crisis began when the Kentucky’s accomplice ship, the Porpoise,sailed into Rio with two child slaves on board, both boys branded on the chest with the mark of their Brazilian owner. The Porpoise, of Maine, was a widely suspected slave tender. The ship had already been to Africa in 1843 with two other American slave ships.

One of those ships, the Hope, of New York, had carried the kind of cargo that made ships subject to seizure whether or not they were carrying slaves at the time. On board were rum casks filled with huge quantities of water. Lumber to build a temporary slave deck was listed as material for a frame house. A crate marked HATS carried an unassembled boiler for cooking food for large quantities of people. And boxes marked SOAP were filled with manacles.

Such deceptions easily fooled customs agents and U.S. Navy officers, especially if they wanted an excuse to look the other way. But any authorities willing to seize an obvious slave vessel such as the Hope were thwarted in court by a maze of owners. The Porpoise, for example, though registered in Maine, had been turned over to Maxwell, Wright & Company, U.S. coffee traders in Rio who chartered her out, through an English broker, to one of Rio’s wealthiest slave merchants, Manoel Pinto da Fonseca.

In January 1844, Fonseca acquired control of the Kentucky when it arrived from New York. Two months later, he sent it to the east coast of Africa to rendezvous with the Porpoise. Together, the Kentucky and the Porpoise provide a blueprint of the manner and depth of U.S. involvement in the illegal slave trade.

The part-owner of the Kentucky had delivered her from New York to Rio. From Rio, she’d sailed for Africa under Captain George Douglass of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Captain Cyrus Libby of Portland, Maine, had commanded the Porpoise.

Both ships spent most of the summer of 1844 sailing from one place to another in the vicinity of Mozambique, trying to acquire a full cargo of slaves. In late August, with slaves in short supply, Fonseca’s agent settled for 500.

Then, working quickly, the two crews began to build a slave deck in the hold of the Kentucky. The Porpoise was moored so close to the Kentuckythat Captain Douglass slept aboard the Porpoise and worked days aboard the Kentucky. In early September, boats from the Porpoise helped ferry captured Africans from the shore onto the Kentucky.

Months later the second mate of the Kentucky, Thomas Boyle of Boston, testified that Douglass purposely left the American colors behind when the two ships left Africa. Boyle himself helped paint out KENTUCKY OF NEW

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