Although the characters in the story are fictitious, many elements of Chasing the Nightbird are based on historical fact. Mid-nineteenth-century New Bedford was an ethnically and culturally diverse city and home to Cape Verdeans, Quakers, and fugitive slaves.
Even before the Revolutionary War, whaleships were picking up crew on the Cape Verde Islands. When New Bedford became the hub of the whaling industry, Cape Verdeans started immigrating to the city. Though they tended to live in their own neighborhoods, it wasn’t until later in the nineteenth century that they formed a significant proportion of the workforce in New Bedford’s textile mills.
Of the over 700 whaling ships in existence in the 1840s, New Bedford was home port for more than 400. It became known as “The City that Lit the World” and grew rich supplying whale oil for lamps and spermaceti (a liquid wax that came from the sperm whale) for candles. Wealthy captains and merchants built mansions on the hill above the harbor.
Many of these captains and ship owners were Quakers, who believe all people are created equal in the eyes of God. Quakers took an early stand against slavery and were influential in founding the abolitionist movement. This helped to make the whaling industry and New Bedford a haven for fugitive slaves.
It’s hard to imagine Quakerism being compatible with the authentic whalemen’s commandments Lucky lives by in the story. But whalemen also played an important role in the abolitionist movement. A racially and culturally diverse group, the nature and difficulty of their work led to judgments of each other based on ability rather than skin color.
Frederick Douglass escaped slavery using sailor’s protection papers given to him by a friend. When he arrived in New Bedford in 1838, he found people of color “much more spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a determination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards.”
There are documented cases of attempted kidnappings of fugitives from the city. In 1851 the bell at Liberty Hall was rung to warn of the approach of federal marshals sent to enforce The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal to harbor an escaped slave. The law further mandated that anyone suspected of being a runaway slave could be arrested without warrant and turned over to a claimant on nothing more than his sworn testimony of ownership. Also, a suspected black slave could not ask for a jury trial nor testify on his or her behalf. Despite this law, no fugitive is ever known to have been returned to slavery from New Bedford.
From the mid-1840s to 1860 between 300 and 700 fugitive slaves lived in New Bedford.
While some escaped by ship, others, like Daniel in the story, used directions they heard in songs such as “Follow the Drinking Gourd” to travel north on foot. Still others were led to New Bedford by conductors on the Underground Railroad, such as Harriet Tubman, who also spent time in New Bedford.
Other elements of the story, including whaleships outfitted as slave ships (as Jessup’s ship was) and the attempted rescue of slaves by ship (as Lucky and Daniel set off to do in the end) are also based on documented accounts.
Below is a list of my main sources.
Blockson, Charles L. The Underground Railroad: First Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North. New York: Prentice Hall, 1987.
Church, Albert Cook. Whale Ships and Whaling. New York: Bonanza Books, 1938.
Cohn, Michael and Michael K. H. Platzer. Black Men of the Sea. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1978.
Grover, Kathryn. The Fugitives Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Grover, Kathryn. “Fugitive Slave Traffic and the Maritime World of New Bedford.” A Research Paper prepared for New Bedford Whaling Historic Park and the Boston Support Office of the National Park Service, 1998.
Lobban, Richard A., Jr. Cape Verde: Crioulo Colony to Independent Nation. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.
McKissack, Patricia C. and Fredrick L. Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999.
Michaels, Susan (Producer), Woodard, Alfre (Host). (2002). Underground Railroad: A New documentary that unveils the history heroes and villains of the Abolitionist movement. [VHS], New York: The History Channel.
Thompson, Warren E. “Kidnappings in the North.” Spinner: People and Culture in Southeastern Massachusetts, Vol IV, (1988), p. 69.
Note: The knots pictured on the chapter opener pages came from Knots, Splices, and Rope Work by A. Hyatt Verrill, first published in 1917 and released in 2004 as eBook #13510 by Project Gutenberg.