A dusting of snow overnight reflected the light, making it appear much brighter than it should have been this early in the morning. My breath frosted the metal oil lamp I carried. A small flame flickered in my hand. I didn’t really need it to see. But the warmth felt good. I crept from my cold room off the kitchen toward the roar of the reading room fireplace. Underneath me a floorboard creaked.
“Briton?”
I stopped. Sucked in a breath.
“Briton, that you?”
“Why, yessir, Master Winslow. It’s me.”
“Come in here. Come. And be smart about it.”
I finally exhaled.
In the darkness of the reading room, gold leaf titles glittered orange on book spines. A chandelier in the center seemed to sway back and forth in the heat, tiny fire rainbows leaping from the cut glass. Had I not known Master Winslow was sitting in his high back chair, reading, I would have thought the room empty, since the chair hid him from view. His disembodied voice called out.
“Briton, do you know what day this is?”
“December, sir, the twenty-fifth day of December. Baby Jesus’s birthday, sir.”
Master Winslow’s arm shot out. He tapped the seat to his right. “Briton. Here.” He tapped the seat again. “Have a seat.”
I started toward the front door. “But, sir, I’d just gotten up to fetch more wood for your fire.”
“Nonsense, Briton. I’ve all the wood I need; besides, it’s Christmas today, Briton, Christmas.”
Master Winslow tapped the seat again. “Sit, Briton, you’re a good Christian.”
“I try, sir.”
I set my oil lamp on the mantel above the fireplace, then took a brass snuffer to the flames. When I sat down, I looked over to Master Winslow. He had on no wig nor powder. But a ruffle-top blouse bound his neck tightly, and his cheeks, always too crimson for me, matched the color of the reading robe he wore. The hook of his nose pointed down to thin lips, and beneath them a double chin that ought to belong to a portly body instead of a thin one like his. He’d crossed one leg over the other. An unlit long-stem white pipe rested on the table to his other side. The gilded pages of his Bible lay open in his lap.
“It’s Christmas, Briton. Just think of it. The miracle of it all. That Christ was born today. Soon to die. Then to be resurrected to new life again.”
“A miracle, sir. Can that happen to anyone, sir? I mean dying and then being reborn.”
“Briton, I do believe it can happen to anyone. Even to your kind. If you pray often, obey, and have faith, real faith in Jesus. Even to men of Ham’s curse, like you.”
“To Black men, sir?”
“Yes, Briton, to negroes.”
“Sir, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“You certainly picked a good day.”
“Well, sir, I’ve an intention some time now. Intention to go a voyage to sea.”
Master Winslow shut his Bible. He just stared into the flames.
“I mean, sir, of course, sir, I’d give you most of whatever I made. Nine out of every ten pence of my wages, sir, since I’m yours.”
Master Winslow still said nothing. So, I thought it best if I joined him in silence. I just stared at the flames. Maybe I’d have the same vision as his. Maybe he was searching the flames for an answer. Maybe he was getting hotter in front of the fire, like I was. Maybe he’d get up, in a fit, grab one of the two swords hanging crisscross above the fireplace, and run me through. But I’d said it. I didn’t know what would happen. But I’d said it and there was no taking it back now. Whatever Master Winslow did.
It seemed like hours but I supposed it was just minutes that passed, when Master Winslow stroked the side of his face with his fingers.
“Go a voyage to sea, eh, Briton?”
“Yessir.”
“Ever been on the ocean?”
“No sir, but I know boats. Worked on them at Plymouth, during the cold months when nothing grows.”
“Yes, you do know boats. I’ll give you that. You’d make a fine addition to any crew. But do you think you’d like the sea?”
“Don’t know, sir, but I think I’d like to find out.”
Master Winslow picked up his Bible, thumbed through several pages. His head popped up; fire danced in his eyes.
“You know Jonah?”
I started singing the gospel, real low. “Oh, Jonah! Oh, Jonah! Go down to Nineveh, said the Lord—”
But Master cut me off.
“But Jonah didn’t want to do the Lord’s work, did he? So, he got on a ship to run away. There was a terrible storm and Jonah was thrown overboard. Swallowed by a great fish, he spent three days and three nights in its belly before that fish spit him out. And, finally, Jonah repented. He preached the gospel to the men of Nineveh, and they repented, too.”
“It’s like Jesus,” I said.
“How so?”
“Well, sir, Jonah gettin’ swallowed by that fish an’ all is like Jesus getting nailed to the cross. Fish spitting him out’s like Jesus being resurrected.”
“You think of that yourself, Briton?”
“Yessir.”
“I like that, Briton. I like that a lot. You ready to follow him, Briton?”
“Who, sir, Jesus?”
“No, Briton, Jonah.”
“Don’t know about that fish an’ all, sir. But if my fish ain’t nothing but a ship, then I’m ready to go a voyage to sea and have that ship spit me back out on land.”
Master Winslow chuckled. He closed his Good Book, and took to staring at me. Just like he was staring at the fire. After a while he blinked. “Well, that settles it.” He slapped his thigh. “Briton, a voyage to sea you shall go. Good Fortune is in Plymouth. You will ask for the sloop’s master, John Howland. Known the Howland family for many years. She is bound for Jamaica. There to pick up a load of logwood, I hear. John tells me the mills need it for dye. But tomorrow, Briton, she’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Which means, sir, I must leave today.”
I often walked into Plymouth, which only took me three or four hours. After departing from Master Winslow, I knew I was near to town when the road started downhill and I caught a glimpse of the vast ocean. As far as I could see, a dark blue line drawn on a light blue canvas. I stopped by the livery stable before heading to the harbor. There, I knocked on the stable-keep’s door. David, a Black man, tall like me, opened the door.
“Your master that cruel?” David asked. “Send you to town for a couple of days on Christmas.” He whistled low. Shook his head.
I shook mine back. “Ain’t cruel at all. Gettin’ born again this Christmas, thanks to Master. Just like Jesus. I’m shipping out on Good Fortune and gettin’ born again. Just like that baby was born on Christmas Day.”
David smiled. “Must be what freedom’s like,” he said. “Like gettin’ born again.”
“Don’t know. But I’ll tell you all ’bout freedom when I return in a few months from Jamaica.”
David and I hugged, then I grabbed my cloth satchel from the ground, slung it over my shoulder, and walked down the empty streets, heading toward the docks. Gulls cackled overhead. My breath left me like steam, then came back in cold, but smelling of salt air mixed with manure. Ahead of me only one ship showed any signs of life. Sailors rolled wooden barrels upon a gangplank where they slapped down hard on the ship’s deck. Good Fortune was not long. Maybe forty feet would be my guess. A single tall mast rose from her center. Halyards fastened fore and aft had sails furled up around them.
As I approached the ship, a sharp voice cut through the chilled air. “That barrel goes below on the larboard. Damn you, Walters, I don’t care if it is Christmas Day. Look lively, man, or you’ll have no Christmas supper today and eat nothing but salt water. That’s salted pork for the galley, not silk dresses for the girlies. Take it there, man, and be quick about you. We still have half the ship to load.”
I figured the voice, and the burly man to whom it belonged, must be Captain John Howland. So, I walked toward him. He held a paper in one hand, blew his warm breath through the other, then alternated the hands he used for the paper and his breathing.
“Captain Howland,” I said.
He looked up from his paper. His eyes ran the length of my body several times. “Not taking on any more loads, boy. No space in the holds.” He turned back to his paper.
“Not here with a load, sir.”
He grumbled, “Then what the hell you here for?”
“Reporting for ship’s duty under your command, sir.”
“Hell you are, boy. We got us a Black Jack aboard already, and that’s already one too many.”
“My master, John Winslow, said you were bound for Jamaica, and told me I should ask you to sign on as crew. That it’d be a personal favor to him.”
“Well, did he say all that, now?”
“Yessir, he did.”
“You get the hell outta here, boy.”
He kicked me to the ground. My satchel flew from my hands, my clothes scattered on the hard earth. I looked up at a heavily bearded face, the snarl of yellowed teeth.
“And you don’t come back to my ship ever again.”
I scrambled to collect my clothes.
“Mr. Samuels,” another voice boomed from the ship. “What’s this commotion all about?”
The man in front of me snapped to attention.
“Sir, Captain, sir, this . . . this negro says he wants aboard as crew. And I told him we already got one Black Jack, and we ain’t taking any more.”
I looked over to a gentleman wearing white pants beneath a blue long-tailed coat, with a white blouse and silver buttons, and a matching three-point hat. He strolled the deck of the Good Fortune toward the gangway. The man in front of me bellowed.
“Captain coming ashore. Clear the gangway, you damned salty fools. Clear the gangway. Make way. Captain coming ashore.”
Captain John Howland reminded me a lot of Master. Ruddy cheeks. A similar hooked nose and thin lips but no double chin. The captain, unlike Master, was shorter than me by a few inches. He strutted over to me, clasping one hand in the other behind his back. I stood up from gathering my clothes, stood at attention as I’d seen the others do. The captain wore gloves, and he jabbed me hard with an index finger to my chest.
“You want on board my ship?” He jabbed me in the chest again.
“Yessir.”
“Like my first mate said, we already got our share of Black Jacks as crew.”
“Yessir. I understand that, sir. But my master, John Winslow, said you might do him the great favor of having me ship aboard as crew to Jamaica.”
“John Winslow?”
“Yessir.”
“Your master?”
“Yessir.”
“The John Winslow of Marshfield?”
“Yessir.”
“Wants me to take you as crew to Jamaica?” His finger came at me again but I didn’t flinch.
“Yessir.”
“Hmmmm.” Captain Howland paced around me. “Hmmmm.”
Then he stopped walking in circles and walked over to the man he’d called Samuels.
“Mr. Samuels. You will show this . . . this . . .” The captain turned to me. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Hammon, sir, Briton Hammon.”
“You will show Hammon his berth.”
“But, sir, we don’t—”
The captain snapped, “That’ll be all, Samuels. The Winslows are longtime friends of the Howlands. Not another word from you, Mr. Samuels. You will . . . show . . . Hammon . . . a berth.”
Samuels growled, “Yessir.”
I gathered the remainder of my clothes, and just like that I had the top bunk of a small wooden berth belowdecks in the fo’c’sle. No sooner had I thrown my satchel onto the berth, when Samuels was barking at me. I didn’t dare smile.
“Hammon, damn you, man. Don’t fancy Black Jacks. But if you’re on my ship, you’re under my orders. So, you help Walters load that next barrel.”
We left Plymouth Harbor the day after Christmas. We were not long out to sea, when I first met the other Black Jack aboard. Moses Newmock, a man so light you’d almost swear he was White, hailed from Jamaica. He and I became fast friends. He’d been to sea for twenty years. He taught me all I needed to know about life before the mast—the ropes, and the sails, and the chores a sailor needed to do. And, once, when Little, and Doty, and Webb, and the other boys threatened me harm, Newmock grabbed a belaying pin, jumped ’tween me and the others, and said anyone touch me, they’d have to touch him first. That was the last I had of any trouble from the crew.
On the main, before the mast, brought me great comfort, even when in rough seas with waves taller than any tree I’d ever seen on land. Something about that motion made me sleep better, though it made some of the others vomit. When our quarters reeked badly, I’d stick my head out in the fresh air, careful not to let the captain or the watch officer see me. Looked like I could reach out and touch the stars. On calm nights, looking up at the heavens, I talked to my friend David, back in Plymouth. Talked to him about what it felt like being free.
I think we must have been out on the main for nearly a month, when one day, from the crow’s nest high above us, I heard Collymore shout, “Land, ho!” He pointed off to his right. Every man ran to the rails. The helmsman leaned hard left into the tiller and the Good Fortune swung in the direction of land.
“You ever been with a woman?” Newmock asked.
“No.”
He whistled low. “Got lots and lots of pretty colored gals in Jamaica. ’Bout all of them love sailors.” He laughed. “Ham,” he said. That’s what he’d taken to calling me. “This is really going to be your maiden voyage.” He slapped me on the back.
The next day, we tied up in Jamaica. And that night, with Newmock’s expert guidance, I did enjoy my first maiden voyage. In fact, I enjoyed it for each of the four nights we were there. After that, we were off to Campeche. It took us ten days to get there, and each night along the way seemed like I thought of more and more to tell David about this thing called freedom. After tying up in Campeche, Captain Howland called for Newmock to accompany him and Samuels ashore, since Newmock was the only man who spoke Spanish. A few hours later, Newmock was back onboard the Good Fortune smiling, and for the next several days the crew did nothing but load logwood. After bringing ten tons aboard, my hands, my face, even my sweat turned red. But I was smiling, too, ’cause Newmock said we picked up a full load, and that meant money in our pockets once back in Plymouth. Master had never said if he agreed to him getting nine pence to my one, so I didn’t know how much that would mean for me, but truth is, I didn’t really care. So far, I liked a sailor’s life, and if Master allowed me, I’d turn around and do it again.
Loaded heavy, the Good Fortune showed her weaknesses. We must have been in port for six or eight weeks, replacing planks, pitching the space between them. I even got to dive under the ship with Newmock, take a scraper, or a hammer and chisel, and go at the barnacles growing along the hull. In the evenings, I also got to sample Campeche’s style of maiden voyages.
When it came time to leave, Captain Howland said we were headed straight across the Spanish Main to Cape Florida, turn to the larboard there, and up the coast to Plymouth. No stopping. No provisioning. No dallying. Every man aboard liked what they heard. Fifteen days later, it was me up in the crow’s nest who hollered out, “Land, ho!” and pointed ahead to the larboard. I stayed in the nest as the helmsman, following the captain’s orders, swung the boat to the larboard.
About an hour later, the deep blue of the ocean turned light, light green. I blinked several times, then rubbed my eyes to make sure the sunlight dancing off the water hadn’t blinded me. But the light green was coming up fast, too fast. “To starboard! To starboard!” I sang out.
“Steady on the helm,” cried the captain. “He’s a lubber. Pay him no mind.”
“Aye, Captain,” the helmsman called back. “Steady as she goes.”
“But, Captain, ahead . . .” I called down from the nest.
“Hammon, man, be still, or so help me God, I’ll have you whipped before the mast.”
“You can whip me all you want, sir.”
The captain raised his head, and his fist, in my direction.
“But, sir, there’s a reef dead ahead.”
Good Fortune made an ungodly scraping sound as she skipped over the reef. Then with a huge thump, and a crash, came to a dead stop. As she careened to one side, I lurched for the netting above me and held on.
“Reeeef.”
I heard the helmsman’s feeble cry before the boat finally came to rest. Being barefoot made it easier for me to climb through the rigging descended around me, then shimmy down the high side of the mast. At the bottom, I lay on my back, sliding across the deck to the low side where the crew and the captain had gathered.
Webb came at me with a belaying pin. “God damn it,” he spit. “It’s what you get for having a lubber, and a Black lubber at that, in the nest.”
Newmock held him back.
“Not his fault,” said the helmsman. “He saw it. Called it with plenty of time.”
The crew’s eyes turned to the captain, who seemed to be muttering oaths and imprecations to himself.
“Captain,” Webb said. “If we lessen our load, and get a pinnace with a line on the mast, when the tide comes in, we can right her, and be gone from this godforsaken point.”
And a cheer from the men rose, “Dump the wood!”
“Never,” said the captain. “Never. It’s a half-year’s wages there for everyone. Dump the wood, we might as well be dumping our wages, too.”
Doty, with his thick Irish accent, spoke up. “Captain, better the wood than our lives. ’Sides, what’s wages if you’re too dead to spend ’em. Everything in Davy Jones’s locker is free.”
“We will not dump the wood, and that’s an order. We will wait here for high tide to clear the reef, then use a pinnace to pull us out to sea.”
Our galley was flooded. So, too, our quarters. We had little to eat and nowhere to sleep. Nerves had worn thin. Talk of mutiny floated among the crew. On the second day, the captain announced a new plan. The pinnace would ferry most of the crew ashore, while the captain and one hand would stay onboard waiting for the tide to right the ship. Onshore we would make a camp, forage for food, and cook, until a more suitable rescue could take place.
But as I rowed back to shore with the second group of men, we spied what first seemed to be more rocks exposed by the tide, but soon turned into Indians in canoes.
“Indians! Indians!”
We shouted to the captain, but it was hard to determine if he heard us, and by now we had problems of our own. Sixty of them, several to a canoe, paddled quickly and soon overtook our pinnace. Two canoes, each carrying three men with loaded weapons, stayed to guard us, as we floated adrift. The rest of their party made for the Good Fortune. We watched, in horror, as they boarded the ship and shot the captain, and all aboard, to death. They dumped the bodies overboard, then got back in their canoes and headed for us.
“Lads,” said Samuel. “We are all dead men.”
The canoes were soon upon us. We watched as they reloaded their weapons, then took aim, unleashing a volley that killed three men around me. I do not know why a bullet did not pierce my heart but at the sight of Young, and Little, and Doty covered in blood and slumped over, I dove into the water, preferring sharks or drowning to lead. Three or four minutes later, the crack of another volley sounded. I looked back to see my friend Moses Newmock slumped over the side of the pinnace, blood dripping in the water from his lips.
In a moment, I expected to see fins. But, instead, I saw canoes and the business ends of many rifles pointed in my face. Sopping wet, I was hauled into a canoe and beaten senseless with the handle of a cutlass. The Indians paddled back out to the Good Fortune, where one of them leapt aboard, set a fire, then retreated to a canoe. We bobbed in the water, waited, and watched, to the whooping and hollering of the natives, till Good Fortune burned to the waterline.
My captors kept me five days in their village. Each day I thought of Jonah in the belly of that big fish, and I wondered if I’d ever be spit out. On the fifth day, the Tesoro del Señor, a Spanish schooner, arrived from St. Augustine. As fate, or God’s hand, would have it, I knew the master of this ship, whom I’d met in Campeche, where we both found the company of the same lady appealed to our maiden voyages there.
The natives appeared to have great respect for Capitán Ramon. They talked back and forth with him. While I did not understand what either of them said, Capitán Ramon’s English was excellent.
“They agreed to release you to my custody,” he said. “To travel to Cuba.”
And, just like that, within a day’s time, I stepped off the Tesoro del Señor in the port of Havana. But after four days there, my captors were there, too. I do not know if they paddled from Florida, or managed passage on another Spanish ship. They demanded me released to them, as I was their captive.
“Do not worry, señor,” Ramon said. “We shall take up this matter with the governor.”
Felipe de Fondesviela y Ondeano, marqués de la Torre, spoke abruptly to the natives.
“He is not happy,” Ramon said. “That they killed everyone aboard the English ship except you.”
There was more back-and-forth between the marqués de la Torre and the natives. Ramon turned to me.
“The Indians said they kept you alive because they know that ‘men with burned skins’ are more valuable. The governor said that from now on he will pay the Indians ten silver pieces a head for English brought to him alive, and agreed to twelve silver pieces for men like you with ‘burned skins.’”
After their intercourse with the governor, the natives seemed pleased, and I never saw them again. For a year, I lived in the governor’s castle and worked for him. I freely roamed the streets of Havana. I even came to speak passable Spanish. One evening, though, while out walking, a Spanish press-gang grabbed me, threw me into prison, and that next morning informed me I’d been pressed into service aboard the San Pablo, bound that day to Madrid. I refused to go, and was then thrown into a dungeon. There I stayed for almost five years. I knew no bleaker, darker belly than that of this iron and brick fish I’d been swallowed by. I appealed to anyone who came into that thankless pit to bring my name up to the governor, but it was not until an English merchant vessel sailing out of Boston stopped in Havana for repairs that I received any relief. One Betty Howard, the wife of the captain, at dinner with the governor, interceded on my behalf, and the next day I was ordered released to resume my stay at the governor’s castle. I vowed then to escape this island prison, even with the pleasantries I now enjoyed again.
When an English twenty-gun warship pulled into Havana harbor, I snuck aboard and hid, revealing myself only as we left port for open water. I pleaded with the captain to take me, but he insisted he would not, and sent me back ashore in a pinnace. My attempted escape displeased de la Torre, who now had me closely guarded. In a year’s time, however, perceiving a lapse in my guard’s schedule, I slipped out of the castle and headed toward the harbor, where I knew a sloop bound for Jamaica was ready to cast off. But de la Torre’s guards stopped me before I could get to the sloop.
Now, I was ordered to be one of six chair-bearers for Cuba’s head bishop, who traveled around the country blessing and baptizing natives from a chair carried on our shoulders. I actually was paid for my service, and I lived quite well, though I continually searched for a way out. That way finally came in the form of the Beaver, an English man-of-war that stopped into port. With the intercession of a kindly benefactor, the lieutenant of the Beaver agreed to take me on board, and refused to hand me over to the Spanish who boarded his vessel, demanding my release.
Finally, I was heading away from Cuba. We stopped at Jamaica for only a few days, though long enough for me to renew my skills at captaining maiden voyages. Then, the Beaver set sail for England, as consort to a convoy of merchantmen. We arrived safely just north of Dover. I thought I might finally find some respite, but apparently my seamanship skills had grown to the point where I was now in high demand. I was passed between several man-of-wars until landing on the seventy-four-gun Hercules, which immediately left port. But before getting away from the Channel we were engaged in a smart battle with an eighty-four-gun French warship.
Captain John Porter, master of the Hercules, lost his leg in the fight, and seventy of our crew were killed. I myself received a head wound from being grazed by a bullet, and an arm wound where I’d been cut by a saber. But I recovered quickly. Seemed now that seamanship was all I knew. I shipped out on another warship but was discharged for my arm injuries. But land wasn’t for me. Not long after that discharge, I got a severe fever which landed me in a small London apartment to recover. Lying in bed, close to death, again the image of Jonah and that big fish came to mind. I had no work, and I’d spent all my money, so I was now nearly destitute.
I felt compelled to sign on to a slaver bound for West Africa. The thought of manning a ship that would pick up people who looked like me, treat them like cattle, then deliver them for sale made me queasy, but lack of money made me even more ill. No other ship would have me now, especially with my arm injury.
The night before shipping off on the slaver, I overheard some men in a tavern talking about rigging a ship bound for Plymouth, captained by a man named Wyatt. So, I approached Captain Wyatt, explained to him my circumstances, and my years before the mast. For the next three months I re-planked and re-caulked his ship, mended sails, and generally got her ready to sail.
One day, while working in a hold, I heard a voice that sounded very familiar. I walked out on deck and saw Captain Wyatt speaking to another man. I shook my head. Rubbed my eyes. But before approaching I asked the ship’s mate who was it that the captain was conversing with.
“Why, that’s General Winslow,” the mate said.
By this time, I was bursting at the seams, and I determined to take my chances even if I was wrong. I walked down the gangway toward Captain Wyatt and this other man. About twenty yards away I said, “Master Winslow?”
Both men swung around to me. But the cheeks of the man on the right flushed dark red. Then, I knew for certain.
“Briton? Briton, is that you?”
“Yessir, Master Winslow, it’s me.”
We rushed to each other and hugged each other. Tears came before any words.
“I thought you were lost at sea,” Winslow said. “Thought I’d never see you again.”
“Not lost, sir. Just in the belly of the fish for three very long days and three longer nights. But I finally got spit onto land.”
Master Winslow and I sailed back to Plymouth with Captain Wyatt. Seemed we were all talked out by the time the ship docked. Master Winslow let me stay in Plymouth for as long as I wanted. He left for Marshfield in a wagon sent to pick him up. I walked over to the livery stable, knocked on David’s door.
The door swung open. David’s eyes flashed wide. “Briton, my friend.” He patted me on the back. “Heard the Good Fortune and all aboard were lost off the Florida coast. Thought I’d never see you again.”
“David,” I said. “Let’s find a place we can sit. I want to tell you all about freedom.”
I never did go a voyage to sea again. But whenever I pass along the ocean, on my way into Plymouth, I look out to sea, I take a deep breath, and I give thanks that I once did.1
* * *
Briton Hammon was a Black Jack, a Black seaman in the Age of Sail, and he wasn’t alone. By the early 1800s, Black men worked at 18 percent of all American seafaring jobs,2 a remarkable number when the 1800 census also recorded Blacks as just over 18 percent of the total American population.3 Black Jacks like Hammon endured the owners, the captains, the whips, the fears, and the general privations and hardships of being sailors, while also enduring the brutality and racism they encountered being Black and being at sea. In exchange, they enjoyed the adventure, the relative freedom, and the autonomy of a sailor’s life. Aboard ships, they worked as cooks and deckhands, as first mates, and, in some cases, even as captains. Some Black Jacks were free. Others were slaves, like Hammon, hired out to the benefit of their owners.
Southern plantation slaves are popularly thought of as being either “field slaves” or “house slaves.” Field slaves, the common wisdom goes, worked a hard life outside. House slaves worked an easier life inside. From there, many stereotypical images of slavery evolved, none more famous than Malcolm X’s contrasting distinction between the “house Negro” and the “field Negro.”
You have to read the history of slavery to understand this. There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro. And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put ’em back on the plantation. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master—in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master—good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That’s why he didn’t want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he’d say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” When the master’s house caught afire, he’d try and put the fire out. That was the house Negro.
But then you had some field Negroes, who lived in huts, had nothing to lose. They wore the worst kind of clothes. They ate the worst food. And they caught hell. They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. Oh yes, they did. If the master got sick, they’d pray that the master died. If the master’s house caught afire, they’d pray for a strong wind to come along. This was the difference between the two. And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes. I’m a field Negro.4
As a charismatic orator, Malcolm with this two-minute riff brought audiences to their feet, laughing and shouting encouragement. After first debuting this sketch in 1963, it became a staple of many of his talks until his assassination in 1965. Unfortunately, he failed at the very homework he urged of others. Malcolm had not read the history of slavery well enough to know that not only was his a false and often baseless dichotomy, but also that he’d left out at least one important category of slave. Had Malcolm done his homework, perhaps the “boat Negro” would have been incorporated into his routine. Plantation owners feared boat Negroes more than they feared either house Negroes or field Negroes.
“Dont let the Boat Negroes go amongst the Plantation Slaves,” South Carolina plantation owner Henry Laurens cautioned his overseers in 1764.5
Slaveholders like Laurens called boat Negroes patroons, a strange title given the earlier Dutch usage of the word for owners of large manors and slaves in and around New York City, and up and down the Hudson River.
“Load the boat as well as you can & take care to prevent any intercourse between Boat and Plantation Negroes and let me know how Abram the Patroon of the Boat behaves,” Laurens asked his overseers in a 1765 letter.6
Throughout the coastal southeastern colonies in the nineteenth-century United States, the small workboats run by patroons went by many similar names—periaguas, petty-augers, pereaugers, periaugers, petiaugers, pettiaugers, peteaugers, petteaugers, piraguas (Spanish), pirogues (French)—all tracing their origin to a Galibi (Carib language) word of first contact, piraua, meaning “canoe.”
Irish medical doctor and naturalist John Brickell, who traveled through Virginia and North Carolina in the early eighteenth century, wrote,
And Laftly, the large and Navigable Rivers and Creeks that are to be met with watering and adorning this Country, well ftored with vaft quantities of Fifh and Water Fowl . . . They make very neceffary Veffels for carriage of their Commodities by Water, which are called in thefe parts Periaugers and Canoes, which are the Boats made ufe of in this Country . . . 7
Periaguas were inexpensive boats, built on plantation grounds rather than in shipyards, from age-old techniques first developed by Native Americans. Brickell goes on to say the boats were “generally made out of one peice of large Timber, and that moft commonly of the Cyprefs kind, which they make hollow and fhaped like a Boat, with Mafts, Oars, and Padles, according to their fize and bignefs.”
Fire or chisels hollowed out the boats, which ranged in length between thirty and forty feet. Some were monohulls. Others were like catamarans made by joining each half of a split log with planking. Paddles, sails, and long ferrymen poles were used for propulsion and steerage. Periaguas weighed anywhere from 3 to 20 tons with a volume of up to 4,200 gallons. Consider an average bathtub has a volume of forty-two gallons. Periaguas were typically manned by crews of five or more. Patroons commanded periaguas, and patroons were frequently Black men, slave or free.
Working the rivers was dangerous, and exciting, said “Look-Up” Jones, an ex-slave from South Carolina, and a patroon. Richard Jones had earned the nickname “Look-Up” from his constant skyward gaze. He said, “I run on Broad River fer over 24 years as boatman, carrying Marse Jim’s cotton to Columbia fer him. Us had de excitement on dem trips. Lots times water was deeper dan a tree is high. Sometimes I was throwed and fell in de water. I rise up every time, though, and float and swim back to de boat and git on again.”8
Owners often outfitted periagua crews with special uniforms unique to each plantation. Henry Laurens dressed his boatmen in “Jack Robbins blue pea jackets, trousers of brown cloth, and a ‘blanket Surtout’ [overcoat].” Boatmen slaves on the Elliot plantation in Charleston, according to British journalist William Howard Russell, wore “red flannel jackets and white straw hats with broad ribands.”9 Like horses at a racetrack, these slave crews from different plantations would often race their periaguas against each other for entertainment, and gambling, of their owners.10
But the real business of patroons and their periaguas was making money for plantation owners. Shipping was the lifeblood of the American colonies and the early United States. Without ships, no colonists would ever have arrived. Without ships, no colonists would ever have survived. Without ships, no colonists would ever have thrived. The reason the Virginia Tidewater, the South Carolina Lowcountry, and the North Carolina lowlands prospered was because of their river systems. Natives had used these extensive waterways for millennia to trade, to travel, and to make war. As Europeans forcibly evicted these natives, the river systems remained a means to explore deeper into native-held territory, to conduct war against them, and then to claim their lands.
But rivers were also the means to ship products out. On periaguas of all sizes, manned by patroons and their slave crews, boats on these networks of rivers carried tobacco, sugar, rice, and cotton to larger ports where they could be injected into the international trade heading north along the coast, or east across the Atlantic, creating power and wealth for the White men who lived remotely, far upstream. And on other legs of this trade, products from Europe or the Caribbean might travel on large ships only as far as ports at Norfolk, or Charleston, or Savannah; from there the final miles to consumers meant travel by periaguas upriver. Goods circulated this way.
Briton Hammon and Moses Newmock went “a voyage to sea” to pick up logwood, a tree with a bloodred heartwood used by New England textile mills to dye the cotton that patroons like “Look-Up” Jones ferried from plantations to ships waiting in coastal harbors, frequently with Black Jacks as crew. Hammon and Newmock and Jones, and countless of thousands of Black Jacks, were essential links in the chain of trade that created wealth for, and conferred power to, plantation owners, ship owners, ship captains, mill owners, and slaveholders, like John Winslow.
Henry Laurens presided over the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington relied on periaguas and their crews to bring their tobacco to market. Families like the Winslows, Laurenses, Jeffersons, Washingtons, and the generations of their descendants reaped the financial and political rewards that Hammon and Newmock and Jones, and their descendants, never did.
With slaveholders deriving such great benefit from their Black Jacks, what did they have to fear? What is it that Malcolm did not know?
Anyone who’s ever been at the wheel of a boat knows how unpredictably it steers. Boats are subject to the vagaries of wind, weather, and water. For those who pilot them, the elements are their masters more so than men. Slaves knew this. Slaveholders did, too, and they feared the freedom experienced by these Black Jacks even as they reaped the rewards of their bondage.
When a slave revolt placed ex-slave Toussaint L’Ouverture in charge of Haiti, the US Congress, in 1799, debated the merits of recognizing the L’Ouverture government. Jefferson, writing to James Madison, who was out of office at the time, expressed his concerns. “We may expect therefore black crews, supercargoes & missionaries thence into the Southern states,” he said. “[I]f this combustion can be introduced among us under any veil whatever, we have to fear it.”11
Black Jacks were not only in the midst of trafficking in goods, but trafficking in ideas. “Worldly and often multilingual slave sailors regularly subverted plantation discipline,” notes nautical historian W. Jeffrey Bolster.12 A Black seafaring captain, Paul Cuffee, helped foment the largest slave rebellion in South Carolina history, led by Denmark Vesey. Frederick Douglass used his skill as an enslaved ship’s caulker, and his extensive maritime knowledge, to deck out in sailor’s garb and borrow a Seamen’s Protection Certificate from a free Black sailor. Then on September 3, 1838, he slipped away from Baltimore to Philadelphia by train, blending in unnoticed among other free Black Jacks. From Philadelphia he traveled to New York City and, as a freeman, to the shipbuilding town of New Bedford, Massachusetts.13 Blacks also filled the ranks of pirates, led by men like Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, and William Lewis of the Flying Gang.14
Many held tightly to their Seamen’s Protection Certificate, issued by the United States beginning in 1796, which identified them as citizens under the protection of America both abroad and at home, regardless of race. An anomaly to be sure, yet this was one of the first official documents declaring free Blacks to be citizens of this country. Black Jacks returned from sea not only with these documents, but with good news and good hope. Black seamen, slaves and free, saw a world of promise beyond slavery, and they returned to Black communities throughout the United States with just such news, helping to agitate and organize for change.
When they were paid, or if they ran a black market beyond the watchful eyes of their owners, Black Jacks often made good money for their travails. They provided for families on land and helped build institutions such as churches, which became the pillars of Black communities across the nation. More than one Black sailor slipped effortlessly from the pulpit of a ship to the pulpit of a church, where they could preach and teach from real-world experience.
Black Jacks played a crucial role in creating and maintaining the extensive international mercantile system that generated White power and wealth throughout colonial and early America. But they also planted seeds that would one day flower into the loud, sustained calls for justice and equality, challenging these same American institutions of power and wealth.