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Maritime Masters and Seafaring Slaves
in Bermuda, 1680–1783
Michael J. Jarvis
| THE grey dawn light on the morning of May
9, 1782, revealed to the masthead
lookout of the Continental frigate Deane a strange sail on
the horizon. Even at a distance, he guessed that the vessel with
the raked-back masts to leeward was a Bermudian privateer. This
late in the War of Independence, only fast runners, privateers,
and warships cruised the waters off the Carolinas. She would bring
welcome prize money to the Deane's crew, rounding out a highly
successful cruise. Capture was almost certain, since she was caught
on a lee shore with nowhere to run and her sixteen six-pound cannon
were no match for the frigate's twenty-eight twelve-pounders. Trapped
and out-gunned, Captain George Kidd struck his colors, and the Bermudian
privateer Regulator fell prize to the United States navy.1 |
1 |
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men of the Deane were no doubt amazed to find that seventy
of the seventy-five-man crew on the Regulator were black
slaves. Kidd and his four officers were the only white men on board.
A further surprise occurred at the vice admiralty court trial of
the Regulator when, breaking with precedent, the Massachusetts
justices offered the slaves among the crew their freedom rather
than condemn them, as forfeited chattel, to be sold at auction.
To a man, the black Bermudians declined the offer and asked instead
to be sent to their island home as prisoners of war on the next
flag-of-truce. Rather than embrace the freedom offered to them by
this new republic, they chose to return to Bermuda and slavery.
Contemporary Bostonians and modern readers alike might puzzle over
the seemingly incongruous choice of the Regulator's black
sailors. To understand their decision requires a close look at their
complex motives, embedded in the structure of Bermuda's maritime
community, its male workforce, and centuries of historic development
of slavery on the island.2
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Nearly six hundred miles to the east
of the North Carolina coast, the island of Bermuda maintains a lone
outpost in the midst of the wide North Atlantic. Neither American
nor Caribbean, this ancient British colony has escaped the attention
of most colonial historians, a neglect perhaps owing to its small
size and anomalous location.
3
Far from marginal, Bermuda lay at the crossroads of the Atlantic
world in the age of sail, when one contemporary claimed that nine
out of ten vessels sailing between the Caribbean and Europe passed
within fifty miles of the island. It was the most central location
in England's American empire, roughly equidistant from all the colonies
in a broad thousand-mile arc from Newfoundland to Antigua (see Figure
III on page
584
). The Gulf Stream to the west, the northeast trade winds to the
south, and the Westerlies to the north enabled vessels to sail easily
to and from Bermuda. Its location was a vital asset in an age when
people, information, and trade traveled only as fast as wind and
waves allowed.
4
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