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“They Proved to Be Very Good Sailors”: Slavery and Freedom in the South Sea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2021

Tamara J. Walker
Tamara J. Walker*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article mines archival sources and published accounts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to highlight the extent to which enslaved men, women, and children in the South Sea came into contact with British corsairs. It does so in ways that lend to three important observations: that people of African descent occupied a central role within the history of British corsair activity in the South Sea; that British corsair activity in the South Sea forms part of the history of the slave trade; and that there are important differences between British corsairs’ use of enslaved and free people of African descent in the South Sea as compared to the Atlantic World. The latter point, which rests on the recognition of the particular linguistic skills and geographic knowledge held by people of African descent in the South Sea and British corsairs' particular vulnerabilities, also provides a useful framework for future research on both the specificity of black life in the region and the meanings those skills and knowledge held for Africans and their descendants themselves.

Keywords

slaverypiracyslave tradeAfrican Diaspora18th century
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 439 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

I wish to thank Herman L. Bennett, Kristen Block, Sherwin K. Bryant, and Rachel O'Toole for their generous and generative comments on earlier versions of this article. I also benefited tremendously from feedback given by Anna Brickhouse, Thomas Klubock, Ricardo Padrón, and the faculty affiliates of the University of Virginia Centro de las Américas during my time as a Visiting Scholar in Fall 2016. Also of great benefit was the feedback from Alejandro de la Fuente, Tamar Herzog, and the students in their Spring 2019 graduate seminar at Harvard University, and from Rafael Gaune Corradi and the members of the Laboratorio de Mundos Coloniales y Modernos at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile during my visit in Summer 2019. Finally, I am beyond grateful to the three anonymous readers at The Americas for their rigorous critiques and suggestions for revision, and to Ben Vinson III, John R. Schwaller, and the editorial board for their patience, guidance, and kindness on my long path to publication.

References

1. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles que salieron del Puerto de Quinfel del Reyno de Irlanda por Septiembre de 1703, y entraron al Sur, por Enero de 1704, por mar ancho a vista de la Tierra del Fuego en dos embarcaciones de Particulares nombrada S. Gorge y Sinportgalera, y sus cabos Guillermo Dampier, y Thomas Stradling, por la fuga que hizieron de la Carcel publica de la Ciudad de los Reyes del Reyno del Peru, el dia 9 de Enero por la tarde de dicho Año de 1708, y assi mismo contra un negro nombrado Fernando de Velasco, y dos mestizos Agustin de Pinares, y Nicolas de Arteaga, y por los hechos antecedents, y subsequentes a la dicha fuga, primera, y segunda aprehencion de dichos Ingleses, que se remiten, Archivo General de Indias [Spain; hereafter, AGI], Lima 484.

2. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles que salieron del Puerto de Quinfel del Reyno de Irlanda por Septiembre de 1703, y entraron al Sur, por Enero de 1704, por mar ancho a vista de la Tierra del Fuego en dos embarcaciones de Particulares nombrada S. Gorge y Sinportgalera, y sus cabos Guillermo Dampier, y Thomas Stradling, por la fuga que hizieron de la Carcel publica de la Ciudad de los Reyes del Reyno del Peru, el dia 9 de Enero por la tarde de dicho Año de 1708, y assi mismo contra un negro nombrado Fernando de Velasco, y dos mestizos Agustin de Pinares, y Nicolas de Arteaga, y por los hechos antecedents, y subsequentes a la dicha fuga, primera, y segunda aprehencion de dichos Ingleses, que se remiten, AGI, Lima 484.

3. Peter T. Bradley, British Maritime Enterprise in the New World (466), puts their number at nearly 1,000. This group included both pirates and privateers, between whom there were obvious legal distinctions, given that the latter carried official letters of marque that authorized their presence in the region on behalf of the British crown. For more on the origins and workings of privateering in this era, see Beattie, Tim, British Privateering Voyages of the Early Eighteenth Century (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hanna, Mark G., Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2015)Google Scholar, which shows how, in the late seventeenth century, the term “privateer” came to imply “a subtle combination of independent action and communal, patriotic purpose.”

4. On the advice of one of the anonymous readers for this piece, I have chosen to use the label “corsairs” primarily as a catch-all that encompasses privateers and privateering, for reasons of linguistic economy. I also see this as a useful way to indirectly acknowledge the perspective of the Spanish crown, local officials, indigenous populations, and persons of African descent who saw little difference between the two groups and their practices. In other words, while I understand that piracy and privateering were not synonymous—least of all to privateers, who often took great offense at being called pirates—I also wish to honor the experiences of those victims, captives, and even collaborators for whom such distinctions were largely semantic.

5. On the perceived disposability of Africans, see Arne Bialuschewski, “Pirates, Black Sailors and Seafaring Slaves in the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1716–1726,” Journal of Caribbean History 45:2 (2011): 143–158. Bialuschewski describes (146) an incident typical of the time and place, involving a pirate ship that had been unloaded and careened off St. Croix before being set on fire with 20 Africans on board. “These pirates,” he writes, “regarded slaves as disposable, showing no care for them in instances when their own lives were threatened. Of course, the black men had never been accepted as equal members of the marauding gang.” He also notes other instances in which pirates left Africans behind when overtaking slave ships or delivered them to slavers in North Carolina and elsewhere. As the captives did not speak English and lacked sailing expertise, Bialuschewski claims they generally proved useless in the eyes of pirates. While Marcus Rediker's Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004, ebook) presents a more inclusive view of piracy and suggests that pirate vessels functioned as “multiracial maroon communities” (55) wherein enslaved and free people of African descent found freedom and community, he also acknowledges that “even though many pirates were black, when they took prize vessels, as they did near African and New World ports, slaves were sometimes part of the captured ‘cargo’ and were in turn treated as such—traded and sold as if commodities like any other.” (location 3009). On the creation of safe harbors in the Atlantic World, see Mark Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire. He describes these “pirate nests” as land-based communities (in Boston, Philadelphia, and Port Royal in Jamaica) where pirates could enjoy their gains and dedicate themselves to planting and other more respectable pursuits.

6. Ernesto Bassi, An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada's Transimperial Greater Caribbean World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). For more on black sailors in the Atlantic context, see David S. Cecelski, The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)

7. Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 73–108.

8. Trade and Plantations; Board of Commissioners for: Plan for expedition to S. America submitted to: 1708, British Library [hereafter BL], Manuscripts, Add MS 61644 A, fol. 41. See also Bradley, Peter T., The Lure of Peru: Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea, 1598–1701 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bradley, Peter T., British Maritime Enterprise in the New World from the Late Fifteenth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

9. The story of Drake's passage is often told, across various sources, but the details of this summary are taken from The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, being his next voyage that to Nombre de Dios, formerly imprinted; Carefully collected out of the notes of Master Francis Fletcher Preacher in this imployment, and divrs others his followers in the same (London: Printed for Nicholas Bourne, 1628), 34–61. For a foundational study of the early history of piracy in the region, which places Drake's voyage in broader context, see Kris Lane, “Buccaneers in the South Sea,” in Pillaging the Empire: Global Piracy on the High Seas, 1500–1750 (New York: Routledge, 1998).

10. The texts I cite here form the basis of a large corpus that includes original accounts, edited volumes, and re-editions: William Dampier, Captain William Dampier's Voyages Round the World: Describing particularly, the Coasts and Islands in the East and West-Indies. The South-Sea Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico. The Countries of Tonquin, Achin and Malacca. The Cape of Good Hope, New-Holland, &c. (London: Printed for James and John Knapton, at the Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1729); Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World: First to the South-Seas, thence to the East-Indies, and homewards by the Cape of Good Hope. Begun in 1708, and finished in 1711 (London: A. Bell, 1712); and George Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World by the Way of the Great South Sea: Performed in the Years 1719, 20, 21, 22, in the Speedwell of London, of 24 Guns and 100 Men (under His Majesty's Commission to cruise on the Spaniards in the late War with the Spanish Crown) till she was cast away on the Island of Juan Fernandes, in May 1720; and afterwards continue in the Recovery, the Jesus Maria and Sacra Familia, &c. (London: Printed for J. Senex, at the Globe against St. Dunstan's Church, Fleetstreet; W. and J. Innys, at the Prince-Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard; and J. Osborn and T. Longman, at the Ship in Pater-noster Row, 1723).

11. B. M. H. Rogers, “Dampier's Voyage of 1703,” The Mariner's Mirror 10:4 (1924): 366–381; 371.

12. Captain William Betagh, A Voyage Round the World: Being an account of a remarkable enterprise, begun in the year 1719, chiefly to cruise on the Spaniards in the great South Ocean (London: T. Combes, 1728).

13. See for example Peter Bradley's The Lure of Peru, and British Maritime Enterprise in the New World; and Richard Frohock, Buccaneers and Privateers: The Story of the English Rover, 1675–1725 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

14. Matthew Restall, “A Handful of Adventurers: The Myth of Exceptional Men,” in Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). On the roles of indigenous and Asian actors in the South Sea and the broader world of the Pacific Ocean, see for example Matt K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); David Igler, The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); and David Armitage and Alison Bashford, eds., Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, and People (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

15. Dampier, Voyages Round the World, 249.

16. Dampier, Voyages Round the World, 249.

17. Ann Pollard Rowe, Costume and History in Highland Ecuador (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012), 99–103; William Dampier, Voyages Round the World, 158.

18. Captain Swan was killed a year later, which only deepens the mystery about what became of the child.

19. New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd ed. Erin McKean, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, also available at http://www.oxfordamericandictionary.com/.

20. Dampier, Voyages Round the World, 365.

21. See for example Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians and Their Shared History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

22. The group also included Edward Cooke, who published his own account of the journey, titled A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform'd in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710, and 1711(London: H. M. for B. Lintot and R. Gosling, 1712).

23. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 8.

24. Arne Bialuschewski, “Pirates, Black Sailors and Seafaring Slaves in the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1716–1726,” Journal of Caribbean History 45:2 (2011): 143–158; 145.

25. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 212.

26. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 248.

27. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 271.

28. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 247–248.

29. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 248.

30. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 256.

31. John C. Appleby, Women and English Piracy, 1540–1720: Partners and Victims of Crime (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2015), 182–183.

32. Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 279.

33. For analyses of the Black Legend in Spanish and Spanish American history, see Benjamin Keen, “The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities,” Hispanic American Historical Review 49:4 (1969): 703–719; Charles Gibson, The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and New (New York: Random House, 1971); and María DeGuzmán, Spain's Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

34. Rogers’ discussion of “she-Negroes” is also interesting for the contrast it offers to how he and his crew treated Spanish women. Describing an encounter with a Spanish “gentlewoman and her family” (which included the woman's 18-year-old daughter and the girl's new husband) who were taken prisoner from a ship en route to Panama, Rogers wrote of treating the women with exceptional kindness. “We assigned them the Great Cabin,” Rogers claimed (242), “and none were suffer'd to intrude amongst them.” Whether it was true or not, it marked a clear difference in his thinking when it came to women of African descent, who he had urged to take responsibility for themselves. Rogers further noted how “modestly” his crew had behaved towards the “Ladies of Guayaquil,” which suggested that the men's careful treatment of women was a source of pride.

35. Sherwin K. Bryant, Rachel Sarah O'Toole, and Ben Vinson III, eds., Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 2.

36. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles que salieron del Puerto de Quinfel del Reyno de Irlanda por Septiembre de 1703, y entraron al Sur, por Enero de 1704, por mar ancho a vista de la Tierra del Fuego en dos embarcaciones de Particulares nombrada S. Gorge y Sinportgalera, y sus cabos Guillermo Dampier, y Thomas Stradling, por la fuga que hizieron de la Carcel publica de la Ciudad de los Reyes del Reyno del Peru, el dia 9 de Enero por la tarde de dicho Año de 1708, y assi mismo contra un negro nombrado Fernando de Velasco, y dos mestizos Agustin de Pinares, y Nicolas de Arteaga, y por los hechos antecedents, y subsequentes a la dicha fuga, primera, y segunda aprehencion de dichos Ingleses, que se remiten: AGI, Lima 484.

37. William Funnell, A Voyage Round the World, Containing an Account of Captain Dampier's Expedition into the South Seas in the Ship St George in the Years 1703 and 1704 (London: W. Botham, 1707).

38. I have anglicized what were likely hispanicized transcriptions of the men's names, which appeared in the record as Guillermo Roberts and Juan Noles.

39. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fol. 191. The original Spanish reads: “Ai fuera están unos paisanos tuyos.”

40. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fols. 188–191.

41. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fols. 188–191.

42. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fols. 300–301.

43. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fol. 196.

44. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fols. 185–188.

45. There is evidence to suggest that officials in England were aware of the men's predicament, although they did not have a full accounting of just how many members of the crew were imprisoned. In a 1707 letter addressed to the Earl of Sunderland, Britain's secretary of state, an unnamed writer laid out what was then known of the whereabouts of Stradling and his carpenter (a man identified only as Langford), following the grounding of the Cinque Ports (referred to in the letter as the “Seaport”). The letter writer indicated that the pair were “now prisoners at Lima” and requested that the Lord “engage the governor of Jamaica to procure the liberty of the said Stradling and his carpenter by using such effectual meanes for obtayning their enlargement.” See “Captain Thomas Stradling, commanding [HMS?] ‘Seaport’: Memorial rel. to,” BL, Add MS 61644 A: 1704-c 1721, fols. 104–105b. The name Langford does not appear in the 1708 criminal case, raising several possibilities. Perhaps Langford was the last name of the man identified in the record as “Guillermo Robert” (with Robert being a middle name), or the man named Langford was no longer with Stradling. If either of those scenarios were true, then one or both of the other men joined or was taken by Stradling's crew at some point during their voyage prior to being arrested by the Spanish, which could explain why British officials did not know their names.

46. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fol. 277.

47. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fol. 302b.

48. Stradling mentions this incident as part of his larger testimony. See: Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, fol. 268.

49. Autos que sean fulminado de oficio en el Tribunal de la Guerra el Año pasado de 1708 contra tres ingleses nombrados Thomas Estradling, Guillermo Robert y Juan Noles, AGI, Lima 484, hojas sueltas. Carte de 14 de Noviembre de 1714.

50. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 81.

51. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 299.

52. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 299.

53. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 299. For the sake of brevity I have created a single citation for this and the preceding passages, which were all taken from the same page of the text.

54. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 322.

55. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 201.

56. Kevin Dawson, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 173.

57. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 346.

58. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 378, 451, and 187.

59. Captain William Betagh, A Voyage Round the World.

60. Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 458.

61. Diary and consultations of the Council in China for 1721; December 31, 1720-May 25, 1722, BL, G/I/22-G/12/22; at Canton July-December 1721, fols. 54–55. Letter of December 17, 1721.

62. Diary and consultations of the Council in China for 1721; December 31, 1720-May 25, 1722, BL, G/I/22-G/12/22; at Canton July-December 1721, fols. 54–55. Letter of December 17, 1721.

63. Susan E. Schopp, Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020), 14–16.

64. Gregory O'Malley, “Black Markets for Black Labor: Pirates, Privateers, and Interlopers in the Origins of the Intercolonial Slave Trade,” in Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807 (Williamsburg and Chapel Hill: The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 86.

65. O'Malley, Final Passages.

66. O'Malley, Final Passages, 67–68.

67. This work would necessarily build on that of scholars such as Alex Borucki, “Shipmate Networks and Black Identities in the Marriage Files of Montevideo, 1768–1803,” Hispanic American Historical Review 93:2 (2013); Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York, Penguin Books, 2008); and Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa too American Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), who have shown how the shared experiences of the Middle Passage served to bind Africans in ways that kept them socially and culturally connected once they arrived in the Americas.

68. Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 53.

69. Bialushewski, Arne, ““Pirates, Black Sailors and Seafaring Slaves in the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1716–1726,” The Journal of Caribbean History 45: 2 (2011), 143–158Google Scholar; 151.