Story Overview
Enslavement | The Baracoons of Gallinas | The Middle Passage
The Cuban Slave Market | The Revolt | The Black Schooner
The Africans in America | The Amistad Trials | Return to Africa
The Black Schooner
The Africans had taken control of the schooner, but their situation was extremely precarious. The vessel was low on food and water, and thousands of miles from Africa. Most critically, it was drifting, and the Africans did not know how to operate the schooner or navigate their way back across the Atlantic. In fact, though they couldn't know it, the prevailing winds and currents between them and Africa ran right in the face of a return voyage.
Under Cinque's leadership, they tried to force Ruiz and Montes to sail the schooner east, toward the rising sun, which they had marked as the direction homeward during the Middle Passage. But the Spaniards, equally desperate and bent on a very different course, slowed the sailing by day when the vessel pointed eastwards, and brought the schooner about during the night, fervently hoping they would attract the notice of other vessels.
These tactics kept the vessel in Caribbean waters and then among the Bahamas for some weeks. At one point the Africans risked landing a shore party in the Bahamas, to procure water, provisions, possibly a pilot. But they spoke almost no English, and had to work under the assumption that if they were captured they would be enslaved again. So they quickly returned to the schooner and got back under way.
Eventually, the schooner worked its way through the Bahama Channel into the Atlantic proper, picking up the Gulf Stream, which carried the Africans north, towards the U.S. Critically, this confluence of forces--African intention, the Spaniards' cross-purpose, Atlantic currents--carried the Amistad past the slave states altogether, up the coastline into New York and ultimately New England waters.
By August, after several months at sea, the situation aboard the schooner was growing dire. The Africans were parched, ill, some had died and others were near death. In desperation, Cinque and the others decided to land another shore party. They had reached Culloden Point, on the eastern tip of Long Island. It was August 25.
Ashore, the Africans encountered a small group of white men--Henry Green and four other local seamen. Wary but desperate, the Africans tried to engage the men to sail the schooner back to Africa, promising to pay in gold they claimed to have on board. Green, sensing the possibility of loot, made some vague promises. The two parties agreed to meet the next morning.
That meeting was broken up by the arrival of the U.S.S. Washington--a
naval brig surveying the coast, commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Gedney--which brought
this leg of the Africans' voyage to an abrupt end. They were taken into custody and
brought into New London, just across from Long Island. Once again the Africans were
in captivity. Their fate now depended on American authorities.
