SOCIAL STUDIES – Students will learn about the history of black sailors in America and can be assessed using the short answer questions at the end of this lesson.
Did you know that one out of every five American seamen in the early 19th century was black? At the time, seafaring was the nation’s most common male occupation after farming.
Did you know that Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in disguise as a sailor? Or that the first six autobiographies that black people wrote in the English language were written by seamen?
What about the triggering point of the American Revolution – the Boston Massacre? Did you know that Crispus Attucks, the first man killed at the Boston Massacre was a black seaman? He was a sailor and rope-maker of mixed African American and American Indian descent.
When we learn about the slave trade, we tend to think of the Middle Passage and the sheer horror of men, women, and children stolen from their lands, with a sizable portion not surviving the journey to America. While it’s hard to get precise figures, estimates suggest that 10-20% of people died before reaching America. It’s a sad story that has left many to believe that black people have a fear of ships and the sea. But long before the horrors of the Middle Passage, Africans had strong connections to the sea and vessels, regarding ships and boats as workplaces but a site of spiritual power. Historian W. Jeffrey Bolster said, “I would hope some black kid learning this story would realize he can do anything — because that’s what his ancestors had to do and did.”
“Everybody assumes that any black sailors there might have been at that time would be unlettered and ignorant.” Bolster explained. “And uncovering even one letter by an American black during the 1700s is a big deal. Here we have 12.”
In American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm, Gail Buckley documents the amazing story of James Forten. Born free in Philadelphia in 1766, James Forten joined the crew of Royal Louis in 1781.
On Forten’s second cruise, a British frigate overran the ship and captured the entire crew. The British captain’s son befriended Forten, and the captain eventually offered him a life in England. However, Forten refused to renounce his American allegiance. He was imprisoned on board the British Old Jersey. Confined with hundreds of prisoners off the coast of New York, Forten struggled to survive (11,000 prisoners died on this ship throughout the war) while continuing to resist the British. After seven months, Forten was released and made the 100-mile trek back to Philadelphia despite severe malnutrition.
After the war, Forten worked for a sailmaker and became the owner of a sail loft. He invented a sail-maneuvering tool and amassed a $100,000 fortune. He was a strong abolitionist and a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Forten’s relatives and descendants continued his abolitionist and patriotic fights after his death in 1842. His nephew, James Forten Dunbar, served in the Navy during the Civil War.
At the time, sailors were not identified by race. Each person was listed by name, place of birth, residence, age, height, hair type, and complexion. Sailors with “black,” “African,” “mulatto” or “yellow” complexion were almost always described as having “woolly” hair. It is the most reliable indicator of race. When sailors’ complexions were described as “brown” or “dark,” it became complicated since deeply suntanned white sailors could also be described this way. In the absence of other corroborating evidence, Bolster counted these men as white.
Because of the collective hardships of shipboard life, racial stratification was not as pervasive. Of course, some white sailors did treat their black counterparts badly, but far more appear to have accepted their crewmates no matter their race. Sailing was an environment in which mastery of nautical skills was the preliminary factor judging men.
A small percentage of enslaved men became coastal captains or pilots. These men led all black crews, developed tangible skills and leadership abilities. While these men and their ships could only operate in slave territory, these captains created a degree of physical and psychological freedom that was unheard of on land.
Moses Grandy was born into slavery in Camden County in 1786 and as a child became very interested in maritime occupations. As a result of his skills as a river ferryman, canal boatman, schooner deck man, and lighter captain he became known as Captain Grandy. William Grandy, a prominent slave owner in Camden County was Moses’s first slave master. William’s son, James, inherited Moses in 1794 and hired him out annually to various owners to tend ferry along the Pasquotank River and haul lumber in the Dismal Swamp. He was able to purchase his freedom for $600. Captain Grandy dictated his autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America,” to fellow abolitionist George Thompson, and it was published in 1843.
Thousands of black patriots served on American vessels during the American Revolution (1775-1783). According to a U.S. Army report on the African American military experience, higher percentages of black men served in the naval forces than the land forces. The Continental Navy did not restrict their service like the army and militias. The navy also protected them from man-stealers and slave masters. But the Continental Navy was relatively small, and black sailors served in even greater numbers on board state naval vessels and privateers.
At the time, many black sailors were enslaved, and records of their service are hard to find. Often owners put forth their slaves to serve under a substitution system, but the owners received their pay. For many black seamen, the most significant development in the American Revolution was the end of slavery in many northern states. After the Revolution, black men in the North could enter the maritime labor market as free men, giving hope to the still enslaved mariners from the South that a society without slavery in the United States could exist.
Within the maritime slave system, captains and pilots like Moses Grandy now had skills that could help propel them toward freedom. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, many free men of color worked in international seafaring throughout the Atlantic.
Because of stereotyping at the time, however, most mariners of color filled roles as cooks, officers’ servants, or musicians, differentiating them from seamen proper. In 1810, 51% of African American mariners were listed as cooks or stewards in Providence, Rhode Island. Superior officers assigned berths according to race, with white colonial culture mirroring its values on board ships.
While it was difficult for free blacks to acquire land and they faced discrimination in most trades, black New Englanders turned to the sea to keep their families together, acquire land, and gain respectability.
Black seamen became bearers of news from all corners of the world, becoming themselves what newspapers and the royal mail service were to white elites. Whereas white seamen were among the most marginalized in white society, black seamen gained access to privileges, worldliness, and wealth denied to most slaves. Black sailors exemplified black manhood and independence.
As early as 1822, lawmakers began requiring black sailors’ incarceration during southern port calls. Denmark Vesey’s slave revolt in 1822 in Charleston triggered new laws, specifically at black seamen. Vesey, who was a mariner in his youth, never confessed, but several of his leaders did. They pointed to black seamen as the links in the chain of rebellion. Black sailors were eventually banned from Southern ports on the eve of the Civil War (1861-1865). Although there is widespread debate among historians who assert that the Vesey conspiracy was never real, but instead a result of slaveholder paranoia. Vesey’s refusal to “name names” has long been held up as a form of resistance, but others argue he simply had no information to confess as the plot was unreal. Either way, his case led to increased restrictions on black sailors at the time.
After emancipation, blacks shipped out almost exclusively as cooks, Bolster says, in part because of the “wickedly racist” seamen’s unions that gradually took over the maritime trades. By the middle of the nineteenth century, black men had fewer opportunities at sea and racial segregation became more prominent than it was in the past.
Short Answer Questions:
- Name a surprising fact you learned while reading this lesson.
- Why do you think black sailors, slaves or freemen, had greater freedom than on land?
- How did colonial culture mirror life on board a ship for people of color?
- Did freedom of movement in the maritime trades remain consistent for black people over time? Why or why not? Give examples.
Additional Primary Sources
Read Captain Moses Grandy’s autobiography for free from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Documenting the American South: https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/grandy/grandy.html
Learn more about African American service in the U.S. Navy and read oral histories.
The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System currently contains the records of approximately 18,000 African American sailors.
Additional Resources
Check out our other lessons on Black history! Learn about the Black Star Line and the fight to desegregate the SS Columbia.
W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Harvard University Press: 1997).
Learn about black sailors serving on the USS Constitution during the War of 1812.
“Black Men in Navy Blue During the Civil War,” by Joseph P. Reidy, National Archives.
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