|
In 1607, Jamestown became the 1st permanent English settlement in the Americas. For centuries, very little was known about the origins of a group of Africans that landed there in 1619. In fact, the reliance by historians on a few surviving letters and journals written by colonists led to published conclusions that we now know are false. Here is the true story about two ships whose role escaped the eyes of history and what we now know about a group of slaves brought to the shores of Virginia.
The summer of 1619 was a high time in the Chesapeake Bay colony. Several years prior, John Rolfe literally saved an infant nation from starvation and failure by importing tobacco seeds from Trinidad and Venezuela and teaching his fellow planters to cultivate commercially successful tobacco. So successful was the new variety that they developed, it became known in Europe as “sweet-scented". It’s quality was as good as anything the Spanish were producing in South America at the time, and ten times better than the bitter, indigenous “Virginia weed" they tried to market years before.
Now that they were on a roll, the new Virginians were clearing land and planting fields at an amazing rate and needed help immediately. While tobacco proved to be wildly profitable, it was also incredibly labor-intensive. Meanwhile in Europe, the British were developing a voracious appetite for smoking and tobacco prices were going through the roof! Complicating matters was the fact that Spain was antagonizing its neighbors, Queen Elizabeth needed gold and other commodities to fight back and the Spanish-owned Trans-Atlantic slave trade was in full swing. Standing on the banks of Point Comfort, Captain John Smith described the arrival of an unidentified ship in his journal:
“About the last of August, there came to Virginia a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars."
This entry, along with written statements by John Rolfe and Secretary of Estate John Pory, led historians to believe that these were the first African slaves to permanently settle in North America. It was also believed that these slaves were a mixture of tribes and nationalities who were born in the Caribbean and transported from the islands to Jamestown. We now know that these assumptions were not true. In 1997, the late Engel Sluiter, a renowned historian from USC was digging through old Spanish and Portuguese archives and came across an amazing find that changed nearly 400 years of seemingly settled American history. Here is what happened that fateful summer of 1619.
A week prior to the arrival of the twenty slaves, another vessel visited Chesapeake Bay. It didn’t draw much attention because it was flagged with the British Jack. The ship’s captain, a man named Kerby met with Governor Samuel Argall in closed meetings, kept his men well disciplined and had his ship restocked with food, water, tobacco and other necessities. This was something not out of the ordinary for Jamestown. However, what the local common folk didn’t know was that Kerby and Argall were cutting a deal that would make a Texas politician blush!
Meanwhile, out in the Atlantic, a Portuguese slave ship named the San Juan Bautista was making its way from Luanda, Angola to Vera Cruz, Mexico with 350 slaves on board. As she reached the warm waters of the Caribbean, it wasn’t long before the crew of the San Juan Bautista was staring down the cannons of two English ships named the Treasurer and the Trier. Not only were the Treasurer and Trier both man-of-war ships carrying anywhere from 20 – 100 guns, they were also pirates! Despite a few shots across the bow, negotiations ensued and rather than engaging in a bloody battle at sea that would have damaged or destroyed all three vessels, 147 Angolans were transferred to the pirate ships in exchange for the San Juan Bautista’s continued safe passage. Every sailor, scoundrel and cabin boy on-board the slaver breathed a sign of relief, realizing they would live to see another day! The two pirate vessels agreed to remain together en route to Jamestown but somehow they became separated, arriving four days apart. Both ships sold a number of their slaves to the colonists for loads of tobacco and supplies, and then headed back South to continue doing whatever pirates of the Caribbean do.
In what is probably the crowning achievement in a long and distinguished career, Professor Sluiter was able determine something that remained hidden for centuries: the identity and role of the Trier, the unnamed Dutch man-of-war that delivered the slaves on the last day of August 1619. Confusing? Sluiter carefully articulated in the William and Mary Quarterly that the English provided extensive military support to the Dutch who had no standing navy at the time, so it was not unusual for Dutch ships to fly the British flag when circumstances warranted. That is why the San Juan Bautista reported being robbed by two English man-of-wars, but the slaves were observed being delivered by a Dutch man-of-war. The Netherlands were a small country militarily and could not afford to be implicated in the plundering of Spanish crown ships. On the other hand, the British had not officially entered the slave trade at this time, but the Dutch were known slavers. Dr. Sluiter also sheds light on the fact that Governor Argall’s cohort Kerby was commander of – you guessed it – the Treasurer!
Most importantly, he uncovered the previously unknown facts that the slaves were taken by force on the San Juan Bautista’s transatlantic voyage and that the slaves were from Angola and not the Caribbean. In the scheme of historical updates, this story is of monumental importance and has significantly increased our understanding of this segment of the Jamestown chronology. The Treasurer and the Trier are not only the two ships that got away from the Portuguese, they also got away from history for 380 long, long years.
Copyright © Joseph Collins (2006). All rights reserved.
This article is an excerpt from my upcoming book. For now, the title and subject will remain unannounced but the published manuscript is due out in the Spring of 2007.
|
tweet this!
