Editor's note: The following articles were originally published in the New-York Evening Post and the New-York Daily Advertiser in June 1817. Thanks to volunteer researcher George A. Thompson for finding, cataloging and transcribing this article. The language of the articles reflect the time period when it was written. For more information see Dr. Jonathan Daniel Wells' presentation for the HRMM lecture series, of his book "The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War" here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chjcZEQR9iY KIDNAPPING -- This most odious, and I might even say, worst of crimes, which has hitherto been principally confined to the southern states, has of late found its way among us. On Thursday last, information was lodged with the Manumission Society, that a gang of scoundrels were engaged in seducing, and decoying free men of color, on board a small schooner, called the Creole, then lying up the North River, a little distance above the state-prison, with the intention of transporting them abroad and selling them as slaves for life. Assistance was procured from the police-office, the schooner boarded, and a search took place, when behold, on opening the hatches, 9 poor unfortunate sons of Africa, who were huddled together in her hold, half suffocated, leaped upon deck, and disclosed to their deliverers the scene of villainy which had been practiced upon them. One of the owners of the schooner, James H. Thompson, who belongs to Virginia, attempted to make his escape in the long-boat, but was overtaken, secured, and together with the people of colour were taken to the police-office. Upon examination it appeared that one Moses Nichols, who keeps a brothel in Love-lane, in the vicinity of this city, and one Royal Bowen, were accomplices of Thompson in his odious traffic in human flesh. They have likewise been taken into custody and all three sent to Bridewell. The following are the names of the blacks who were kidnapped: -- Stephen aged 12, Jacob aged 19, Hannah aged 23, Mink aged 18, Mary aged 8, Harvey aged 10, Henry James aged 20, Caty aged 20 and Ann Freedland. Two of the above were brought from Albany, six from Poughkeepsie, and one belonged to this city. Various were the strategems used to deceive these poor ignorant creatures, and keep them in the dark as to the hard fate which awaited them. At one time they were told that they would be employed as gentlemen’s servants; at others they were to be hostlers. They were conveyed to the schooner in a coach last Thursday afternoon, in a violent rainstorm, and soon after put under hatches, and would, in all probability, have been taken to sea that night, had not the authority interposed. One of the colored women was brought to this city in a sloop from Poughkeepsie, by one of the above named fellows, (Nichols,) who pretended to be her master, and during the whole passage was observed to read frequently in the bible, and at other times to weep, and refuse all sustenance offered her. On the captain of the sloop inquiring of her the cause, she told him she was apprehensive that there was a scheme on foot to transport her out of the country. Thompson, the principal actor in this disgraceful traffic [had claimed last winter to have been] knocked down in Warren street and robbed of a large sum of money. We understand from the police officers he is an old offender, and was concerned with a couple of fellows who were indicted last winter for kidnapping. It would, perhaps, be no more than fair to state, that the captain of the schooner, who was supposed to be implicated, has been examined and discharged. It is therefore presumable that he had no knowledge of the nature of the voyage he was about to enter upon. - New-York Daily Advertiser, June 30, 1817 KIDNAPPERS TAKEN. It gives great pleasure to state that a number of villains, engaged in the atrocious crime of kidnapping people of colour, have lately been discovered in this city, through the benevolent exertions of Mr. S. Kelly, of Poughkeepsie, who suspecting the plot, came to this city on Thursday last, and communicated the intelligence to the Manumission Society. Immediate measures were taken to secure them and rescue the unfortunate victims that had fallen into their clutches. The principal of the gang is a man calling himself James H. Thompson, who last fall purchased some slaves of a Captain Storer, who sailed from this port in a vessel called the Alligator, with four blacks on board kidnapped here, touched at Philadelphia and procured two more, and then proceeded to Baltimore, where they were sold. Thompson undertook to convey them to Georgia, but in passing through North Carolina, the blacks procured an opportunity to communicate their situation to some travellers, who interceded on their behalf. On reaching the town of Winton, Thompson was seized, and bound to appear at Court. Having got bail, he came on to this city, for the purpose of procuring testimony concerning his slaves. During the winter, he was knocked down in Warren-street, by Arthur Miles, Captain Storer's mate, and robbed, as he stated, of rising one thousand dollars. After this he went back to Georgia, where he resides, being, according to his own story, a farmer in King's county, and has a family of seven children. Some time ago, he took passage in a vessel at Savannah, & came to this city, accompanied by a fellow who calls his name Crabtree. Here the nefarious combination was formed. Their head quarters was at a notorious gambling house, occupied by Moses Nichols, in Love‑Lane, a road but little travelled, about two and a half miles from the city. Nichols was supplied with funds, and sent out on a Northern tour -- at Albany he procured two, and at Poughkeepsie six blacks, pretending he purchased them for his own use, and had them conveyed to his brothel, where they were kept secure by the rest of the gang. While Nichols was busy to the North, Thompson, Crabtree and others were to work here. In the whole ten blacks had fallen into their hands, This being a tolerable cargo, and delays dangerous, they were preparing to depart with their booty, and would no doubt have left this port on Friday last, had not a discovery taken place. On Thursday, the standing committee of the Manumission Society watched their manouvres. In the night, while the rain fell in torrents, the blacks were conveyed in a carriage by Thompson, from the house of Nichols, and put on board a small schooner called the Creole of New‑York, then lying in the North River, about a half a mile above Fort Gansevoort. On Friday morning, information was given to the Police, who promptly afforded assistance. The vessel was boarded, and eight blacks found on board, secured in the hold and cabin. On enquiry of Thompson, who appeared as the owner of the vessel, he stated that two of the blacks were his own property, the rest were passengers, put on board by Nichols, who were to be landed at Poughkeepsie and Albany, where the vessel was bound for a load of cheese, and from thence to Baltimore. The schooner was seized by the Custom House Officer, and Thompson and his accomplices conveyed to Bridewell. On Saturday Thompson was brought before the Police for examination -- in the course of his evidence he stated he had purchased the schooner for coasting, and that the blacks were bought for his relations in Baltimore. He denied having any connexion with Nichols, and pretended he knew no such man as Crabtree, but being more closely questioned, acknowledged they came passengers together from Savannah. After his affidavit was drawn up, it was handed him to read, and notwithstanding he stated it to be correct, refused to sign it. The following is Mr. Stilwell's affidavit, who was employed to navigate the vessel, but who it appears had no knowledge of the villainy going on. He was accordingly discharged. CITY OF NEW-YORK, ss. William Stilwell of No. 22 Hester-street, being duly sworn, says that eight or ten days since he was employed by James H. Thompson, the man now here, to act as captain of the vessel called “The Creole of New-York” -- That deponent obtained coasting licence, and was to sail yesterday to a place called Darien, [Georgia] about 60 or 70 miles from Savannah, in South Carolina* -- that said Thompson said that he was to take nothing but passengers out, together with a few blacks, their servants, and he was to return to this port with a cargo of wheat. WM. STILLWELL. Sworn the 27th day of June, 1817. J. HEDDEN, Police Justice. When this villainous conspiracy shall have undergone a full examination, we have no doubt other actors will be discovered, and that it will be found to have consisted of a gang of BLOODY THIEVES who have long been engaged in kidnapping this unfortunate race of people. We thank God that through the exertions of the friends of Africans, they have at length been taken, and are about to suffer the just sentence of the law for their atrocious crimes. Names of the blacks and their ages -- Stephen aged 12, Jacob 19, Hannah 23, Mink 18, Harvey 10, Henry James 20, Caty 20, Jane Freedland, and one other. New‑York Daily Advertiser, June 30, 1817. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
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Happy Fourth of July! For today's Media Monday, we thought we'd share this amazing series of videos with leading historians on the American Revolution in the Hudson River Valley, centered on Dobbs Ferry. Two major turning points of the American Revolutionary War occurred in the Hudson River Valley - the American victory at Saratoga (October, 1777) and the bold decision of Washington and Rochambeau to march from Westchester County, NY, to Virginia (August, 1781). In 2009 the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society received a grant to record a series of interviews with leading historians of the American Revolution as part of the creation of the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail (now known as the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route). These excerpts are just a few of the ten part video series! Interview with Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David Hackett Fischer: During the American Revolutionary War Washington and Rochambeau, while encamped in Westchester County, NY, made the decision that would win the war. Dr. Fischer speaks about this decision and about Dobbs Ferry, starting point for Washington's 1781 march to victory at Yorktown, Virginia. Congress recognized the great historic significance of the march by establishing the Washington Rochambeau National Historic Trail in 2009. Dr. Fischer explains why Washington chose lower Westchester (Dobbs Ferry, Ardsley, Hartsdale, Edgemont and White Plains) for the side-by-side encampment of the American and French armies and why he deployed the light infantry and light dragoons in Dobbs Ferry. In this interview Thomas Fleming, past president of the Society of American Historians, speaks about the 1781 encampment of the American and French armies in lower Westchester (Dobbs Ferry, Ardsley, Hartsdale, Edgemont and White Plains) and about the the march of the American army from Dobbs Ferry to victory at Yorktown, Virginia. Dr. Mary Sudman Donovan, author of George Washington at 'Head Quarters, Dobbs Ferry', discusses topics relating to the Washington Rochambeau encampment of the allied American and French armies in Dobbs Ferry and neighboring localities (July and August, 1781). You can watch all ten videos on the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society YouTube Channel! To learn more about the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, visit the National Parks Service. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
Welcome to Sail Freighter Fridays! This article is part of a series linked to our new exhibit: "A New Age Of Sail: The History And Future Of Sail Freight In The Hudson Valley," and tells the stories of sailing cargo ships both modern and historical, on the Hudson River and around the world. Anyone interested in how to support Sail Freight should also check out the Conference in November, and the International Windship Association's Decade of Wind Propulsion. NOTE: This week's post is a guest post from the Royal Museums Greenwich in the UK about the Cutty Sark, one of the most famous of the Tea Clippers. To learn more about the Cutty Sark check out the Royal Museums Greenwich website. Cutty Sark is the sole surviving tea clipper ship in the world. It wasn’t the first or the biggest; it wasn’t the fastest or most successful; it wasn’t even its owner’s favourite. But it is the last one left. And it is because of its survival that it has become one of the most iconic ships in the world: a symbol of the romantic ‘age of sail’; of the peak of clipper ship design; of Britain’s identity as a nation of tea-drinkers; of the exploitation and wealth of the British Empire and vital importance of merchant shipping to Britain, both then and now. Cutty Sark was launched in 1869, in Dumbarton, Scotland. It was built exclusively for the China tea trade, in which a fashion had developed for consuming the first of the season’s fresh tea. Thus it paid to be fast and as one of the last tea clippers to be built, Cutty Sark had some claims to be the pinnacle of a design, already at its apex. It is an ‘extreme clipper’, having all the design characteristics of clipper ships but with extra abundance. Clippers, typically, have three main design traits: a long, narrow hull; a sharp bow at the front of the ship for cutting through the waves rather than riding atop and a huge sail area. By the 1860s, composite construction, combining wood and iron to make a ship strong but lighter and with greater cargo space, was the favoured method of construction. Cutty Sark was one of these composite ships. Clipper ships were pioneered by the Americans in the early nineteenth century. These small, fast and agile ships, able to zip along ‘at a clip’, put an emphasis upon speed rather than cargo space. The gold rushes in California and then Australia in the middle of nineteenth century meant that orders for vessels flooded the American market. Spurred by the need to obtain even a slight advantage in speed, American designers were bold and inventive, developing clippers which seemed to turn ship design on its head. Across the Atlantic, British shipping was at risk of stagnation. A series of reforms, including the end of the East India Company’s monopoly on trade in the east prepared the scene. The first British clipper ship, Stornaway, was built in Aberdeen in 1850. Tea first came to Britain in the middle of the seventeenth century. Initially hailed for its medicinal qualities, it was mainly enjoyed by the wealthy. But thanks, in part, to an extensive smuggling network, tea soon became a popular beverage for all. Little more than one hundred years after its introduction, tea was embedded in the very fabric of British life. As a tea clipper, Cutty Sark played its role in converting tea from exotic leaf to national staple. It would deliver over 4.5 million kgs of tea to Britain in just eight years. Yet it never lived up to its promise. In a somewhat poetic twist of fate, the Suez Canal was opened just five days before Cutty Sark was launched. These two feats of engineering, one which would seal the fate of the other were inextricably linked, providing a marker in time, almost a ‘before and after’ in the world of shipping. The canal provided a ‘short-cut’ out to China and back. Rather than having to sail all the way around the continent of Africa, ships could now cut through the Mediterranean and Red Sea reducing the voyage by over 3,000 miles. But the challenging navigation of the Mediterranean and relative windless conditions and expensive tolls on the canal itself meant that it was only viable for steam ships. Ships like Cutty Sark would have to stick to the long route. In 1870, the year of Cutty Sark’s maiden voyage, there were over fifty other sailing ships heading out to China and back. By 1878, there were just nine. Unable to compete, Cutty Sark was forced from the trade for which it had been built after just eight voyages, a tea clipper without any tea. After leaving the tea trade, Cutty Sark spent the next few years tramping: taking whatever cargo it could from port to port. It is not without irony that in this period the ship regularly transported coal for steamships’ coal stations. In fact, in total it transported more coal than tea in its career. While the network of coal and water stations required for the efficient passage of steamers developed around the world, the quickest and most reliable method of getting their fuel to them was by sail. When John ‘White Hat’ Willis, the ship’s owner, elected to place Cutty Sark in the Australian wool trade, it was as if Cutty Sark had found its calling. The trade, at the time, too far away for steamers to contend in, suited Cutty Sark. The route home took the ship around Cape Horn and the ‘roaring forties’, the fastest trade winds in the world, allowing the ship to make full use of its impressive spread of canvas to surge home. Under the confident leadership of Captain Richard Woodget, the ship’s longest serving and most successful master, Cutty Sark consistently broke records. Its best passage was just 73 days back to London, racking up speeds of up to 17.5 knots an hour and enjoying a new reputation as one of the fastest ships afloat. In 1895 an aging Willis, with no heirs to pass his fleet onto, sold Cutty Sark to a Portuguese firm. Renamed Ferreira, the ship became a general cargo carrier – carrying anything from coal to whale bone and fish guano - traversing the Atlantic between Portugal, the West Coast of Africa and the continent of America. In 1922, after departing London, Ferreira was damaged in a storm, had to call in at Falmouth for repairs and experienced astonishing good luck. There was probably not much more working life left in the ship, so when the local retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman, spotted Ferreira, the ship’s fortune was changed forever. In 1895, Dowman had been a 16 year old apprentice, who watched as Cutty Sark surged past his ship, leaving a lasting impression on the young man. Twenty-seven years later, Ferreira was a shadow of its former self yet Dowman’s memory had not dimmed. He knew it was a special vessel. Together with his wife, Catharine, the pair were committed philanthropists who paid well over the odds to bring the ship back to Britain, restore it and rename it Cutty Sark once more. Two years later, it reopened as a cadet training ship and visitor attraction. Following Dowman’s premature death, the ship was given to the Incorporated Thames Nautical College to serve alongside HMS Worcester as a cadet training ship in Greenhithe on the Thames. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the cadets were evacuated and Cutty Sark suffered from a terrible lack of maintenance. By the end of the war, sail-training was no longer deemed necessary and Cutty Sark’s future looked bleak. But befitting of the ship’s story, it was thanks to a passionate individual and a stroke of good luck that it is here today. HMS Implacable had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 but by the late 1940s, like Cutty Sark, it was in very poor condition. Recognising the ship’s significance, a place in Greenwich was offered to it but its restoration costs were soon deemed to be too expensive in an age of austerity. Instead the ship was scuttled. Understandably, this caused an outcry which Frank Carr, then director of the National Maritime Museum, was able to utilise to save Cutty Sark. He persuaded the London County Council to give the Greenwich site to Cutty Sark; he engaged the support of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and together they formed a society which raised public funds to restore the ship and create a new dry dock for it. They were also keen that Cutty Sark adopt yet another identity: that of memorial to the Merchant Navy, the days of sail and the 44,000 from the merchant service lost in both world wars. In 1954 the ship was floated into its new dock and final resting place. Three years later, after an extensive restoration, the ship was opened to the public by HM The Queen. In total, more than 650 men from 30 different nations served on Cutty Sark during its years as a British ship. Most would do so only once. On average, just 28 men would serve per voyage but it could be as few as 19. The oldest to serve was 54 and the youngest 14. These men had eleven miles of rigging and 32,000 square metres of sail to contend with in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. The ship has visited nearly every major port in the world and transported millions of kgs of goods around the globe. Built to last just 30 years, it now sits in Maritime Greenwich, more than 150 years old and an inspiration to a new generation of sailing cargo ships. To find out more, please visit: Cutty Sark AuthorLouise Macfarlane is the Cutty Sark Curator at Royal Museums Greenwich, UK. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
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