Anglo–American Atlantic, 1772–1783

The Gaspee Affair and Maritime Fugitives in the Anglo–American Atlantic, 1772–1783

Charles R. Foy

Charles R. Foy is Associate Professor, Emeritus, at Eastern Illinois University. Dr. Foy has published more than a dozen articles on Black mariners and is the creator of the Black Mariner Database, a dataset of more than 43,000 18th century Black Atlantic mariners. He is completing a book manuscript, Liberty’s Labyrinth: Freedom in the 18th Century Black Atlantic, that details the nature of freedom in the eighteenth century through an analysis of the lives of Black mariners.

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The burning of the schooner Gaspee, on June 10, 1772, has been described as the “first armed confrontation of the American Revolution” and “a singularly important event” in American history .

1 Annual celebrations of the affair have helped frame contemporary Rhode Islanders’ view of their ancestors as having played a central role in Americans obtaining independence . The Gaspee Affair played a critical role in spurring colonists from Massachusetts to Georgia to seriously consider breaking away from the British monarch . 2 But in combination with the Somerset vs. Stewart decision issued ten days later in London and the outbreak of the American Revolution, the affair also caused enslaved peoples in Rhode Island and elsewhere to see the Royal Navy as an effective means for obtaining freedom and England as a refuge from the harshness of enslavement within the British empire . This essay reframes our understanding of the Gaspee Affair by considering it through the eyes of enslaved people and placing the event within the Atlantic context of Blacks’ struggle for freedom . To do so, it centers the story of Black indentured servant Aaron Briggs of Prudence Island, who provided sworn testimony to British officials regarding the burning of the Gaspee, and other maritime fugitives . 3

State of Slavery in Rhode Island Prior to 1772

Prior to the American Revolution, slave labor played a sizable role in Rhode Island’s economy . By 1750, more than 3,300 individuals were enslaved in the colony and constituted ten percent of Rhode Island’s population . 4 Special laws singled out Blacks . Lethal force against an enslaved individual was accepted as a “corrective” tool, and Rhode Island masters did not need to fear prosecution for murdering their bondsmen . 5

How did enslaved people find freedom in such circumstances? Emancipation was difficult as slave owners were required to post a one-hundred-pound bond for each slave they sought to free . This requirement was to ensure localities did not bear the cost of freed elderly or disabled individuals who could not support themselves . 6 In a colony where many residents’ economic well–being relied upon the slave trade and slave labor and slavers “formed the nucleus of Newport society,” petitions such as those submitted by Massachusetts Blacks seeking legislation to free them was not a feasible option . Litigation to challenge one’s enslavement was costly and required access to an attorney . The result was that in the years before American independence, negotiated manumission and flight were the primary means for Rhode Island’s enslaved to find freedom . 7

Julius Scott has vividly described regional networks of information that moved revolutionary ideas about the Caribbean in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and assisted considerable numbers of enslaved peoples to obtain freedom . 8 While perhaps not as well-developed as the connections among enslaved peoples later in the century, prior to the American Revolution, well-established networks and connections among Blacks existed in various regions of the Atlantic basin . As N . A . T . Hall has demonstrated, maritime flight and interimperial connections among enslaved people operated long before 1772 . Such networks were particularly vibrant in colonies such as Curaçao and Bermuda, where the economies were largely maritime in nature . Bermudian and Coraçaon Black seamen informed other Blacks of uprisings elsewhere and helped to shape some of those insurrections . 9 The information that moved through these networks included African maritime and military practices that enslaved peoples utilized to transverse interimperial borders, to engage in violent uprisings, and to seek freedom in other nation’s colonies . 10

Colonial Rhode Island’s economy “depended on the sea . ”11 Enslaved Blacks, such as Edward Abbie, worked on slave ships . Quaman and scores of other slave seamen manned Rhode Island’s merchant ships . And hundreds of Black men toiled caulking, rigging, and loading the colony’s vessels . Information regarding ships sailing, ship captains, and opportunities for freedom circulated on the wharves and streets of Newport and Providence among the enslaved population . 12 This maritime culture resulted in hundreds of Rhode Island’s bondsmen being knowledgeable about the larger Atlantic and opportunities for freedom via the sea . Black bondsmen such as Moses Perry may not have been to sea before, but he and others believed that the information they gathered in Rhode Island would help them find freedom at sea . 13 But prior to 1770 (except for several years during the War of Austrian Succession), maritime flight from Rhode Island was limited with not more than three in any year . The Royal Navy establishing a regular presence in Narragansett Bay not only led to Rhode Islanders burning the Gaspee but also opened a door to freedom for the colony’s enslaved .

Prelude to the Burning of the Gaspee:

The burning of the Gaspee was but one of several violent outbursts in and about Narragansett Bay during the decade prior to the American Revolution . These altercations included firing at a naval tender, a mob setting fire to a naval boat, and the dumping of the sloop Liberty’s armaments . Such armed confrontations with British naval vessels reflected American colonists’ growing hostility to the navy, which they perceived as an instrument of tyrannical imperial control . Thus, although the burning of the Gaspee may be the armed confrontation leading up to the Revolution that Rhode Islanders remember, it was not the first such event nor was it an isolated moment . 14

Prior to the Seven Years’ War, naval vessels occasionally entered Narragansett Bay . In this era, Royal Navy vessels more typically were stationed at Boston, New York, and Charleston . After 1763, the Royal Navy regularly stationed armed sloops and schooners in Narragansett Bay to ensure compliance with mercantile laws . John Brown and other American colonists complained of the navy’s “putting his Majesty’s subjects in fear of their lives and liberties, and in a most underhanded manner take every low method to obtain intelligence” about alleged smuggling activities . 15 Bondsmen, on the other hand, perceived this unfolding dispute between American colonists and their monarch in a different light . The Royal Navy’s persistent presence, in Massachusetts, Narragansett Bay, and eventually in New York Harbor, as well as Chesapeake and Lowcountry waterways, would provide a door to freedom for many North American Blacks . For a few, such as Briggs, the ticket to that door would be assisting British investigations . For many others, freedom would be obtained by service in the Royal Navy . And for a third group, the Royal Navy would, without requiring sworn depositions or hauling lines on a vessel, provide taxi rides to freedom . In short, in the period from 1772 to 1783, the navy would be seen by Blacks not as the oppressive force of liberty that white Americans perceived it to be but as one of the best means to obtain freedom .

Burning of the Gaspee:

Along with the sloop Beaver, in June of 1772, the Gaspee was stationed in Narragansett Bay . The Beaver and Gaspee were small, and, in contrast to larger Royal Navy men-of-war, could enter local waterways when chasing merchant vessels that refused to heed commands . On the night of June 9, the Gaspee gave chase to the sloop Hannah as it headed from Providence

to Newport . The schooner’s commander, Lieutenant William Dudingston, suffered bad fortune as the Gaspee grounded on a sandbar in the Providence River, allowing the Hannah to sail to Providence uninspected . Dudingston’s fortune only got worse, as later that night, Rhode Islanders in longboats attacked the schooner . During a brief engagement, the lieutenant was wounded . After taking the vessel’s crew and officers ashore, the Rhode Islanders returned to the Gaspee and burned her . British authorities were outraged by the attack, destruction of a naval vessel, and wounding of a naval officer . The British government wished to quickly identify and bring to justice those responsible for this incident . In contrast, most Rhode Islanders wished to hide who was involved . In the middle of this conflict was Briggs, who had his own agenda, obtaining permanent freedom .

Aaron Briggs’s Involvement in the Gaspee Affair:

At the time of the Gaspee’s burning Briggs was working on Captain Samuel Tompkins’s Prudence Island farm . Placed there as an apprentice at the age of five, Briggs gained some experience with small boats . Briggs testified that on the night of June 9, he was rowing in Narragansett Bay when he encountered Simeon Potter in a longboat coming from Bristol . He further stated that Potter compelled him to partake in the attack on the Gaspee. Patrick Earle, a seaman on the Gaspee, informed authorities he helped “Briggs, to row the bow oar” on the boat taking the Gaspee’s crew ashore . However, Briggs’s and Earle’s version of events was contradicted by two servants of Tompkins, who asserted Briggs was at home the night of the attack and did not have access to a boat . 16

On June 12, Governor Joseph Wanton issued a proclamation that a one-hundred-pound reward would be paid “to any Person or Persons who shall discover the Perpetrators . ”17 Over the ensuing weeks, the governor and British officials jousted over investigating the affair . In the meantime, no Rhode Islander stepped forward with information concerning the attack .

Several weeks after the Gaspee burned, Briggs took his master’s boat and rowed out to the Beaver, anchored off Prudence Island . When Briggs came aboard the sloop, he encountered an almost exclusively British crew . 18 However, the sloop’s crew included at least two Black seamen — John Cato and John Mingo . Cato was a twenty-five-year-old African-born, able-bodied seaman, while Mingo was a New England-born seaman . Mingo’s and Cato’s presence on the sloop would have signified an acceptance of Blacks by the navy . The two Black tars also may have been individuals with whom Briggs shared a mess with and helped him become a naval seaman . Finding such a cohort of Blacks aboard ship, as Francis Barber had when he fled Samuel Johnson’s London home for a bunk on the Stag in 1758, would have eased Briggs’s entry into the new world of a naval vessel .

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Why did Briggs board the Beaver? There is no indication Briggs sought the reward Wanton had offered . And it was likely he understood an indentured Black servant making a statement that went against the interest of most whites in the area was not likely to be believed . As Briggs so precisely stated, he “went on board said man of war with an intention not to return again to his master . ”20 If, as we should, we take Briggs at his word, why did he flee onto the Beaver? A twenty-one-year-old, whose indenture was believed to expire in four years, Briggs appears to have had his fill of Tompkins and life as his indentured servant . 21As an indentured servant, Briggs’s mobility, work, and intimate life were strictly controlled . And as a Black man, he had very limited legal rights . Thus, while the end of his indenture in four years promised freedom, his life in 1772 was rather difficult . It also is likely that by living on Narraganset Bay, Briggs was aware Rhode Islanders enriched themselves through the sale of captured Black mariners, some of whom may have been among bondsmen he encountered while out on the bay . 22 Thus, Briggs had cause to see life in Rhode Island in 1772 as not hospitable to Blacks . In contrast, entering a Royal Navy ship whose officers were highly motivated to find who attacked the Gaspee, Briggs understood he would be protected . Ship musters confirm that naval officers were deliberate in their wanting to protect him, as they noted Briggs had “evidence relating to the Gaspee schooner being burnt [and had been] sent round for examination .” And he was protected . When Rhode Island officials came to the Beaver on July 11 with an arrest warrant for Briggs after he had submitted an initial statement, the sloop’s commander refused to turn him over to local authorities . Instead, Briggs was transferred to the Captain to provide “evidence relating to” the Gaspee Affair, entered the ship as an ordinary, and paid wages . 23

Briggs had a relatively short tenure on the Captain. Promoted to able-bodied seaman in November 1773, he

remained on the ship and sailed with it to Portsmouth, England, arriving there in July 1774 . The following month, the Captain and Briggs moved on to Chatham . We do not know what thereafter became of him . 24 But what we do know is that while his testimony ultimately was rejected by the commission investigating the burning of the Gaspee as coming from one with a “weak or wicked mind,” by proffering it, Briggs was able to end his indenture, gain his freedom, and migrate to a nation from which he could not lawfully be compelled to leave by a master .

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Maritime Flight, 1772–1783

When Briggs rowed to the Beaver, he moved along a path to freedom that enslaved peoples in Rhode Island had trod earlier in the eighteenth century . As early as 1714, Rhode Island slave masters had placed fugitive slave advertisements indicating they believed their bondsmen had “designs to get off to Sea .” Rhode Island maritime fugitives such as Cuffee, Newport, Toby Hazard, and others sought berths on vessels in ports along the North American coastline . This resulted in ferrymen and boatmen being prohibited from transporting any

Copy of the first page of the testimony of Aaron Briggs.

RIHS COLLECTIONS, MSS434B1F4.

Captain Musters, 1772-1773, TNA ADM 36/7345. COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, KEW, UNITED KINGDOM.

enslaved individuals lacking a certificate indicating their owner authorized the slaves’ passage and permitting slave owners to search ships for their runaways . Such measures proved ineffective . Instead, in the years before the Revolution, slave owners tended to be more willing to negotiate terms of service and sometimes manumission . 26

Warfare greatly expanded the opportunities for maritime fugitives as increased need for maritime labor led ship captains to value muscle and skill over possible status as bondsmen . 27 However, in times of peace, when the need for maritime labor was but a fraction of what was required during war, the numbers of maritime fugitives were relatively small . It was with the advent of armed conflict that the scope and nature of flight by enslaved people via the sea changed dramatically . Studies of Chesapeake, New York, and the West Indies maritime regions have demonstrated that enslaved people found increased opportunities at sea during wars throughout the Western Atlantic . 28 It was not until the War of Austrian Succession, when privateers brought into Newport captured Spanish Black seamen who were sold as prize goods, that Rhode Island saw a considerable number of maritime fugitives . These formerly free men resisted enslavement by fleeing alone and as part of “a Conspiracy between a great Number of Spanish and other Prize Negroes, to run away with one of the Privateers’ Sloops” in Newport harbor . 29 The Revolutionary era, with its persistent presence of the Royal Navy in Rhode Island, saw a significant increase in the number of Rhode Island maritime fugitives .

Why might enslaved Rhode Islanders have chosen to flee via the sea when to do so often meant leaving family, friends, and community behind? For bondsmen who ate “corn meal, stale bread and watery stew,” the rumble of an empty belly was a daily reminder of what life would continue to be while enslaved . The quality and quantity of food on navy ships was far better than that which eighteenth-century working men and women typically ate, meaning that maritime fugitives typically experienced a significant upgrade in their diet when entering a naval ship .

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But the primary attraction of maritime flight was that it offered permanent freedom . Once a runaway secured a berth on a vessel, everyday sailing put greater distance between him and his former master, making recapture less of a possibility . With wages better than that which most working men of the time received and generally equal working conditions on board, the degradation of enslavement could be left behind . Maritime fugitives also entered vessels that historians have described as having “motley crews,” that is, multiracial and multinational, in which maritime skills were valued .

31 And mobility of employment at sea also created possibilities of transforming oneself through migration . Maritime fugitives and other Black seamen were known to choose surnames reflecting the naval ships they served on. In doing so, they asserted their Britishness based upon having served the king . These men understood that their free status in the British Empire was tenuous and sought to cement it by reminding others of their role in the creation of Britain’s maritime empire . 32

Issued only ten days after the Gaspee was burned, news of Chief Justice Lord Mansfield’s decision in Somerset v. Stewart quickly spread among North American enslaved peoples . By the third week of July, Rhode Island newspapers carried

summaries of the case, and by the end of August, the Newport Mercury noted Mansfield had held “that Mr . Stuart, his master, had no power to compel him on board a ship, or to send [Somerset] back to the plantations . ” 33 Despite the accuracy of the Mercury’s summary of the decision, many believed Mansfield had abolished slavery in England . Slave masters in Britain’s American colonies observed that their bondsmen, even those who spoke limited English, would “endeavor to get . . . to Britain, where they imagine they will be free .

”34 From 1772 to 1775, there was a more than tripling of advertisements for North American maritime fugitives over the prior three years . Several of the advertisements directly indicated runaways sought to reach England .

The persistent presence of the Royal Navy in Narragansett Bay did not offer opportunities for freedom to all enslaved peoples . Maritime flight was deeply gendered and largely only possible for young men such as Briggs . In contrast to the large numbers of enslaved Black men who either worked at sea or in maritime-related trades, women rarely wore sailors’ tarred breeches or handled rope lines . North American slave sale advertisements, which could be quite detailed about the skills of enslaved persons, never referenced a woman as suitable for maritime work . Some enslaved women, such as one known only as Molly, disguised themselves as men, “in order to get on board some vessel .” Another, named Mary, and several other women fled with their husbands dressed “in sailor’s clothes .” However, the masculine culture on board rarely proved welcoming of women as members of a crew . If women were discovered on board before a vessel left port, they could find themselves treated roughly, as was the unidentified woman who the Castor’s crew ducked from the ship’s yardarm and then “tarred [her] all over .” This may have been an extreme example of men’s hostility to women attempting to work at sea, but women discovered among a crew typically were discharged at the first opportunity to do so after their gender was revealed . Acceptance of women as seamen typically only occurred after they had disguised themselves as men and had proven their worth . 35

During the Revolution, the Royal Navy also assisted flight by enslaved families, women, and children . Both in the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry, naval ships, including the ship Brune, carried family groups . However, this phenomenon was not seen in Rhode Island . In part this was due to the size of naval vessels in Narragansett Bay . Sloops and schooners had very limited space in their holds, making commanders unwilling to accommodate families of fugitives . And unlike the Brune, smaller vessels such as the Beaver did not move between locales, enabling them to drop large numbers of refugees behind British lines . 36

What the Royal Navy’s persistent presence in locales offered enslaved people from 1772 to 1783 can be best understood through a consideration of the lived experiences of individual maritime fugitives . Amos Anderson, Benjamin Freebody, maritime fugitives on the Rose, and enslaved seamen on the merchant vessel Lawrence each had very different experiences, but the totality of their lives at sea provides a comprehensive picture of how and to what degree maritime flight changed the lives of enslaved Rhode Islanders .

Anderson was unusual for many reasons but perhaps most importantly due to how detailed a picture of his life we have .

37 In December 1779, Anderson entered the naval sloop Loyalist as an able-bodied seaman . The Rhode Island-born free Black found service in the Royal Navy not to his liking and deserted the following November . Anderson’s time on land proved shortlived; four months later he was impressed back onto the Loyalist . Three months thereafter, the Loyalist was captured by a French frigate . Upon being captured, Anderson found himself sold in Martinique as a “prize good .” This occurred because at this time most European nations presumed captured Black seamen were slaves and therefore property . 38 Remarkably, Anderson was able to escape enslavement in the French West Indies and to return to Rhode Island .

From Rhode Island, Anderson sailed to London in December 1783 . Once in England, Anderson convinced authorities to arrest and prosecute John Moseley, his former Black shipmate on the Loyalist . It turns out that while Anderson was enslaved in Martinique, Moseley had taken his pay ticket and fraudulently obtained Anderson’s wages . 39

What became of Anderson between 1784 and 1793 is not known . In 1793, Anderson reentered Royal Navy service as a forty-three-year-old seaman . Like hundreds of impoverished blacks in London after the Revolution, Anderson struggled to get by; his five-pound reenlistment bounty was a needed lifeline . With no family or kin in England, Anderson relied upon crewmates, such as his white crewmates John Horton and John Raymond, for support . In turn, Anderson made these white sailors his heirs . While serving on the Vengeance in 1793–94, Anderson returned to the island where he had been

enslaved, participating in the British capture of Martinique . Despite suffering a fractured skull, Anderson remained in the navy through at least May 1800 . At the end of his life, Anderson was an in–pensioner at the Royal Hospital Greenwich, receiving protection and care from the British government in recognition of his long naval service .

The lives of Black fugitives who boarded the Rose while it was stationed in Narraganset Bay from 1775 to 1777 were more typical of Rhode Island maritime fugitives . In this two-year period, not less than twenty-four Blacks, characterized as “friend[s] of the government” came aboard the frigate . Most of these men became members of the vessel’s crew, including Alfred Hazard and Peter Robarts, but were made captain’s servants, not seamen . Caezer Tillness and other maritime fugitives on the Rose were recaptured by American forces and returned to their former slave masters . Few of the maritime fugitives on the Rose had extended naval careers . Tall Wheeler, a thirty-seven-year-old Guinea-born man, was an exception to this . Coming aboard in November 1775, he was made an ordinary the following November . Wheeler eventually was promoted to able-bodied seaman before he died on board in October 1779 . 40 Notwithstanding their short tenures in the Royal Navy, the cohort on the Rose demonstrated to other Rhode Island Blacks that naval vessels were useful places of refuge for runaways and that naval officers would assist fugitives in obtaining freedom .

In June 1775, as Moses Brown was renewing his efforts to have slave trading banned in Rhode Island, Samuel and Benjamin Freebody reached an agreement whereby Benjamin would be freed . Reflective of the fact that the war with Great Britain and increasing abolitionism in Rhode Island was beginning to undermine slavery and the power of slave owners, Samuel, a Newport distiller, agreed to hire out Benjamin to Captain James Brattle as a means for Benjamin to earn his freedom . Lacking maritime experience, Ben was to be employed as a landsman . Ben understood he would be able to purchase his freedom for two hundred dollars, an amount he could have earned in about three years’ service at sea . Rather than being treated as a member of Brattle’s crew, Benjamin found himself “most cruelly used” by the ship captain . The unscrupulous Brattle provided Ben some osnaburg cloth and a single dollar to share with Dick, an unidentified but presumably enslaved sailor . Nor did Benjamin receive the ninety pounds that other crewmembers on Brattle’s ship were awarded as prize monies for the capture of two American vessels . For three years, Brattle forcibly moved Benjamin about the Atlantic, first to Grenada, then to the Gold Coast on several slaving voyages, and on to Pensacola and several West Indies Islands before finally landing in New York . “In a declining State of health” and blind in one eye, the unfortunate Benjamin had to rely upon the charity of a stranger to survive . After the British evacuation in 1783, Ben wrote to his master seeking assistance . Despite Ben’s belief that his service on Brattle’s ship entitled him to wages sufficient to buy his freedom, he was forcibly returned to Rhode Island .

41 Benjamin never was able to use the sea to achieve freedom . Instead, he remained enslaved until at least 1790 . 42

In 1776, four enslaved sailors on the merchant sloop Lawrence found themselves stranded in the Gulf Stream when the rudder on their vessel broke . The sloop was on its way from St . Thomas to Copenhagen, having engaged in smuggling goods for the American rebels . Discovered by the Royal Navy, the Lawrence was brought into Portsmouth, England . There, John Draper, one of the four enslaved seamen, took the opportunity to escape and communicate with British officials . Although recaptured, all four Black sailors, with the assistance of officials in Portsmouth and at the direction of Lord George Grenville, the foreign secretary, were released and allowed to remain in England as free men . Grenville’s directive did not directly reference the Somerset decision, but it is apparent from how officials in Portsmouth acted that they believed it required the freeing of the four Black sailors . And Draper acted as if he understood that Mansfield’s decision could, and here it apparently did, provide freedom to enslaved men born in Africa, the West Indies, and North America who landed in England . 43

The experiences of these maritime fugitives demonstrate the central tenents of their lives and most Blacks at sea in the Revolutionary era . Most importantly, it was the persistent presence of the Royal Navy in a particular locale that enabled considerable numbers of runaway bondsmen to escape enslavement . Whether it was Lord Howe’s large flotilla in Chesapeake Bay in 1777, the British fleet off the Lowcountry later in the war, or the Rose with its regular movements about Narragansett Bay from 1775 to 1777, these naval vessels drew fugitives like bees to honey . Being welcomed onto Royal Navy vessels opened up possibilities for the naval careers experienced by those such as Anderson and Wheeler, as well as allowing

these men to serve on other vessels, as scores of Blacks, including a South Carolinian named June, did on British privateers operating out of New York . 44 Naval service also allowed some, although not very many, maritime fugitives to migrate to England and then take advantage of the Somerset case to claim freedom . It also meant that many maritime fugitives, for the first time in their lives, were being heard and allowed to speak . A naval seaman, Anderson had his concerns about having his pay stolen taken seriously and his testimony given credence, yet Briggs’s testimony in Rhode Island was not .

But maritime life was not an unalloyed positive experience for maritime fugitives . As noted above, women, elderly, children, and most disabled individuals were not able to flee via the sea . Moreover, it was far more likely that those with maritime experience, be they enslaved seaman or workers in one of the maritime trades, could obtain berths than those who were farmhands . Thus, maritime flight in Rhode Island was not only gendered, but also shaped by where one lived . Residing in the middle of Narragansett Bay resulted in Briggs’s involvement in the Gaspee Affair and made his subsequent flight to the Beaver and eventual freedom possible .

For men who were able to obtain a berth on a Royal Navy vessel, a naval career may have been possible, but as the lives of Anderson and Wheeler demonstrate, upward advancement was limited . Becoming an able-bodied seaman was possible, but Blacks becoming officers was rare . During the eighteenth century, only one, John Perkins, served as a commanding officer . Moreover, through the end of the American Revolution, Blacks also were conspicuously absent among the seamen who received pension benefits . 45 Many left behind family and friends only to end up destitute . A considerable portion of the Black poor on the streets of London in the post-American Revolution era were former seamen . Lacking family and personal connections, many of these men struggled to find work . 46

Life at sea for Blacks also came with serious risks, far beyond the vagaries that all seamen experienced . Maritime fugitives entered a world in which many whites, despite working beside them, still saw them as lesser . In the first half of the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for sea officers to own and bring enslaved men onto ships, despite Admiralty orders barring the employment of slaves on its vessels . North American colonists hired their slaves onto naval ships . Sea officers were known to return runaways to their masters, and some sea officers on the North American station had experience putting down slave revolts in the Caribbean . 47 Thus, entering a naval ship, as did seeking a berth on any vessel, involved runaways calculating whether they could trust the officers and crew .

The greatest danger to maritime fugitives and Black seamen was that they were subject to being treated as property . This was not merely that a ship captain, such as Brattle, might abuse a Black . As Anderson’s story makes clear, free Black seamen and maritime fugitives often found themselves enslaved upon being captured by enemy vessels . In the eighteenth century, Great Britain, France, Spain, and the United States at various times, treated captured Black mariners as cargo that could be sold to the highest bidder . As a result, when fugitives obtained a berth, they entered what I have termed the “Anxious Atlantic,” a maritime realm in which their seafaring skills might be prized, but their blackness left them vulnerable, as Anderson was, to being treated as property . 48 It was a place in which a lost or a misplaced freedom certificate could be the difference between freedom and enslavement .

Movement in the Atlantic from 1772 to 1783 also was restricted for Blacks from the Americas as European nations attempted to grapple with the tension of having established colonies based on enslaved labor while remaining determined to keep their metropolis societies free of enslavement . In some European nations, licensing regimes were enacted to limit movement of enslaved peoples into the metropolis . These legal measures, commonly referred to as the Free Soil Doctrine, required American colonists to be strategic in how they employed enslaved peoples on their ships . 49 Prior to the American Revolution, few Blacks served on ships sailing to Europe from Rhode Island . This appears to have been a strategic choice by Rhode Island slave owners seeking to avoid their enslaved seamen obtaining, as had Draper, freedom in nations that recognized their humanity in ways that legal systems in the Americas did not . 50

Yet notwithstanding these difficulties, thousands of enslaved peoples fled via the sea in the eighteenth century . Hundreds of them went onto Royal Navy ships . For Bristol Rogers, Quashie Ferguson, Pompey Topham, and the other Black maritime fugitives who came aboard the Rose, life at sea was not perfect and surely carried considerable risks . In a world in which slavery was legal in most of the Atlantic basin, North

American maritime fugitives’ choices as to whom they served typically was a strategic choice based on which ship and nation would provide them the best opportunity for permanent freedom . Although many Rhode Island Blacks would, after 1778, choose to enlist in American forces and become free pursuant to the 1778 Slave Enlistment Act, in the years between the Gaspee Affair and the British evacuating Newport near the end of 1779, service on Royal Navy ships was the avenue to freedom that many enslaved peoples chose . 51 For Ferguson and dozens of other Rhode Island maritime fugitives, the flames that Briggs saw shooting from the Gaspee in June 1772 represented not a blow against tyranny but rather a light indicating a pathway to freedom . But unlike white Rhode Islanders, these men experienced freedom not in the Ocean State but on the decks of enemy vessels . Thus, when Rhode Islanders consider the nature of freedom won in the American Revolution, for which the burning of the Gaspee was the first blow for freedom, they need to construct a narrative that acknowledges that some Rhode Islanders, enslaved and indentured Blacks, had to leave the state to obtain their freedom .

Endnotes

1 Christopher L. Pastore, Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 2014), 177; W. R. Leslie, “The Gaspee Affair: A Study of Its Constitutional Significance,”

The Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1952), 233. 2 Peter C. Messer, “A Most Insulting Violation: The Burning of the HMS Gaspee and the Delaying of the American Revolution,”

New England Quarterly 88, no. 4 (2015): 582–622; Steven H. Park, “The Burning of HMS Gaspee and the Limits of

Eighteenth-Century British Imperial Power” (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2005). 3 “Blacks” refers to persons of African ancestry, including mixed-race people.

“Maritime fugitives” are Black bondsmen who fled via the sea or whose owners believed they had so fled. My Black Mariner

Database (“BMD”) contains references to almost 9,000 maritime fugitives from throughout the Atlantic. The BMD undercounts maritime fugitives. For example, runaways for whom records do not indicate they fled via the sea, but headed to ports where maritime flight was possible, are not included.

The BMD contains fifty-one fields of data on each of the more than 43,000 Black mariners and maritime fugitives. It includes references from ship musters, court records, fugitive and slave sale advertisements, newspaper dispatches, merchant records, and governmental records providing “information we need to assess the typicality” of Black life in the Atlantic. Geoffrey Plank,

“Sailing with John Woolman: The Millenium and Maritime Trade,” Early American Studies:

An Interdisciplinary Journal (“EAS”), 7, no.1 (Spring 2009): 51n15. 4 Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 369. 5 John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730–1830 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2003), 71. 6 Elaine Forman Crane, A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era (New York: Fordham University

Press, 1985), 82–3. 7 Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1998), 67. After 1772, emancipation in Rhode Island accelerated due to Quaker manumissions, freedom granted slaves who fought for American forces, and, in 1784, the Gradual Abolition Act. Christy Clark-Pujara, Dark Work: The Business of

Slavery in Rhode Island (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 62. 8 Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (New York: Verso, 2018).

Similar maritime connections existed among St. Croix enslaved peoples in the nineteenth century. Lomarsh Roopnarine,

“Maroon Resistance and Settlement on Danish St. Croix,” Journal of the Third World Studies 27, no. 2 (Fall 2010), 99–102. 9 N. A. T. Hall, “Maritime Maroons: Grand Marronage from the Danish West Indies,” William and Mary Quarterly, 77:4 (Oct. 1985): 481–82; Linda M. Rupert, “Marronage, Manumission and Maritime Trade in the Early Modern Caribbean.”

Slavery and Abolition 30, no. 3 (Sept. 2009), 361–382; Justin Pope, “Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Rebellion,

Conspiracy and the First Great Awakening, 1729–1746,” PhD diss., George Washington University, 2014; Clarence Maxwell,

“Enslaved Merchants, Enslaved Merchant-Mariners, and the Bermuda Conspiracy of 1761,” Early American Studies, 7, no. 1 (Spring 2009), 147–151.

10 Kevin Dawson, “A Sea of Caribbean Islands; Maritime Maroons in the Greater Caribbean,” Slavery & Abolition 42, no. 3 (Aug. 2021): 428–444; Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2020), 173, 240. 11 Crane, Dependent People, 35. 12 Mar. 1766 portage bill for the brig Sally, B. 707 F. 7, Brown Family Business Papers (Nicholas Brown & Co.), John Carter Brown

Library; Aaron Lopez Papers, Box 2, Folder 1 and Box 1, Folder 13, Center for Jewish History; 29 May 1747 Bill of Sale, Vol. 11, 98, Rhode Island Historical Society Manuscripts, Mss 9003, RIHS; Charles R. Foy, “Black Hands, White Profits: The Critical Role

Black Laborers Played in Rhode Island’s Maritime Economy, 1750–1800,” in Peter Benes, ed., New England at Sea: Maritime

Memory and Material Culture, (Deerfield, MA: Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 2019), 129–33. 13 Newport Mercury, May 11, 1772. 14 Michael R. Derderian, “This Licentious Republic: Maritime Skirmishes in Narragansett Bay, 1763–1769,” Journal of the American

Revolution, Oct. 2, 2017; Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,”

William & Mary Quarterly 25, No. 3 (Jul. 1968), 388; Sarah Kinkel, “The King’s Pirates? Naval Enforcement of Imperial Authority, 1740–76,” William & Mary Quarterly 71, no. 1 (Jan. 2014), 3–34. 15 Providence Gazette and Country Journal, June 27, 1772. 16 William R. Staples, The Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee (Providence, RI: Knowles, Vose and Anthony, 1845), 18, 33. 17 Newport Mercury, June 15, 1772. 18 The exact date Briggs entered the Beaver cannot be determined as there is no reference to Briggs in either the Beaver’s log or muster. HMS Beaver, Captain’s Log, 1771–72, TNA ADM 51/3781; HMS Beaver, Muster, 1772, TNA ADM 36/7330. Briggs says it was “some time” after the burning of the Gaspee. Given naval officials forwarded Briggs’s initial statement to Wanton on

July 8, it appears Briggs entered the Beaver in early July. Staples, Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, 17, 34. 19 HMS Stag, Musters, 1758–1759, TNA ADM 36/6755. 20 Staples, Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, 34. The Beaver’s captain may have been willing to use force to compel Briggs to testify, kept Briggs in irons, and said he was going to “flog him.” But there is no evidence Captain John Linzee threatened to hang Briggs. Staples, Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, 34, 54. There also can be no doubt that Rhode Island authorities were unwilling to consider that Briggs was telling the truth and instead sought to undermine the credibility of his statements. 21 Rory Raven, Burning the Gaspee: Revolution in Rhode Island (Indianapolis: History Press, 2012), Chap. 6. Unlike for other indentured maritime fugitives, there is no evidence Briggs claimed his indenture had expired. Elena A. Schneider, “A Narrative of

Escape: Self Liberation by Sea and the Mental Worlds of the Enslaved,” Slavery & Abolition 42, no. 3 (Aug. 2021), 485. 22 Boston Weekly News-Letter, June 22, 1758. During the Revolution, Esek Hopkins, the commander of the Continental navy, and other Rhode Islanders continued to enrich themselves by the capture and sale of Black sailors. Foy, “Black Hands, White Profits,” 134–135.

23 HMS Captain Musters, 1772–73, TNA ADM 36/7345. 24 HMS Captain Musters, 1772–74, TNA ADM 36/7345–46. Record keeping on the origins of Blacks in eighteenth century England is incomplete. Kathleen Chater’s extensive database of British Blacks has place-of-origin data for only 24 percent of the entries.

Kathleen Chater, Untold Histories: Black People in England and Wales during the Period of the British Slave Trade, 1660–1807 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2009), 31. Those conducting searches of English records for details of migrating

American Black seamen often come up empty. Foy, “ ‘Unkle Somerset’s’ Freedom,” 30–31. 25 The commission investigating the affair believed “illegal threats from Capt. Linzee of hanging” Briggs made his statements worthless. Staples, Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, 34, 54. 26 John Russell-Bartlett, trans., Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, vol. 4, 1707–1740 (Providence, RI: Knowles, Anthony & Co., 1859), 179–80; Sweet, Bodies Politic, 95; Boston News-Letter, May 24, 1714;

New England Weekly Journal, May 3, 1731; New-York Mercury, March 21, 1763; New-York Mercury, Nov. 24, 1764; Providence

Gazette & Country Journal, Oct. 27, 1770. 27 W. Jeffrey Bolster, “ ‘To feel like a man’: Black Seamen in the Northern States, 1800–1860,” Journal of American History 76 (1990), 1179.

28 Charles R. Foy, “Using Data to Understand Maritime Flight in the Chesapeake During the American Revolution,” in Debra Reid, ed., Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019): 82–84;

Charles R. Foy, “Possibilities & Limits for Freedom: Maritime Fugitives in British North America, ca. 1713–1783,” in Gender, Race,

Ethnicity, and Power in Maritime America (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport, 2008): 43–54; Charles R. Foy, “Seeking Freedom in the

Atlantic World, 1713–1783,” EAS 4:1 (Spring 2006), 46–77; Schneider, “A Narrative of Escape,” 484–501; N. A. T. Hall, “Maritime

Maroons: Grand Maroonage from the Danish West Indies,” William & Mary Quarterly 42, no. 4 (Oct. 1985): 476–98. 29 Boston Post-Boy, July 19, 1742; Boston News-Letter, Feb. 10, 1743; 30 Clark-Pujara, Dark Work, 46; Janet McDonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy: The Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era (London: Chatham, 2004), 16–38. 31 Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the

Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 27–28. 32 Charles R. Foy, “Britain’s Black Tars” in Gretchen Gerzina, ed., Britain’s Black Past (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 80. 33 Providence Gazette, July 25, 1772; Newport Mercury, August 31, 1772. 34 Pennsylvania Gazette, April 26, 1775; Newport Mercury, Sept. 28, 1772; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), Sept. 30, 1773;

Virginia Gazette (Rind), June 30, 1774. 35 South Carolina Gazette, Dec. 31, 1763; Connecticut Courant, July 27, 1784; New-York Post-Boy, July 25 and Aug. 8, 1743;

Boston Evening-Post, March 15, 1756. See also Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling, Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and

Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1870 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

Rather than attempt to flee via the sea, Black women in the Americas more frequently fled enslavement by peddling at markets.

Shauna J. Sweeney, “Market Marronage: Fugitive Women and the Internal Marketing System in Jamaica, 1781–1834.”

William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 76, no. 2 (April 2019): 197–222. 36 HMS Brune Musters, 1777, TNA ADM 36/7756; Pybus, “Jefferson’s Faulty Math,” 249. 37 A detailed overview of Anderson’s life is set forth in Foy, “Britain’s Black Tars,” 63–64. 38 Charles R. Foy, “Eighteenth Century Prize Negroes: From Britain to America,” Slavery & Abolition 31:3 (Sept. 2010): 379–393. 39 Old Bailey Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17840421-17-defend288&div=t17840421-17#highlight (accessed March 12, 2022). 40 HMS Rose Musters, 1775–1777, TNA ADM 36/7947–50; NDAR 2:23. 41 W. Bryan Rommel-Ruiz believed that Benjamin went to Nova Scotia at the end of the American Revolution. W. Bryan

Rommel-Ruiz, “Atlantic Revolutions: Slavery and Freedom in Newport, Rhode Island and Halifax, Nova Scotia in the Era of the

American Revolution,” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1999, 1. As his own letter notes, Benjamin refused to go to

Nova Scotia feeling he “belonged to” Samuel Freebody, whom he hoped would free him. 42 Benjamin Freebody’s letters and documents from the court proceeding between Samuel Freebody and Captain James Brattle are filed in Mss 9003, Vol. 16, p. 97–103, Rhode Island Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island (RIHS). Thanks to Philip D. Morgan for providing copies of these records. 43 The case of the Lawrence seamen is discussed in detail in Foy, “ ‘Unkle Somerset’s’ Freedom,” 21–36. 44 Newport Mercury, July 3, 1782. 45 Charles R. Foy, “The Royal Navy’s Employment of Black Mariners and Maritime Workers, 1754–1783,” International Journal of

Maritime History, 28, no. 1 (Feb. 2016), 13–17; Douglas Hamilton, “ ‘A most active, enterprising officer’: Captain John Perkins, the Royal Navy and the boundaries of slavery and liberty in the Caribbean,” Slavery & Abolition, 39, no. 1 (2018): 1–21. 46 Foy, “ ‘Unkle Somerset’s’ Freedom,” 30. 47 Chater, Untold Histories, 235; Brown, Tacky’s Revolt, 165. 48 Foy, “Eighteenth Century French Atlantic Black Seamen,” Lumières 35 (Spring 2021), 31–33; Foy, “Britain’s Black Tars” in Gerzina, ed., Britain’s Black Past, 68–71; Foy, “Eighteenth-Century Prize Negroes,” 382-–88. 49 Sue Peabody and Keila Grinberg, “Free Soil: The Generation and Circulation of an Atlantic Legal Principle,” Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 3 (Sept. 2011): 331–339. 50 Foy, “Black Hands, White Profits,” 132. 51 The Slave Enlistment Act clearly altered enslaved peoples’ views as to how to achieve freedom. While in 1777 there were twenty-eight known Rhode Island maritime fugitives, in 1778 there were only two.

Fourth of July flag (1826), RIHS COLLECTIONS AN 1826.2.1, RHI X17317.