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Abstract
With his 1772 decree in Somerset v. Steuart that slavery was ‘so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it [in England] but positive law’, Lord Mansfield altered the legal landscape regarding black rights in England. While earlier judicial decisions had implied that slaves who came to England were free, prior to the Somerset decision there was no judicial consensus on the issue. The Somerset decision did not decree that slavery was illegal in England. Yet many blacks believed it ‘emancipated’ any slave who reached the shores of England. This understanding, combined with the British military welcoming runaways into its ranks during the American Revolution, led to several thousand former slaves reaching England, a considerable number of whom were mariners. Although the Royal Navy was not isolated from the racism or harsh legal treatment of blacks, naval personnel often assisted ex-slaves to obtain freedom in England. The freedom black mariners found in England was fairly limited; they remained subject to re-enslavement, had limited legal protections over employment conditions and were often homeless and poor. Despite such conditions, life in England was a considerable improvement over enslavement in the Americas for many former slave mariners. Slave mariners on the sloop Lawrence illustrate the means black mariners took to obtain freedom, the Royal Navy's role in ex-slave mariners becoming free and the limits of freedom in England.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2010 American Historical Association annual conference, the Johns Hopkins University Early American Seminar, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Eastern Illinois University History Department colloquium. I am grateful to the National Maritime Museum, the McNeil Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, Rutgers University and Eastern Illinois University for supporting my research. The author would like to thank all those who read and commented on drafts of this article, including Christopher Leslie Brown, Jan Ellen Lewis, Philip D. Morgan, Katherine Paugh and the anonymous JMR referees.
Notes
London Chronicle, 22 June 1772; Weiner, ‘Evidence on Somerset's case’, 125; Wiecek, ‘Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the legitimacy of slavery’, 86, 144.
Pennsylvania Gazette, 26 Apr. 1775 and Newport Mercury, 28 Sep. 1772; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), Williamsburg, 30 Sep. 1773; Virginia Gazette (Rind), Williamsburg, 30 June 1774.
Forum, ‘Somerset's case revisited’, Law and History Review 24, no. 3 (2006): 601–71; Morgan, ‘Black experiences in Britain's maritime world’, 132, n. 30; Brown, Moral capital, 97–8; Oldham, ‘New light on Mansfield and slavery’, 45, 54; Cotter, ‘Somerset case and abolition’; Wieck, ‘Somerset’, 87, 146.
Most of the relevant records concerning the Lawrence's black mariners can be found at The National Archives, Kew [TNA] CO 5/148. I want to thank Christopher Leslie Brown for having brought these records to my attention.
Gloucester Records Office, United Kingdom [GRO], Granville Sharpe Papers, Granville Sharp Commonplace Book C, 1768, 106.
New York Historical Society [NYHS], Granville Sharpe Papers, Lewis v. Stapylton.
Brown, Moral capital, 99; Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), 30 Sep. 1773 and 30 June 1774; Drayton, Some fugitive thoughts. Slaves from British colonies also fled via the sea to foreign colonies and nations where they obtained freedom. ‘Marroonage en Saint Domingue’, www.marronnage.info/en/index.html (accessed 10 Dec. 2010); Journal of the Assembly of Jamaica VIII (1804): 457.
TNA CO 152/79, fo 63, Duke of Portland to Preston Thompson, Oct. 1800.
Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 98.
TNA ADM 36/7756, HMS Brune Muster Roll, 1777–8. Some maritime fugitives were re-enslaved when captured by American privateers. Foy, ‘Eighteenth-century prize Negroes’, 385–8.
TNA ADM 36/7756, HMS Brune Muster Roll, 1777–8. Mingus's naval career can be followed in TNA ADM 36/8576, HMS Lizard Muster Roll, 1778–9; TNA ADM 36/8309–8310, HMS Courageux Muster Rolls, 1779–80; TNA ADM 34/189–190, HMS Courageux Pay Book, 1780; TNA ADM 36/8727, HMS Courageux Muster Roll, 1781–3.
Clark, Naval documents of the American Revolution, vol. I, 615; vol. II, 452; vol. III, 278, 865, 902; vol. IV, 230; Newport Mercury, 7 Aug. 1776; Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 13; Rodger, Wooden world, 159; Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, 153–5.
FootnoteG.W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, VFM 405, Louis F. Middlebrook, Biographical sketch of Elisha Lathrop, n.d.; TNA ADM 36/1999, HMS Monk, Muster Rolls 1781–2; Pybus, ‘Jefferson's faulty math’, 263–4.
Rodger, Wooden world, 161; TNA ADM 1/927, Holbourne letters, 17, 22 and 29 Dec. 1758.
Brandow, Genealogies of Barbados families, 143, 378.
Rodger, Wooden world, 159–60.
TNA ADM 36/7390, HMS Garland Muster Roll, 1757–66. In contrast, in 1758 when a Maryland slave owner claimed the naval sailor William Stephens as his property the Admiralty refused to release Stephens from naval service, perhaps an indication of the seamen's value during a time of war. Rodger, Wooden world, 113–37.
TNA CO 5/148, fos 92–3, Affidavit of John Harman, 21 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fo 41, Captain Stiles to Collector of Portsmouth, 11 May 1776.
TNA ADM 1/3917, Edward Trelawny to Lords of Admiralty, 21 Dec. 1743; Bernhard, Slaves and slaveholders in Bermuda, 247.
The New York Gazette, 23 Sep. 1732; NYHS, McDougall Papers, reel 1, ‘List of men belonging to the Privateer Tyger’; TNA ADM 1/306, Thomas Franklin to John Cleveland, 28 Apr. 1757; TNA CO 318/3, fo 365, Board of Trade to Crown, 10 Feb. 1758; TNA ADM 36/7910, HMS Racehorse Muster Roll, 1776; TNA HCA 32/454/12, Speedwell (New York Vice-Admiralty Court, 1777); and TNA HCA 32/454/2, Speedwell (New York Vice-Admiralty Court, 1781).
Hall, ‘Maritime maroons’, 490; Clayton, ‘Life at sea in colonial Spanish America’, 22.
L. Greene, The Negro in colonial New England, 116; Fitts, Inventing New England's slave paradise, 109–12; TNA ADM 1/3917, Edward Trelawny to Lords of Admiralty, 21 Dec. 1743; TNA ADM 1/306, Thomas Franklin to John Cleveland, Antigua, 28 Apr. 1757; Hall, ‘Maritime maroons’, 912; Foy, ‘Seeking freedom in the Atlantic’. Cuba's governor acknowledged ‘without those of “broken” color, blacks and Indians … I do not know if we could arm a single corsair’. Landers, ‘Gracia Real del Santa Teresa de Mose’, 609.
Black sailors' anonymity is the result of many being illiterate, their mobility, often dying young, and the paucity of eighteenth-century crew lists.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 92, Affidavit of John Harman, 21 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fo 41, Captain William Stiles to Collector and Comptroller of Portsmouth, 11 May 1776.
Berlin, ‘From Creole to African’, 254; Eltis, Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 41, Captain William Stiles to Collector and Comptroller of Portsmouth, 11 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fos 78–9, Affidavit of James List and Robert Parnell, 18 May 1776.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 41, Captain William Stiles to Collector and Comptroller of Portsmouth, 11 May1776; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich [NMM], ADM/L/G/140A, Log of HMS Greyhound, 15 Apr. 1776.
NMM ADM/L/G/140A, Log of HMS Greyhound, 18 Apr. 1776. Given that the Lawrence's black mariners undoubtedly understood the significance of HMS Greyhound's presence, one must wonder how quickly they responded when their captain did not accede to the Greyhound's authority. With or without the black mariners' best efforts, the Lawrence was unable to escape.
Gould, ‘Zones of law, zones of violence’. The Lawrence case demonstrates that Eliga Gould's division of the British Atlantic into western and southern ‘zones of war, chaos and brutality’ and eastern and northern zones of law is too tidy a division. Mary Sarah Bilder's view that ‘a colony's laws could not be repugnant to the laws of England, but could differ according to the people and place’ is a more accurate statement of the legal system at play in the British Atlantic in the early 1770s. Bilder, Transatlantic constitution, 1.
Pennsylvania Chronicle, 27 Sep. 1773; Whyte, Scotland and the abolition of black slavery, 16, 32.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 41, Captain William Stiles to the Collector and Comptroller of Portsmouth, 11 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fo 61, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to Commissioners of Customs, 13 May 1776. As Collector and Deputy Collector, Cooley and Stiles were responsible for the running of Portsmouth's port and oversaw the harbour's customs staff. Carson, ‘Smugglers and revenue officers’, 3–4. In these roles the officers would have been familiar with the large-scale smuggling of tea in Britain and its colonies.
TNA T 1/516, fos 332–5, 339–40, 344–5, 355–7, 372–4, 386–93, 401–5, Letters from Customs, Dover, 20 Nov.–20 Dec. 1775; TNA T 1/523, fos 9–25, Letters from Customs, London, Mar.–Apr., 1776; NMM [Rodger – ] Douglas Papers, DOU/9, James Douglas to Admiralty, 18 Dec. 1775.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 39, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to Commissioners of Customs, Portsmouth, 10 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fo 65, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to Commissioners of Customs, 16 May 1776; Hampshire Chronicle, 20 May 1776. A review of Portsmouth area newspapers – Hampshire Chronicle, Sussex Weekly Advertiser and Salisbury and Winchester Chronicle – did not disclose any fugitive slave advertisement for John Draper. It may be that when British authorities spoke of Draper ‘being advertised by the [Lawrence's] Master’, they were referring to Captain Martin's use of handbills. English watermen were also known to be willing, for compensation, to kidnap black men to be sold back into slavery. Scobie, Black Britannia, 54–5.
NYHS, Lewis v. Stapleton.
TNA CO 5/148, fos 70–1, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to the Commissioners of Customs, 17 May 1776; NYHS, Prerogative Court, BV Slavery, Cay v. Crighton.
Portsmouth City Record Office [PCRO] 11/1/16/827, Affidavit of James List and Robert Parnell, 18 May 1776; Bristol Record Office [BRO], Champion Family Letter Books, no. 973612, letter from Nicholas Pocock, 7 Mar. 1783.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 71, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to the Commissioners of Customs, 17 May 1776.
TNA CO 5/148, fo 72, William Knox to Edward Stanley, 18 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fos 78–9, Affidavit of James List and Robert Parnell, 18 May 1776.
ibid.; TNA CO 5/148, fo 76, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to Commissioners of Customs, 19 May 1776.
TNA CO 5/148, fos 86d and 88, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to Commissioners of Customs, 21 May 1776; TNA CO 5/148, fos 91–2, Affidavit of John Harman, 21 May 1776.
TNA CO 5/148, fos 122–23d, William Knox to Commissioners of Customs, 7 June 1776. The Admiralty's determination may have been in part due to the intercession of the Danish ambassador and Advocate General James Marriot's indication he thought Captain Martin ‘an honest man and not in American interest’. TNA CO 5/148, fo 88, W. Cooley and W. Stiles to William Howe; TNA CO 5/148, fos 283–84d, James Marriott to Lord George Germain, n.d.
J.P. Greene, Exclusionary empire, 3.
Hulseboch, ‘Nothing but liberty’, 647; Van Cleve, ‘Somerset's case and its antecedents’, 602–3.
TNA PROB3/34/133, Inventory of John Gallway, 24 Nov. 1735; TNA BT 98/36–37, Liverpool Crew Lists, 1776–7; BRO, SMV/9/3/1/6–8, Bristol Muster Rolls, 1768–83; Lane, Liverpool, 117; Pybus, Epic journeys, 82, 238, n. 13.
TNA T/1/508/139–144, Papers Regarding the Estate of William Spencer.
Among the records reviewed to determine if the four slave mariners remained in Portsmouth were muster rolls of Royal Navy ships in Portsmouth in 1776 (TNA ADM 36); PCRO, Mortgages, Deeds and Indentures; PCRO X/11/A/A, Portsmouth Poor Law Records; PCRO PL 2/1 and 6/10–11, Portsmouth Parish Registers, 1779, 1780–1800; PCRO C/1CP/4 and 8/HP/3/21/2, Portsmouth Common Rate Books, 1775, 1785–90; PCRO CH 2/1A/3–4, 7, St Thomas's Church, Portsmouth, Registers of Marriages, 1776–83 and Register of Baptisms and Burials, 1770–83; PCRO CH 3/1A/9/3–9, St Mary's Church, Portsea, Register of Baptisms and Burials, 1773–83; TNA RG4/403, High Street Presbyterian Church, Portsmouth, Burial and Baptism Registers, 1780–3; TNA RG 4/1806, Meeting House Alley, Portsmouth, Burial and Baptismal Registers, 1770–83; PCRO CHU 23/1A/5–6, Holy Trinity Church, Gosport, Baptisms, Burials and Marriages, 1696–1783; PCRO S3/173–4, Portsmouth Court of Quarter Sessions, 1776; PCRO R4/17–18, Portsmouth Mayor's Warrants, 1774–82; PCRO R1/22, Portsmouth Court of Record Books, 1773–83.
TNA ADM 1113–1115, Portsmouth Yard Pay Books, 1776–9; Hampshire Chronicle, 29 Apr. 1782. In 1773 when two black beggars were imprisoned more than 300 blacks supplied money for the men's maintenance. Shyllon, Black people in Britain, 80–5.
Wieck, Somerset, 110; Pybus, Epic journeys, 84; Williams v. Brown in Catterall, Judicial cases, vol. 1, 5–6, 23–5.
GRO, Granville Sharp Commonplace Book D; Foy, ‘Eighteenth-century prize Negroes’, 379–85.
GRO, D3549/1/G2, Henry Gandy to Granville Sharpe, 4 Aug. 1796; Paley, ‘After Somerset’, 165, 178–81.