Navigating Race: African Pilots in the Early Modern Atlantic World

“African Pilots in the Atlantic World” considers how local hydrographic knowledge provided early modern Atlantic Africans (from the Senegal River to Central West Africa) and New World slaves with piloting skills vital to Western trans-Atlantic commerce.  This knowledge enabled many to earn substantial incomes and challenge Western notions of race, civilization, and masculinity.  Through boating and canoe-borne fishing activities, many Africans and slaves became intimately familiar with coastal and littoral waterways, learning their depth, current and surf patterns, and underwater contours including the location of reefs and sandbars.  When Western ships arrived in Africa and the New World, ship captains often employed watermen of African descent as pilots to guide their ships through dangerous coastal and littoral waterways.  African and enslaved pilots issued commands, in essence assuming temporary command of Western ships.  Since captains and officers subordinated themselves to black pilots, they regarded pilots as offensive to their sense of honor, masculinity, social status, and racial hierarchy.  The travel accounts, logbooks, letters, and diaries written by ship captains and officers indicate that they regarded pilots of African descent as their inferiors, often referring to them as arrogant and uppity savages, brutes, apes, and pagans.  Officers’ exasperation was heightened by the fact that pilots issued orders to them in sight and earshot of their crews.  However, African and enslaved pilots wielded considerable power.  Their knowledge and skills were necessary to safely guide ships through dangerous waterways, and captains indicated that they had little recourse if pilots grounded or wrecked their ship.  Consequently, prudent ship captains and officers understood that for the safety of their vessels, cargo, crew, and passengers they must suppress their racial views about blacks, swallow their pride, and accept pilots’ orders.