Enslaved Ship Pilots: Navigating the Green Waters of Race and Slavery

This paper considers how enslaved pilots helped facilitate maritime commerce by linking plantations to the overseas markets and factories. Through years of boating and fishing activities, some slaves became intimately familiar with coastal waterways, learning their depths, current and surf patterns, and underwater contours, including the location of reefs and sandbars. Western shipmasters could navigate the Atlantic, however, they typically relied on pilots' to guide their ships through dangerous waterways and into and out of port. Consequently, pilots were an important, hard-to-replace link in overseas trade. The abilities of enslaved pilots enabled them to challenge prevailing notions of race, slavery, and social status. Pilots, regardless of their race, assumed proxy command of the vessels they navigated. This permitted bondmen to invert the social/racial hierarchy and act like free, white, men. They received wages and when they boarded a vessel they were cordially received. Like officers, they cursed and commanded white sailors who unquestioningly complied with their orders. Even though officers respected slave pilots' wisdom and abilities, they were often upset by the fact that enslaved black men issued orders to them in sight and earshot of sailors. Unlike other slaves, pilots held the lives of whites in their hands, and the unspoken, yet understood threat of sinking and ship reaffirmed their authority. White mariners recognized that they were in a symbiotic relationship with enslaved pilots and conceded that it was in their best interests to allow them to act like their equals and even superiors. The authority and privileges slave pilots received were ephemeral. As they boarded vessels they underwent a Darwinian evolution that transformed them from slave to ship captain. As they disembarked they experienced another metamorphis that transformed them back into common slaves: the benefits they exchanged for their knowledge and abilities were measured in hours and days.