Atlantic Slavery and the Hidden Atlantic: Slaves Trades and the Smuggling of Human Bodies (Negreros, Captains, Crews, and Personnel) in the Nineteenth Century

This paper examines captains, sailors, and the rest of personnel employed on board Cuban slave trading vessels after the formal abolition of the slave trade (1820-1880). It uses four major criteria to do so: 1) who were they, and what sort of labor were they involved in; with an emphasis on slave ship captains, cooks and surgeons. 2) Did they become part of a Creole-Atlantic culture? 3) the legal construction of the “illegal” within the written culture about the Hidden Atlantic, and 4) the role played by black or ex-slave sailors and other personnel in the formation of the ‘Afro’ cults in Cuba.