Reconstructing a Slave Ship Voyage: The Gideon and the Dutch Slave Trade into New Amsterdam

After a journey of almost nine months, traveling from the Dutch Republic to the African Coasts and the Dutch Caribbean, the slave ship Gideon finally arrived in New Amsterdam in August of 1664, only weeks before the English took over the region. On board, there were 291 slaves who the Council of New Netherland described as “a very poor lot.” Where did these slaves come from, and what brought about their exceptionally poor conditions? What happened to the slaves and ship crew who were stationed in a harbor that would soon be taken over by the English?

In an effort to examine the Dutch slave trade into New Amsterdam, this paper will use the existing historical records to retrace and reconstruct the journey of the Gideon, the experiences of the people on board, both free and enslaved, and the places it frequented, most significantly New Amsterdam. Historians who explore the slave trade in this city tend to focus on the numbers of slaves on board these ships or identifying their African origins. By combining analysis of sources concerning the Gideon with micro-histories of the places and people involved in its voyage, this study realizes an in-depth analysis of one slave ship to provide a more detailed account of the Dutch slave trade and the people involved. In so doing, this paper demonstrates that even in those cases that we do not have ample sources it is possible to write a history of a slave ship and its place in the Dutch slave trade that extends beyond mere statistics.