I have been thinking a lot about the courage that Ernest Hemingway showed in writing The Garden of Eden. In the book, the the story that David Bourne was scared to write was about the killing of the elephant.
Yesterday was a bad day for me. I have had my own elephant to write about. I woke up and intended to write about my elephant, wrote that little thing, which is all true, and got too upset to write about it further. I spent hours collecting source material which just upset me more. I cannot write it as a coherent whole, it is just too disturbing. So, I am going to post the notes I made to myself and some of the source material. No, that isn't courageous of me, it's cowardly, I know, but it is all I am capable of right now; all that I may ever be capable of. Like The Garden of Eden it is an unfinished mass of material.
Photographs I took at the DeWolf lot in Bristol:
Yesterday was a bad day for me. I have had my own elephant to write about. I woke up and intended to write about my elephant, wrote that little thing, which is all true, and got too upset to write about it further. I spent hours collecting source material which just upset me more. I cannot write it as a coherent whole, it is just too disturbing. So, I am going to post the notes I made to myself and some of the source material. No, that isn't courageous of me, it's cowardly, I know, but it is all I am capable of right now; all that I may ever be capable of. Like The Garden of Eden it is an unfinished mass of material.
Dewolf
Strange fruit
Chair
Pox
Cut rope 1789
Cargo
anchorite
11,000-12,000 slaves
11,000-12,000 slaves
Died 2nd richest in land
Grave robber stole gold teeth
Grave robber stole gold teeth
Conversation
Reparation
RI seal: plantation, anchor
Slave ship name Polly
sewer of new england
https://web.archive.org/web/20141214024651/http://res.providencejournal.com/hercules/extra/2006/slavery/day6/
https://hobblecreek.us/blog/entry/wolf-in-ships-clothing-americas-most-prominent-slave-trader
sewer of new england
https://web.archive.org/web/20141214024651/http://res.providencejournal.com/hercules/extra/2006/slavery/day6/
https://hobblecreek.us/blog/entry/wolf-in-ships-clothing-americas-most-prominent-slave-trader
DeWolf went up to the main top with a member of
the crew, where they found the infected woman still clinging to life. They
proceeded to blindfold her and tie her to a chair, after which four sailors
lowered her to the deck. Although she was alive in the main top before being
lowered down, no witness was able to say afterwards whether she was still alive
when, a short time later, two sailors lowered her, still in the chair, down the
side of the ship into the waters of the Atlantic below.
In April 1795, criminal proceedings for the same
incident were initiated in St. Thomas, a Dutch colony, where James DeWolf was
then living. A fellow ship captain, Isaac Manchester, brought the complaint.
The court heard testimony from, among others, Captain Henry Bradford, who was a
sailor aboard the Polly at
the time, and depositions were read into evidence from two other members of the
crew, which were sworn by them before the governor of St. Eustatius, a Dutch
colony, after the Polly arrived
there from Africa. These eyewitness accounts agreed that the enslaved woman had
been given all available treatment, that there appeared to be no possibility
that she would recover (and, indeed, no one could say for sure whether she was
alive or dead when lowered into the water), and that there appeared to be no
alternative to save the others on board but to throw her off the ship. The
witnesses further agreed that all sailors who had been previously infected with
smallpox joined the captain in carrying out this task.
Judge Advocate Christian Frederick Petri declared
in his ruling that “this act of James De Wolfe was morally evil, but at the
same time physically good and beneficial to a number of beings.”
Sources: Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode
Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807 (Philadelphia:
Temple Press, 1981); David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and
Herbert S. Klein, eds., The
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge,
1999); George Howe, Mount
Hope: A New England Chronicle (New York: Viking Press, 1959);
M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Bristol,
Rhode Island: A Town Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1930); Cynthia Mestad Johnson, James DeWolf and the Rhode Island
Slave Trade (Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2014);
Sowande’ Mustakeem, “‘She must go overboard & shall go overboard’: Diseased
bodies and the spectacle of murder at sea,” Atlantic Studies 8:3 (Sept. 2011),
301-316; Isidor Paiewonsky, Eyewitness
Accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies (New York:
Fordham Univ. Press, 1989); Rufus King Papers, New York Historical Society, Box
6, Folder 2, Item 26.
He then decided that, although she was still alive, she should
be thrown overboard to the sharks. None of his crew would assist, so he did it
himself, tying her to a chair and a weight.
Captain Jim was later indicted for murder by authorities in
Bristol, and one of his crew testified:
Q: Did
you not hear her speak or make any Noises when she was thrown over—or see her
struggle?
A: No—a
Mask was ty’d round her mouth & Eyes that she could not, & it was done
to prevent her making any Noise that the other Slaves might not hear, least
they should rise [rebel].
Q: Do
you recollect to hear the Capt. say any thing after the scene was ended?
A: All
he said was he was sorry he had lost so good a Chair.
https://www.evblog.virginiahumanities.org/2011/12/a-good-chair-gone-or-the-story-of-capt-jim/
John Cranston
The Slave Ship: A Human History Paperback – September 30,
2008
by Marcus Rediker
“She must go overboard & shall go overboard”
Calabar was a major port in the transportation of African
slaves. 85% of slave ships that transported slaves from Calabar came from
Bristol and Liverpool merchants.]
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/georgian-britain-age-modernity/slave-ships/
James DeWolf and the Rhode Island Slave Trade
By Cynthia Mestad Johnson
Through the Howes, Thomas learned of Katrina Browne's plans
to make a movie about the family, and the trip she was organizing. In July of
2001, the ten distant cousins—who hadn't known each other previously—gathered
in Bristol to begin their journey.
They met with local historians, whom they discovered were
very reluctant to discuss the slave trade. ( Linden Place also refused to allow
them to film.)
In 1803, James DeWolf gave his wife an African boy and girl
for Christmas.
At the urging of the DeWolfs, Congressman John Brown helped
establish Bristol and Warren as a separate customs district where slave traders
could operate away from "the prying eyes" of William Ellery in
Newport, says Coughtry. A few years later, the family successfully lobbied
President Thomas Jefferson to name Charles Collins, a slave trader and DeWolf
cousin, as head of the new district.
Collins had been captain of the seized ship, the Lucy.
The family's hold was now complete.
From 1804 to 1807, the prosecution of slave traders ceased,
and the number of Africa-bound ships from Bristol soared.
"The DeWolf family monopolized the slave trade,"
says Kevin E. Jordan, a retired professor at Roger Williams University.
To keep an eye on their trade, the DeWolfs built huge homes
near the harbor.
Charles hired ship carpenters to build the Mansion House on
Thames Street before 1785. It had four entrances, with broad halls running
north to south and east to west. Wallpaper in the drawing room featured exotic
birds with brilliant plumage.
Some images I pulled:
