1839 slave revolt Captained by Ferrer,
La Amistad left Havana on June 28, 1839, for the small port of Guanaja, near
Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, with some general cargo and 53 African captives bound for the sugar plantation where they were to be delivered. (in modern-day
Sierra Leone), sold to European slave traders and illegally transported from Africa to Havana, mostly aboard the Portuguese slave ship
Teçora, to be sold in Cuba. Although the United States and Britain had banned the Atlantic slave trade, Spain had not abolished the trade in its colonies. The crew of
La Amistad, lacking purpose-built slave quarters, placed half the captives in the main hold and the other half on deck. The captives were relatively free to move about, which aided their revolt and commandeering of the vessel. In the main hold below decks, the captives found a rusty file and sawed through their manacles. On about July 1, once free, the men below quickly went up on deck. Armed with machete-like
cane knives, they attacked the crew, successfully gaining control of the ship, under the leadership of
Sengbe Pieh (later known in the United States as
Joseph Cinqué). They killed the captain Ferrer as well as the ship's cook Celestino; two captives also died, and two sailors Manuel Pagilla and Jacinto escaped in a small boat. Ferrer's slave/mulatto cabin boy Antonio Two days later, the
Gratitude pilot boat came across
La Amistad when she was twenty-five miles east of
Fire Island. When Captain Seaman of the
Gratitude wanted to put a pilot aboard, one of the ringleaders of
La Amistad ordered the men to fire on the
Gratitude. Gun shots hit the pilot boat but she was able to escape. Discovered by the naval
brig while on surveying duties,
La Amistad was taken into United States custody. By the time of their trial, six of the captives had died. argued the case before the Supreme Court which ruled in favor of the Africans. A widely publicized court case ensued in New Haven to settle legal issues about the ship and the status of the Mende captives. They were at risk of execution if convicted of mutiny, and they became a popular cause among
abolitionists in the United States. Since 1808, the United States and Britain had prohibited the international slave trade. In order to avoid the international prohibition on the African slave trade, the ship's owners fraudulently described the Mende as having been born in Cuba and said that they were being sold in the Spanish domestic slave trade. The court had to determine if the Mende were to be considered salvage and thus the property of naval officers who had taken custody of the ship (as was legal in such cases), the property of the Cuban buyers, or the property of Spain, as Queen
Isabella II claimed. A question was whether the circumstances of the capture and transport of the Mende meant that they were legally free and had acted as free men rather than slaves. The Spanish government claimed that the Mende people were Spanish citizens not of African origin. This created tension among the U.S. government, the Spanish crown, and the British government, which had outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire with the
Slave Trade Act 1807 and had recently abolished slavery in the British Empire with the
Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Later years La Amistad had been moored at the wharf behind the
US Custom House in
New London, Connecticut for a year and a half, and it was auctioned off by the
U.S. Marshal in October 1840. Captain George Hawford of
Newport, Rhode Island purchased the vessel and then needed an act of Congress passed to register it. He renamed it
Ion. In late 1841, he sailed
Ion to
Bermuda and
Saint Thomas with a typical
New England cargo of onions, apples, live poultry, and cheese. Hawford sold
Ion in
Guadeloupe in 1844. There is no record of what became of it under the new French owners in the Caribbean. ==Legacy==