Amistad

[shipstamps]

Schooner. Portuguese slaver. No info.
Sierra Leone SG827b, 966. SSS Ency

[aukepalmhof]

When the AMISTAD is built is unknown, but it is believed that she was built in Baltimore, Maryland before 1839 as a two masted wooden topsail schooner under the name FRIENDSHIP.
Tonnage 70 46/95 ton, dim. 19.5 x 6 x 1.9m.
Hull black with a white stripe. Gilt eagle head and two gilt stars on transom.
Crew 5.
She was later sold to a Cuban owner and renamed AMISTAD (which is Friendship in Spanish.)

When the Portuguese slave ship TECORA landed African slaves in Havana, which were sold on the slave market in Havana, part of it were bought by the Cuban slave runners Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes for use in the Province of Puerto Principe.
They were embarked on board the AMISTAD which was used in the coastal trade along the Cuban coast.
The AMISTAD was under command of Captain Ferre. The 52 slaves and 4 children were locked up below decks and on deck.

28 June 1839 the AMISTAD sailed from Havana for the short voyage to Puerto Principe., when underway the slaves found a rusty file, and used this to free them selves. The slaves under the leadership of Sengbe Pieh also known as Joseph Cinque started a revolt, killing the captain and the cook, two sailors escaped in a ships boat.
The two slave runners were captured, and forced to steer the ship back to Africa, during the day they kept an easterly course but during the night she altered the course to the American coast.
26 August when she lay at anchor off Culloden Point the schooner and her crew were seized by the revenue cutter WASHINGTON under command of Lt. Thomas R. Gedney.
The AMISTAD was taken to New London, Connecticut.
A inquire was held on board of the WASHINGTON. The Africans were committed for trial in Hartford for piracy and murder.
Lt. Gedney claimed salvage on the ship and the cargo including the slaves, who had been purchased for $450 each in Havana.
A widely publicized court case in ensued in New Haven, Connecticut, about the ship and the legal status of the African captives, which became a cause célèbre among abolitionists in the USA. At that time, the transport of slaves from Africa to the Americas was illegal, so the ship owners fraudulently described the Africans as having been born in Cuba. The court had to decide if the Africans were to be considered salvage and the property of the Naval Officers who had taken custody of the ship, whether they were the property of the Cuban buyers or of Spain as Queen Isabella II of Spain claimed, or if the circumstances of their capture and transportation meant they were free.

On appeal, the Amistad case reached the US Supreme Court, which in 1841 ruled in that the Africans had been illegally transported and held as slaves, and ordered them freed.
(1842 The survived AMISTAD slaves returned to Africa.)

After being moored along the wharf behind the US Custom House in New London, Connecticut for one and half year, the U. S. Marshal in October 1840 sold her on a public auction to Captain George Hawford, of Newport, Rhode Island. He renamed her in ION.
Late 1841 he sailed her with a cargo of agriculture products to Bermuda and Saint Thomas.

1844 He sold the ION in Guadeloupe to some French owners.
Fate unknown.

Sierra Leone 1984 40c sg872B, scott 646a. 1985 40c sg?, scott?.
Lesotho 2000 M4 sgMS?, scott?
Ghana 1998 C5500 sgMS2697, scott?
Netherlands Antilles 2010 400c sg?, scott?

Source: Ships of the World by Lincoln P Paine. Watercraft Philately. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Amistad

[D. v. Nieuwenhuijzen]

The stamp of Lesotho gives the wrong name ARMISTAD.

[Arturo]

L'Amistad

Ghana, 1998, S.G.?, Scott; 2039.