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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2021
Francis Seymour, a curly headed nigger from the land of stars and stripes, was brought up for having shown a little too much of the Yankee spirit of independence... He became refractory, refused to do any [work], demanded a sovereign from Mr. Neethling, said....that if he did not get the sovereign he would knock it out of [him]. His abuse was very unsparing, and he was only prevented from “knocking it out” by the opportune appearance of Mr. J. J. Meintjes, who procured a police officer, and the “man of independent mind” was given into custody.
While on its homeward passage in 1813, the whaling ship William Penn was intercepted off the island of Trinidad in the South Atlantic by a British frigate, boarded, and informed of the existence of war; and that the American seamen were prisoners of H.M.S. Acorn. Within a half hour, the Acorn and its prize (now manned by English sailors) were underway, heading off southeast for the Cape of Good Hope. After a passage of forty days they anchored in Table Bay.
Keletso Atkins is Associate Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her recent book, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! won the 1994 African Studies Association Herskovits Award. Her forthcoming book is entitled Questionable Haven: South Africa as an Immigration Site for Freed Slaves and their Descendants from North America, 1783-1870.
1. Although this evidence is later than the period under consideration, the characterization of Francis Seymour, an African-American sailor who was discharged from his ship at the Cape, is consistent with the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century depictions of black ‘jack-tars’ in other foreign ports.
2. Scott, Julius C., “Afro-American Sailors and the International Communication Network: The Case of Newport Bowers,” in Howell, Colin and Twomey, Richard, eds., Jack Tar in the History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour, Acadiensis Press, 1991 Google Scholar.
3. Ross, Robert, Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa, London: Routledge and Kegan Hall, 1983, pp. 97-104Google Scholar.
4. Ibid, page 105.
5. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, “The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century,” in Howell and Twomey.