By
the 1830’s more than one-fifth of sailors on the coastal cities of America were
of African descent. Many were slaves hired out by their owners to make extra
money. In his article on Black seamen, “Black Jacks: African American Mariners
in Early America,” Cliff Odle writes that “The sea was one of the few places
that a 40-year old man, white or black, could be called boy without offence.”
Some of the famous Black sailors Odle mentions are James Forten, Paul Cuffe and
Crispus Attucks. Eighteen thousand men and eleven women who can be named served
in the U.S. naval forces during the Civil War, the majority coming from New
York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland. Going to sea helped many a
runaway slave find freedom. Joseph P. Reidy in his online series Black Men in
Navy Blue shares this: “By
September 1861, the volume of requests from commanders of naval vessels
regarding authorization to enlist fugitive slaves reached such proportions that
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, a Connecticut native of antislavery bent,
felt obliged to act.”