AN EXCEPTIONALLY DETAILED LETTER
,
DISCUSSING A KNOWN SLAVE SHIP
,
THE ANTONIA
[“
ALIAS LA AFRICANA
”]
AS CITED IN JOURNALS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FOR
1821.
The
owner of the slave ship, writing from Matanzas province in Cuba, asks Mr. Forsyth in Baltimore to
“make some insurance for me on my schooner the Antonia, Antonio Echevarria, master, now on a
voyage to the Coast of Africa for cargo of slaves, south of the Equator, agreeable to a royal order from
the King of Spain. This vessel is a first rate pilot boat built schooner, about one hundred thirty
American tons . . . built by Noah Brown of New York, launched in February 1817 . . . Has made
two voyages to the Coast of Africa and now on a third . . . request you will write to your friend in
Baltimore to make some insurance for me,
say fifteen thousand dollars for vessel and
cargo from this port (Matanzas) to a port or
ports on the Coast of Africa, south of the
Equator and back to this place with a cargo
of slaves. The Antonia is provided with a
Royal passport from the King of Spain. . .”
The passport would be accompanied by the
Spanish flag; both were to avoid being
boarded by the British or American revenue
cutters, patrolling the Coast of Africa follow-
ing the 1807 ban on taking of slaves from
Africa. He continues “The whole of the
expedition cost a little over twenty-eight
thousand dollars. The vessel is armed with
on eighteen pound gunnade (a small can-
non) on a pivot, and a good proportion of
small arms and manned by nineteen per-
sons, all told, and is calculated to make an
excellent defense from attack of boats” (pre-
sumably native boats). It is hard to imagine
the Antonia firing on a British patrol boat.
LOT
21,
continued