Willis
Willis
1831
W illis had never seen a tall ship before. Now he was standing near the docks in the port city, looking up at three of them. He tilted his head back to peer at the massive spiderweb of rope ladders and lines that stretched into the sky. Long beams loomed over the decks, wrapped in enormous folds of white canvas. Willis felt his heartbeat quicken at the thought of these enormous vessels, sails unfurled, heading out to sea. Old Joe said the port here was in decline. But you wouldn’t know it, to see this place.
“When I was a young man,” Old Joe said, “you could find many more ships of all sizes docked here. Sloops, schooners, square-riggers. But those modern ships can cross the Atlantic directly from Europe to cities like New York, without depending on the winds to carry them across by the southern route.”
Willis and Old Joe had squeezed their wagon through a street packed with cargo waiting to be loaded onto the ships. On land, dockworkers moved back and forth around them, fetching cotton, rice, and other goods. A dozen oak barrels, bound together and suspended from a long rope, moved slowly from the dock to the deck of the closest ship. This was the square-rigger for which the load of pottery from Oldham’s was destined.
Seamen on board the ship tugged at lines and climbed up the rigging. Willis watched, open-mouthed, as they called out to one another, raising their voices to be heard above the din.
“Willis,” Old Joe barked. He jutted his chin toward the wagon bed, still full of jugs and jars. Willis nodded. He was moving too slowly, he knew, his gaze drawn by the frenzy of labor. As he wrapped his arms around a container, Willis felt a sudden drop in the activity around him. There was a hushing of voices as the ship’s crew turned their gazes inland. A small group of men was approaching the docks.
Three black sailors were flanked by a white man in a captain’s uniform and another who appeared to be a policeman, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his cap. As the men reached the ship, the policeman turned, without a word, and strode away.
“Foreigners,” Old Joe said.
Willis cocked his head to the side, a question in his mind.
“Free sailors from abroad,” Old Joe said. “The inspector must have kept them in the jail until their ship was ready to leave port. To keep them from fraternizing with those of us from here. That’s the rule.”
Willis nodded. He had grown up hearing the story of how a free man in the port city had been hanged for plotting a slave insurrection. Many people had been involved in the plan and, now, all free colored seamen who did not hail from thereabouts were taken into custody on arrival at the port. They were released only when their ship was ready to leave, and only if their captain had posted bond. Otherwise, a Cape Verdean or Gambian who’d been a free crew member on a sailing ship could well be sold into slavery.
“The captains don’t like it one bit,” Old Joe said. “And the United States government has registered its objections.” He gave a short laugh, tinged with a bitter note. “I reckon they all have figured out by now that their opinions don’t have much influence over the way things are done around here. So some of those ships won’t be coming back.”
The ship’s captain walked up a plank to the deck, followed by the three black seamen. A couple of the white crewmen nodded their heads in greeting at the black jacks. One of the men called to them and pointed and the colored men immediately fell into activity with the others, as if they had never been gone.
“The authorities want to keep the foreigners from wandering around town and spreading ideas of rebellion to slaves.” Old Joe said. “As if a slave who sails the seas with the permission of his master doesn’t have eyes and ears of his own. He’s a man, is he not? He has a tongue to tell stories of what he has seen and heard, does he not? He has a pocket sewn into his jacket. He can carry the printed word from afar, with news of how men and women live elsewhere.”
Old Joe shook his head slowly. “They can’t tie up the mind with a rope, but they keep trying anyhow. So they lock up the black jacks.”
“What about Frenchie?” Willis asked. He jutted his chin toward a sailor they’d met the night before, climbing the shroud of the next ship over. Moving quickly up the network of ropes, Frenchie did not appear to be more than sixty years old, as he’d claimed to be. As Frenchie held on with one hand and shouted to someone below, Willis wondered whether the police would notice him.
“Shush, now,” said Old Joe. He looked quickly from side to side, then resumed moving the pottery from the wagon to Willis’s arms. And Willis, though barely fourteen years of age, understood that this was a serious matter.