IrreverentLittleshit

In November 1841, nineteen enslaved men took an American slave ship in the middle of the Atlantic. They sailed it to the nearest British port. ⚓ 128 of them walked off into freedom that day. 🇬🇧 And America wanted them back. 🇺🇸 Madison Washington had been born enslaved in Virginia. He escaped to Canada in 1840 and made it to freedom. Most enslaved people who reached Canada never went back. Madison Washington went back. His wife Susan was still in Virginia. He couldn't leave her there. He didn't reach her. He was recaptured. Sold. Put on the Creole, bound for the New Orleans slave markets. So were eighteen other men who had decided this voyage would not end the way it was supposed to. One of them was called Ben Blacksmith. Ben Blacksmith had heard a story. The year before, an American slave ship called the Hermosa had run aground in the Bahamas. The Bahamas were British. ⚓ British magistrates had boarded the ship, taken the 38 enslaved people off, and freed them under British law. That was the story Ben Blacksmith carried with him onto the Creole. On 7 November 1841, the rebels took the ship. They killed one slave trader. They wounded the captain but kept him alive. They needed him to navigate. Their first instinct was Liberia. The captain told them they didn't have enough food or water to cross the Atlantic. That was when Ben Blacksmith spoke. They turned the ship toward the Bahamas. When the Creole sailed into Nassau harbour, something extraordinary happened. Small boats put out from the shore, rowed by Black Bahamian mariners. Most of them had once been enslaved themselves. All of them were now free under British law. They surrounded the Creole. They were there to make sure the rebels could not be taken back. A British colonial officer came aboard. He was clear. Under British law, slavery was illegal. Anyone aboard the Creole who had been enslaved was, from that moment, free. ⚖️ A hundred and eleven walked off the Creole into freedom that day. The Friendly Society of Nassau housed them, fed them, found them work. Madison Washington and sixteen others were held to face trial. In Washington, the news arrived with fury. The Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, demanded the rebels back to face charges of mutiny and murder. Southern politicians demanded compensation. Some called for war with Britain. Britain refused. 🇬🇧 For five months. Through every threat. In April 1842, the Admiralty Court in Nassau ruled. The men had been illegally held as slaves under British law. They had the right to use force to free themselves. They were not pirates. They were not murderers. They were free men who had escaped illegal captivity. ⚖️ On 16 April 1842, Madison Washington and his fellow rebels walked out of the Nassau jail into the Bahamian sun. ☀️ The Creole was not the first. In 1830, the Comet wrecked off the Bahamas. Britain freed 164 people from it. In 1834, the Encomium. 45 freed. In 1835, the Enterprise. 78 freed. In 1840, the Hermosa. 38 freed. In 1841, the Creole. 128 freed. Across twelve years, British colonies had freed nearly 450 enslaved Americans from American ships in British waters. The most successful slave revolt in American history had ended on a British dock. 🇬🇧 Britain abolished slavery. Then refused to hand a single soul back, no matter who demanded it. We exist to put stories like this back into the story of Britain. Help us keep finding them. 🙏 proudofus.co.uk/support Be part of us. 🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧