All together the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Digital Initiative Team has so far transcribed almost 1,000 whaling crew lists sailing out of New Bedford in the first third of the 19th Century.
Of them, I transcribed 380 lists, or approximately 40%, some with an all Black crew, and some with no Black men at all. I found 889 Black men whose details may contain clues that might indicate that they were self-emancipated former slaves. These might include a place of origin being a slave state or that space simply left blank, or the residence at the time of sailing being left blank, perhaps either because the person was so newly arrived as to not have a local residence, or noting a residence or place of origin could be helpful for bounty hunters.
The terms used for skin color were the terms at the time, with certain ones, like “Sambo”, while being offensive today, at that time was a specific term used if the Black Man came from any country in the Western Hemisphere, other than the United States, that had slaves.
Also of interest is that within the same crew list, “Black” and “BLK” were used, sometimes one after the other as if this indicated something beyond skin color.
Not all the crewmen returned to New Bedford. I did not include my notes or those of the person writing the original list because of space, but a number who did not return from a voyage were not listed as having deserted or having died at sea or fallen overboard, so their leaving the ship might imply that the further they got from the Southern states the better, and of these, the majority were under 21.
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The lists were transcribed faithfully, so even if somewhere on the way to inclusion on www.whalinghistory.org, the lists are modified for uniformity and all those who have some ideation of skin color are listed as “Black”, the original transcriptions will be available for researchers to get a more specific picture as to who these men were.
The average number of Black crew members on my ships was 2, again, some ships having none while others had many if not all crew members being Black, which would mean that if this held true for all ships at the time that the team transcribed, there is a total of 1,876, and we only transcribed a small number of the existing lists, while some have yet to be photographed, or some were transcribed at other locations.
