Freedom ship
the uncharted history of escaping slavery by sea
- ISBN: 9781836741718
- Editorial: Verso Books
- Fecha de la edición: 2026
- Lugar de la edición: London. Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 416
- Idiomas: Inglés
Freedom Ship is a gripping history of the enslaved African Americans who stowed away on vessels that carried them to liberty. Up to 100,000 fugitives successfully fled the horrors of bondage in the American South. Many moved northwards through a network of secret routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. Thousands of others, most of them completely unknown, escaped by sea. Their dramatic accounts of whispered conspiracy and billowing sails make Freedom Ship essential and enithralling reading.
From the docks of Savannah and Charleston to Boston Harbor and beyond, Freedom Ship traces the seekers who turned their sights to the sea. Stowaways regularly arrived in Britain aboard cotton ships bound for Liverpool. Moses Roper, one of the most determined runaways in American history, travelled 350 miles through slave country before boarding the Napoleon and sailing for England. He became the first self-emancipated bondsman to lecture in the cause of abolition in Britain. Legendary abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman both saw the shipping lanes as paths to freedom.
Marcus Rediker displays a prodigious command of archival research to embark on a thrilling journey along the Atlantic seaboard, following those who risked everything in a maritime pursuit of freedom.
Introduction: A wave of resistance
The art of escape
The structure of escape: Port cities, trade, and capitalism
Frederick Douglass's maritime dream
Harriet Jacobs on a "dark and troubled sea"
Jonathan Walker's branded hand
William P. Powell and solidarity at sea
Boston's war on the waterfront
Sea routes to Philadelphia and New York in the 1850s
Epilogue: The Middle Passage to freedom
