The Guerrero Page !

Robert L. Stevenson, Jr.

Dr. Glenn Chambers

Historical Research Methods

November 29, 2014

Review of the book:Slave Ship Guerrero

This paper is a review of a book entitled Slave Ship Guerrero. The sinking of the Guer-
rero, is important to the understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, the Spanish Sugar industry and
the role of Coastal policing by British and American Naval vessels during the mid to late 1800’s.
There are several historical and legal concerns that surface when examining the evidence that led
to the ships fatal demise on December 19, 1827. (1) The sinking of the Guerrero occurs in De-
cember of 1827, twenty years after the British government and 19 years after the American gov-
ernment declared a band on the transport of Africans from Africa to the New World. (2) It’s im-
portant because of the lives that were lost on board ship, while being shackled to a sinking vessel
were not and have not been given a proper burial, (3) It’s important because many of the sur-
vivors were repatriated to Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the research from an African perspec-
tive could be resumed to get further insight into this tragic ship wreck.

This review is organized into four subsections: Section (1) is the introduction, it
discusses the book and its content. Section (2) Is analysis of the book, its strengths and weak-
nesses Section (3), Section, is the literature review, it will discuss the research trajectory of the
early slave ship research efforts. (4) will be the Conclusion of the paper which will offer discus-
sion questions for further research. I elected to place the literature near the conclusion because I
didn't want to disturb the continuity of the narrative.

INTRODUCTION

“Important to American, British, Cuban, Barbadian and Liberian history is the wrecking
of the Spanish slave ship Guerrero off the upper Florida Keys in 1827. It was one of North
America’s most dramatic maritime events, involving 561 hopeless African people, some 90
 The Guerrero Page !2

Cuban pirates in the slave trade, the 56 person crew of a British warship, and American seafarers
from Key West,”1 states, Gail Swanson, the author of the book.

Swanson self published the book, Slave Ship Guerrero, in 2005 and to date there are
presently little to no Journal Articles written about this book or the Slave Ship Guerrero. There
are a few reviews written that mention the Guerrero, but the focus of the articles are the National
Association of Black Scuba Divers (NABS) and Diving With A Purpose, (DWP) both diving
organizations have attempted to locate the Guerrero at the bottom of the Florida Keys.2 I have
spoken to several scholars who’s expertise is slaving and slave ships and few of them have heard
of The Guerrero. I’ve also been on dives with members of NABS, which I am a member and
with members of DWP also of which I am a graduate from the marine archeology course.

Accept for the book itself there are very few academic references made about this terrible
tragedy.

The book is organized into fifteen chapters with an introduction and an epilog. Each
chapter provides a day to day discourse on the voyage of the Guerrero as it journeyed from
Africa enroute to Cuba. Unlike other slave ship narratives this particular study also provides in-
sight into the magnitude of slaving that occurred within the ports of Havana Cuba. “The planters
of the colony of Cuba sought out supplies of forced labor for sugar plantations, and Spain’s law
against human trafficking was almost totally ignored.”3

Swanson states that, The Guerrero, was an old slave trader formerly named the San Joze.4
She was well armed an fitted for battle. This type of fortification seemed to be the general prac-
tice amongst Spanish slavers. Swanson begins by offering an ethnographic look at the captives
on board ship. She argues that though many of the names of the captives weren't available,
based on her research she states that several of the captives may have been chiefs or tribal lead-

1 http://www.diaspora.illinois.edu/news0910/news0910-3.pdf
2 http://www.labeez.org/articles/2010/08/13/diving-into-black-history
3 http://www.diaspora.illinois.edu/news0910/news0910-3.pdf
4 Gail Swanson, Slave Ship Guerrero, INFINITY Publishing.com 2005, p.2.
 The Guerrero Page !3

ers who were sold as booty.5 The book also offers details of the roles of Chiefs who cooperated
with slavers in the ability to capture Africans from the interior of the West Coast. Though this is
not a new discovery it does help to quantify other research that suggests the high level of African
involvement in the trade. Further insight to the ship itself is offered as she gives pin point de-
scriptions of the conditions of the ship itself. She offers an analysis of the numbers of men and
women who were being loaded not only on the Guerrero, but other ships that played the same
role in African forced migration. She introduces logs and memoirs from sailors and crew men
from other ships as well.

From the hold of a slaver, to the decks of the British Naval vessels that policed the open
waters comes important insight as well. These naval ships were stationed at sea to patrol and
protect and even capture illegal vessels at sea. The adventure of the chase, war, escape and cap-
ture are all well integrated into the narrative. Swanson makes it clear that though there had been
a band on African transport the sea was still littered with the illegal trafficking of human bands.
Which leads us to the chase and the ultimate demise of the Guerrero. The reason that the Guer-
rero sunk was because it was engaged in a chase by the British Patrol ship the HBM Nimble.6
Sailing through the Keys, was a dangerous proposition in the 1800’s. Literally hundred of ships
met their end when encountering the reefs that filed ares of the Florida Key West. Unfortunately
the Guerrero and the Nimble both found this reality to be true. According to Swanson, the Nim-
ble gave chase after the Guerrero and was having a difficult time catching it. One of the reasons
was that the Guerrero had a copper hull.7 Ship designs began to change early in the 1800’s be-
cause of the long days of sitting off the shores of Africa. As the ships sat at sea, sea worms
would eat the wood and cause challenges to the integrity of the vessels. In order to combat the
sea worm issue ship building companies began building ships with copper hulls. These copper
ladened hulls protected the wood that was submerged from sea worms and they increased the

5 Ibid.,p.6
6 Ibid., p.12.
7 Ibid,. p.14.
 The Guerrero Page !4

vessels agility in the water. Which in turn made the ships faster and more difficult to catch.8
Thus as the Guerrero ran from the Nimble which, was attempting to save the enslaved captives,
the vessel hit a reef at about 7:30 am.9 This is about 2.5 hours after the chase had begun accord-
ing to Swanson, and the Nimble was approximately 2 miles away when the Guerrero collided
with the reef. Because of the weather conditions at sea that night the Nimble collided with the
reef as well.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

According to Marcus Rediker to date there exist no broad study on the mechanism or the
vessels that made the commerce and the globalization of diasporic proportions that we experi-
ence today.10 The slave ship helped to shape the known world, form it’s role in capitalism, and it
forged the way for globalization and industrialization and yet very little is known about the ves-
sels themselves.11 According to Swanson, British officials in Havana Cuba recorded 3500,
Africans landed from the holds of slavers in 1827.12

The slave ship Guerrero serves as a reminder that there is still a lot of work to be done
regarding the search around slave ships, their crews and the after math of slave wrecks. This
was a pirated slave vessel that was on its way to Cuba, in the year 1827. Which suggest that
there are still more studies that should take into consideration the robbery that took place at sea.
Numerous slave ships have been pirated at sea. The pirate population grew rather significantly
during the slave trade but very little research has been presented in the discussion about the dias-
pora and the forced migration of Africans. On December 19, 1827 the vessel sank with several
hundred enslaved men and women onboard. One of the factors that adds to the interest and need
for further research on this vessel is it’s lack of notoriety in slave and slave ships studies coupled

8 Ibid., p.14.
9 Ibid., p.15.
10 Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship, (New York, Penguin Group, 2007),p.10.
11 Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship, (New York, Penguin Group, 2007),p.10.
12 Gail Swanson, Slave Ship Guerrero, INFINITY Publishing .com, 2005, p.1.
 The Guerrero Page !5

with the idea that a collaboration with marine archeologists would make a great deal of differ-
ence.

However, the Guererro, has received somewhat of a honorable mention in an article writ-
ten by Fred L. McGhee, which discussed the The Slave Ship, by Marcus Rediker, but beyond
that little attention has been given to the Guerrero. One of the areas that could have made the
book better would have been an ethnographic look at the crew, the enslaved and the captains.
One other weakness of the book is the constant references to Swanson’s encounters as she con-
ducted her research. These references weaken the integrity of the research process.

Literature review

The historiography regarding slave ships falls within three categories: the first category
takes into account slave ships themselves. In this rubric of texts would fall books like, The Dili-
gent, by Robert Harms, The Zong, by James Walvin, The Amistad Rebellion, by Marcus Rediker,
The Slave Ship: A Human History, by Marcus Rediker, Slave Ship Guerrero, by Gail Swanson,
Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans
Brought To America, by Sylviane A. Diouf and Spirit Dive, by Michael H. Cottman. Each of
these texts, focus specifically on the voyages of individual ships and the ships themselves. The
second category would be studies of vessels that connect slave ships to slaving and mutinies.
These books are represented by Slave Ships and Slaving, by George Francis Dow, Cap-
tain Conot: Or An African Slaver, by Brantz Mayer, The Adventures of An African Slaver, by
Theodore Conneau, Slave Ships, Sailors, and Their Captive Cargo’s 1730-1807 by Emma
Christopher, The Slave Dancer, by Paula Fox, and A Slavers Log Book, by Captain Theophilus
Conneau. The preceding books are autobiographical studies that provide insight to the lives of
passengers. They include dialogues from diaries, eye witness accounts, captain’s logs, and testi-
monies from slavers and passengers themselves. The third category, though in this category are
seminal works, would be those that include African voices, strategies of women, gender analysis
and studies on quantitative analysis, and slave commodification. The first book in this category
is The Slave Trade: The story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870, by Hugh Thomas, The
TransAtlantic Slave Trade:A History, by James A. Rawley, The Forgotten Trade, by Nigel Tat-
 The Guerrero Page !6

tersfield, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade, by Anne C. Bailey, The Trade, The Owner,
and The Slave, by James Walvin, Women and Slavery in Africa, by Claire C. Robertson and Mar-
tin A. Klein, Strategies of Slaves and Women, by Marcia Wright, Captives as Commodities: The
Transatlantic Slave Trade, by Lisa A. Lindsay, Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, by David Eltis & David Richardson, Guns, Sails, and Em-
pires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion 1400-1700, by Car-
lo M. Cipolla. The preceding texts offer a broad view of the slave trade and the various cate-
gories that make up slave ship studies. Their significance however, lie predominately in their
ability to track and explain quantitative data that correlates eye witness accounts along with his-
torical analysis.

CONCLUSION

For decades scholars have been concerned with the enslaved African in the Americas and
life on the plantations, but little attention has been given to the patterns of revolts on board slave
ships on the African coast and in the Atlantic crossing between 1650 and 1860.13 Even less atten-
tion has been given to the slave ship environment itself, slave wrecks, the multicultural nature of
slaving and the eventual invention of the pirate community. Through the many stories and tales
that have been told about slavery the slave ship, itself, has been a neglected topic within the rich
historical literature on the Slave Trade.14 But as we have seen in this review of the Guerrero, the
slave ship has played a gargantuan role in the settling and the development of the New World.
From the political development and abolition of slavery to the inter-continental commerce that
affected the global community from England, to Spain, to Brazil, North American and Cuba.

What is tragic is that the journey to the New world on board these vessels, has not offered
the intimate discourse of what was felt, heard or even smelt, while conning for the coast to the
ships that lead to permanent bondage.

13Joseph Holloway, African Insurrections on Board Slave Ships, http://slaverebellion.org/index.php?

page=african-insurrections
14 Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship, (New York, Penguin Group, 2007),p.10-11.
 The Guerrero Page !7

The Africans who were stolen and sold from various tribal groups began their journey
with the smells and the rancor that identified a slaver (slaver was a synonym for slave ship) from
other ships. Enroute from the shore to the ship that awaited the captives one could hear the
moans and screams of women and children from a distance on board ship as they attempted to
adjust to the “machines of death”, a term used by Marcus Rediker to describe the slaving vessel.
The Guererro ship wreck proved to be just that, a machine of death.

The Guerrero, happens to be one of the few slavers that had been pirated, and sunk while
still in the service of the forced migration. There are few ships that were in the service of slaving
that have been excavated, The Henrietta Marie and The Fredensborg. The Guererro is still wait-
ing discovery.

Other areas of research in the excavation and recovery of these vessels and vessels like
them can be observe in the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database Housed at Michigan State
University and the Biscayne National Park. One of the obstacles is that slave ships didn't carry
treasure so that average salvager won’t waste their time and money on vessels that offer no fi-
nancial increase and that reminds us of this horrible piece of history.

Another question is can we trace the movement of the survivors of the Guerrero back to
Liberia and if so is there any evidence of the The Guerrero survivors narrative of the event?
How does the Guerrero survive in the memory of the survivors? Why didn’t the Cuban govern-
ment comply with the British and American governments regarding the slave band and what role
did the British officials in Havana play in the perpetuation of the trade? Why was the Guererro
headed to Cuba, even though it had been pirated? What role could marine archeologists play in
conjunction with historians in the recovery and discovery of these sunken vessels?

What I have observed from a historical persecutive and from a diving perspective is that
the slave ship offers little for the treasure hunter and it causes too much controversy for those
who want to forget the 200 year forced migration of Africans. However, looking at the Guererro
narrative as a directive towards historical investigation these issues are the very reason why re-
search on sunken slave ships such as the Guerrero should be continued.