On the morning of February 21, 1862, a small group of members of the U.S. Department of Justice gathered in the courtyard of the prison known as “The Tomb” in the heart of Manhattan, New York, to witness the execution of the former ship’s captain, Nathaniel Gordon, the then newly elected American President Abraham Lincoln was sentenced to death for trafficking in slave workers when it was already illegal around the world.
The day before, in desperation at the approaching execution, Gordon had attempted suicide by ingesting rat poison. But the prison doctors acted quickly and kept him alive until the next day, when the death penalty was imposed.
With that, Nathaniel Gordon gained notoriety: he was the only American to be sentenced to death for his involvement in human trafficking — a crime up until then conveniently ignored by society at the time, which benefited greatly from human trafficking beings.
surprising hanging
Image: reproduction
For Americans, Captain Gordon’s execution by hanging—and especially his relationship with big New York businessmen who financed expeditions in search of black Africans to be sold in the Caribbean and South America—was no longer a problem. a surprise since, until then, this type of crime did not usually result in a prison sentence.
But Lincoln had decided to use the case of Gordon, responsible for the trafficking of thousands of Africans, as an example for those who insisted on keeping alive the lucrative business of human trafficking to other countries, foremost among them Brazil a Land with whom Nathaniel Gordon maintained a close relationship and carried out his most daring venture ten years before his execution.
Hired by a Brazilian
Image: reproduction
In 1851, Gordon, then in command of the brig Camargo, a type of sailboat for the transport of general cargo, docked in the port of Rio de Janeiro, coming from San Francisco, with a cargo of skins to be sent to New York.
But there he learned of the interest of Brazilian landowner Joaquim José de Souza Breves, one of Brazil’s largest buyers of enslaved workers, who wanted to rent a boat to bring more Africans to tend his farms including one that spanned the entire fringes of the region , where the city of Angra dos Reis is located on the south coast of Rio de Janeiro.
Image: reproduction
Gordon then abandoned the voyage, took over the boat he only commanded (that is, stole it from its rightful owners) and headed to Mozambique in Africa to collect the enslaved laborers the Brazilian farmer had hired and much more more profitable operation than the transport of simple animal skins.
Laws for English see
Months later, the American captain docked in Brazil again and brought more than 500 enslaved Africans to the farms of Breves.
Image: Disclosure
The disembarkation took place on December 11, 1852 in a secret port in the Bracuí Bay in Angra dos Reis, since pressure from England had already banned human trafficking in Brazil twice.
Both in vain.
The first was done in 1831 by the socalled “Lei Feijó”, the other, the “Lei Eusébio de Queiroz”, was approved just two years before Gordon’s operation in Angra dos Reis. Both prohibited the trade in enslaved labor (but not slavery) and were never practiced, earning them the nickname “Laws for the English”.
Set the ship on fire
On this day in 1852, after Nathaniel Gordon disembarked the enslaved laborers at Breves farm, he removed the brig Camargo from shore and made two unexpected decisions: He set his own boat on fire, causing the sinking to provide evidence of his criminal act (since the Brazilian coast was often patrolled by English ships in search of slave ships) and fled, disguised as a woman, to the distant port of Paranaguá, from where he returned unharmed to the United States while some of the Camargo sailors were arrested in Rio de Janeiro, but were soon released due to the corruption that was prevalent at the time.
In the United States, Gordon continued trading enslaved laborers for another decade, always on the orders of the powerful businessmen of New York, then the largest slavetrading post in the world, although few knew about it.
finally got stuck
Shortly after his bold operation in Brazil, Gordon did the same on the island of Cuba (where, following the same practice, he also set fire to the boat he commanded, the Ottawa, to avoid being incriminated) and continued to traffic people between Africa and America.
Finally, in 1861, he was arrested off the coast of Africa and sentenced to the maximum sentence, unprecedented in American history.
New chapter of history
But now the story of Nathaniel Gordon receives a new chapter, with the search and rescue of the remains of his slave ship Camargo at the bottom of the sea of Angra dos Reis by Brazilian underwater explorers and archaeologists.
It is also slated for a film, to be produced by Brazilian company Aventuras and negotiated with Hollywood studios, about the only American to be sentenced to death for his involvement in the trafficking of enslaved workers a story also closely tied to Brazil connected is . .
must be a movie
The prospecting work on the bottom of the Enseada de Bracuí in search of the remains of the Carmargo boat is being carried out by underwater archaeologists and researchers from the AfrOrigens Institute, the Federal Fluminense University and the Federal University of Sergipe, with the support of American research institutions such as the George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Image: Disclosure
Technicians are working on three different wrecks that have already been found in the area one of which is the Camargo.
But they still don’t know which one, because the proof has to be scientific, by comparing the residue removed from the wreckage with materials used in the boats of the time.
“Step by step we are making progress, and soon we will have evidence of the discovery of the most famous slave ship that operated in Brazil and one of the few in the world that has still been found,” says one of the founders of the AfrOrigens Institutes, Yuri Sanada , who is also coordinating the Captain Nathaniel Gordon film project, which he said will be shot in Brazil and the United States and a sample of which can be seen here.
He ran away disguised as a woman
“The confirmation of the discovery of Camargo will be particularly important and symbolic for the Quilombola community that still exists in Bracuí, in the same place where was the Santa Rita farm, owned by Breves, one of the biggest slave smugglers in Brazilian history ‘ says Sanada.
“The discovery of the boat will be a kind of ‘certificate of origin’ for those Quilombolas who to this day have no right to own the land they live on and who grew up hearing their ancestors’ stories of disembarking slaves from Camargo without knowing if he really existed,” explains Sanada.
“I grew up hearing that the captain of the boat ran away dressed as a woman, but I thought someone made that story up. But wasn’t that true?” Marilda de Souza Francisco, leader of the Quilombo de Santa Rita, who now expects the quilombolas to be recognized for their right to own land.
“Our story began on this ship. And his story really is a movie,” the quilombola leader guarantees.
Another very similar case
If that happens, it won’t be the first time that the arrival of a slave ship in the past has fueled the emergence of a whole community of African descendants even today.
In the United States itself and at the same time as the most famous case of the hideous Captain Nathaniel Gordon another ship of the same type, the Clotilda, went down in American history because, on the one hand, it was the last to illegally land enslaved Africans in the country, on the other hand, and later, their descendants founded a town, not coincidentally called Africatown (“Africa Town”), which still exists in Mobile, Alabama.
Image: Disclosure/Mobile
But there was another detail that made Clotilda’s voyage (whose remains were also discovered only recently, four years ago, after an intensive archaeological search in the bay bordering the city) even more horrific: the vain reason that to its implementation You can check it by clicking here.
“The slave ships are part of human history,” says researcher Sanada. “And the story of Camargo and the wretched Captain Gordon must be told, for it shows that the center of slave power in America was not in the southern United States, as has always been supposed, but in the capital of the United States.” Land, New York.
“And not even all Americans knew that.”