Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history, where we go far beyond the freedom trail. To share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 234 mutiny on the Rising Sun with Dr. Jared Ross Hardesty,
Hi, I’m jake in just a few minutes, I’m going to be joined by DR Jared Ross Hardesty author of the new book mutiny on the Rising Sun, a tragic tale of smuggling slavery and chocolate.
Dr Hardesty and I will discuss why a reputable sea captain would become a smuggler trafficking and illegal chocolate and enslaved Africans.
The risks an 18th century Bostonian would take to provide himself with a competence or enough money to allow his family to live independently and what it meant in that era to be of.
But not from boston At the heart of the story is a gruesome murder in mutiny on the high seas, illustrating the fundamental brutality of life in the 18th century,
but the role of the church, specifically Old North Church in the social and economic lives of Bostonians is also central to understanding the life and death of Captain Newark Jackson,
Stay tuned to hear how dr Hardesty is illuminated.
A long forgotten chapter in boston history, uncovering the dark web of interconnections between Old North Church chocolate and chattel slavery.

[1:27] But before we talk about Captain Jackson and the mutiny on the Rising Sun. I just want to pause and thank our patreon sponsors.
This week marks the 5th anniversary of the hub history podcast and the show has changed a lot in that time,
when I go back and listen to the earliest shows, I can hardly stand the terrible sound quality and amateurish delivery and the stories are only a few minutes long with the most cursory research.

[1:52] I like to think that this show has improved quite a bit. Since then, we’ll be it gradually.
A lot of that improvement is thanks to our Patreon sponsors the loyal listeners who sign up to contribute $2, or even $10 a month toward the cost of making hub history.
Their support has allowed us to invest in better microphones, cables and soundproofing to upgrade our sound and it’s unlocked research databases and online subscriptions that we otherwise couldn’t afford.
I’d also like to give them credit for improving my delivery, but I think that might just be a matter of practice, practice practice.

[2:28] If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start just go to Patreon dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support us link and a heartfelt thanks to all our new and returning sponsors for making the show possible,
and now it’s time for this week’s main topic dr Jared Ross Hardesty is an associate professor of history at Western Washington University way out in Bellingham Washington.
He studies the global entanglements of colonial boston and he’s the author of two previous books exploring slavery in boston, His un freedom slavery, independence in 18th century boston was our boston book club.
Pick back in episode 1 60 and we feature to talk about black lives, native lands, white worlds, a history of slavery in New England as our upcoming historical event back in episode 1 62.
His latest work mutiny on the Rising Sun, a tragic tale of smuggling slavery and chocolate was just published last week.
It’s available through an affiliate link in this week’s show notes, which you can find at hub history dot com slash 234, or you can find it at your favorite independent bookshop, DR Jared Ross Hardesty Welcome to the show.

Jared:
[3:40] Thanks Jake, thanks for having me looking forward our conversation.

Jake:
[3:43] So the first thing I have to ask as we talk about your new book on the Rising Sun is how you first encountered the sea captain named Newark Jackson and realized that there was a larger story to be told about him.

Jared:
[3:58] It’s funny, sorry actually. So in september 2016, the Old North Church invited me to give a talk about my first book Un freedom.
And before the talk I was sitting in the in the rectory and having a conversation with the then vicar and who is also the executive director of the Old North Foundation steve airs and a few other staff members.
And they asked me do you know about this guy Newark Jackson?

[4:22] And I said who? And they said well you write about him and on freedom. And I said I did.
And um as it turns out I did I used him as an example in the book of of a person who owned owned slaves.
He was enslave er in 18th century Boston and I used him because his probate inventory was particularly long and detailed which I’m sure will come back to later.
And so and so it listed the enslaved people he owned in relation and their value in relation to the rest of his property.
And I said no I didn’t. I just totally forgot that I used him as an example and I think it had to do with his name actually, like his name was so catchy.
You know, I just I something about it stuck out my mind. So I put it in the book and so they proceed to tell me that they have a historic chocolate shop named after this man.
Um and they don’t know too much about him. They had done some basic genealogical research.
They kind of done their due diligence about him, but outside of about kind of four basic facts. They didn’t know much about him. They knew that he lived in boston was a sea captain.
They knew he was a parishioner at Old North, They knew he was married and had had three kids.
Um and they knew or they thought there was a possibility the genealogical research has uncovered an apocryphal story yet to be confirmed true that he had been murdered in a mutiny in 1743 off the coast of Suriname.

[5:42] And so Old North had all these questions about new york Jackson, about where he acquired the chocolate for his, his his his chocolate shop.
He was a chocolate here in boston. And in fact that’s why when old North opened their historic chocolate shop, they had, they chose him.
They had a list of parishioners who dealt in chocolate During the 18th century and I think once again um the name right, his name kind of stood out and and so they named the chop the chocolate shop.
Captain Jackson’s historic chocolate shop after him. But they didn’t know a whole lot about him besides those, those things I just, I just mentioned.
Um and so they had real questions about how did he acquire the Cacau and things like that and I became kind of interested in this.
Um and and it was the apocryphal story of the immunity that really caught my attention because it noted he had been murdered off the coast of Suriname in 17 43.
Suriname was a dutch colony today. It’s an independent nation on the northeastern coast of South America.
Um It was a plantation colony very similar to those in the West Indies, So large scale sugar plantations using enslaved african labor, it just happened to be on the mainland of South America rather than an island in the caribbean.

[6:49] And so I I assume just based on the apocryphal story, that’s probably where Jackson was acquiring the Cacau.
Suriname was a was a group, a cow I knew but I I’ve long had this interest in the kind of dutch world and um and especially the interactions between dutch colonies and dutch colonists with early american colonists, some of whom were dutch.
Um you know, the history of new york. Um and so I I have some, I have some friends and colleagues at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Carwyn, Fatah Black, most importantly for this story.
So I write Carwyn and Car wins an expert on the history of smuggling and slavery in in Dutch Suriname and he almost immediately wrote back and he said, oh, you’re Captain Jackson’s a bit of a smuggler, isn’t he?
He had all these records of Jackson insert?
Um coming and going in port entry records, which kind of answered that question, Where did he get the Cacau um Funny and I was actually happy to leave it at that.
He’s like, ok, question answered kind of moving on and then a couple days later, car would emailed me again. In the subject line of the email was murder exclamation point and it hurt.

Jake:
[7:54] Uh huh That’ll get your attention.

Jared:
[7:57] Yes, they got definitely got my Tissot. And um, and so the funny funny thing, he proved that, that apocryphal story of a mutiny was actually true.
Um two of the mutineers were put on trial and the trial records were in the Dutch archives.

[8:12] And now all of a sudden we had a lot of information to go off of because when you begin reading um the testimony, because it’s the testimony of two mutineers and the testimony of the, of the surviving crew of the mutiny.
Um you all of a sudden it opens this whole world up of, of not just about new york Jackson, but this whole world of kind of smuggling smuggling ring.
You start to get to know the people who are on board, you learn the names of everyone on board the ship and from there, you can begin start teasing out threads and we realize there’s a lot more to this story.
And so with that in mind, with all that information in hand, we applied Old North Applied and I served as the principal investigator for a forest mars Jr, a,
chocolate history grant from the mars Chocolate Corporation, um, to further research the life of Jackson.
Um we received the grant, um and we also received a matching grant from the National Park Service, uh, United States National Park Service to, to conduct the research.
Um, and this allowed us to to really dig into Jackson and his life.
Um, and so I ended up hiring a multinational team of researchers in the Netherlands in boston.
Um, and then did some research myself to begin investigating not just the life of new york Jackson, but the kind of smuggling ring that had uncovered.

Jake:
[9:34] For the modern listener, it’s really strange to hear chocolate framed is sort of the entry into this world of intrigue of smuggling and murder and mutiny.
How did boston first come to be acquainted with chocolate? How to boston get a taste for chocolate? This crop, this product of a very sort of narrow latitude in the, in the tropics?

Jared:
[9:55] Yeah, so before Europeans went to the Americas, they had no knowledge that chocolate existed. It’s a, it’s a crop Cacau is the, is what chocolates made from is um is indigenous to the Americas, to the amazon rainforest actually.
But native peoples in the Americas began cultivating it probably about 4000 years ago or so, if not more.
Um and it spread across the kind of equatorial zone. So out of the amazon basin, up into northern south America, the Guyana’s Venezuela Colombia in into central America uh and into the caribbean a little bit as well.
Um, and it became a delicacy. So the Aztecs drink large amounts of what they would call refer to as chocolate little which is a drinking chocolate.
Uh the Mayans used Cacau beans as currency.
And so when Europeans first encounter indigenous people, especially the Mayans. So columbus on his, I believe second voyage encountered mayan peoples out in the, in the, in the caribbean and he, they encountered a cow.
Once the conquest of Mexico, Europeans became a taste for it, They begin cultivating it.
So so much so that by the early 17th century chocolates pretty well known in Europe and in overtime, very similar to say sugar or something.

[11:16] Um more and more Europeans began consuming it and european colonists in the Americas Africans, Everyone kind of around the atlantic basin began consuming chocolate.

[11:25] And larger amounts nevertheless, even as it was becoming a kind of everyday product throughout its still kind of exotic um, in the in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Um, and so we know, for example, uh first arrived, the first references to chocolate in boston or in the 16 sixties of people importing it and consuming it that way.
Um Chocolates largely consumed as a drink in this time period.
It’s sweetened with sugar sometimes mixed with milk, sometimes the water, depending on where you are in boston, it would have been mixed with milk,
um and with various spices, uh cinnamon, cloves, anise, uh you know, orange peel, things like that.
So it’s kind of spicy rich drink. It’s very good.
Um There’s a few brands that have replicated the taste of it. It’s quite tasty, but it is is largely consumed as a drink.

[12:16] Um and what people would do is they would they would buy it either and as a drink, you know, and served to them in a shop.
Uh and that’s how new york Jackson served chocolate, or it would be bought in bars and bricks that would be, could be shaved down and mixed with water or milk. Um And Jackson sold that as well.
And a wholesale new york. Jackson did not own a chocolate shop. He owned a shop that sold chocolate. So he sold a lot of other goods cloth, uh things like that, pots and pans, all that in addition to chocolate.
And so what what the chocolate required was an extensive amount of of work once it arrives because it arrived in boston as what would be called cocoa.
So these, so when cockles grown, it grows in pods.
Um And those pods inside of it are are the Cacau seeds essentially.
And so you you cut out the seeds from the pod and you leave them to dry and to firm in a little bit and those are packed and that’s cocoa.

[13:15] Those are then uh their ground down into into chocolate and they’re they’re mixed in with the spices and sugar and milk and all that to make to make a drink. And that’s chocolate.
So grinding those beans down as the process of making chocolate. Um So all of that work would have had to been done in the shop.
And so who who would have done that? Well. New york Jackson owned three enslaved people.
Um boston wear him and a woman named they’re both men and a woman named Sylar or Seiler.
Uh depending on how you want to pronounce it or cilla possibly if the new England accent holds true.
Um And they were probably the ones doing that work.
It’s not easy work right to grind this down.
Um And then you have to reform it into bars which would then be turned into uh drinking chocolate.
Or the bars would have to be packaged and sold. So it’s quite a bit of work and they would have been the ones doing it.
Um More likely not in the shop. Um And then Amy Jackson while he’s gone, would have been been running the shop and overseeing those three and say people performing the work of preparing it.

Jake:
[14:20] When I think of making chocolate in New England, I think a generation or maybe two generations later, of the,
chocolate mill on the lower the pontiff that eventually becomes baker chocolate, where all that pressing and grinding cocoa and chocolate was done by water wheels.

Jared:
[14:30] Mhm.

[14:36] Yes.

Jake:
[14:37] And in the 17 thirties in Newark Jackson’s chop, it would have been done by enslaved black people.

Jared:
[14:43] Yes, I mean he had a chocolate mill, right, but it’s a hand grinder that would have been run by enslaved people.
And so the european, the european and euro americans very quickly got a,
taste for this, It’s sweet, it’s it’s really kind of you know all the things we associate with hot chocolate, they would have to um it’s just kind of a nice beverage in different for various reasons.
Um That said it was a relatively despite it becoming increasingly common um largely because of cultivation um the Europeans begin essentially attempting to mass produce it,
grow it in large quantities using on times forced labour either the forced labor of indigenous people in spanish America, but also largely enslaved labor, especially in West today Venezuela.
But you also, by the early 18th century begin to seek a cow spread to the Guyana’s.
Um, and a few of the islands in the, in the West Indies.
Um, so Suriname is a major grow of kick out by the 17 thirties. The thing is, it’s such a valuable crop though.

[15:49] Um, and there’s such a demand for it that there is this movement by european imperial powers, be they spain or the Netherlands or great Britain to limit the ability to purchase it.
So they essentially want to prevent outsiders from buying it directly from the source.
They want to say if you’re the spanish, you want to import it from Venezuela to spain tax it and then sell it to the british right? You want to, you want to collect the tax revenues off of it. You want to centralize the revenues from it.
Um, and most, most empires had passed laws regarding the, these sorts of commodity sugars and other one molasses, coffee, um, that they don’t want a lot of trade from outside their own empire.
Um, and so they want to encourage trade within the empire because they’re afraid of losing wealth.

Jake:
[16:38] A mercantile system that would be familiar to people who’ve read about the, say, the boston tea party.

Jared:
[16:43] Exactly, it’s the exact same economic system, the kind of mercantilism um, that that drives this kind of desire to control the flow of commodities.
And so what this means is incentivizes smuggling and incentivizes people flagrantly violating the law, because who wants to pay all of these import and export duties on stuff when you can just sail directly to the source?
There’s very few enforcement mechanisms in place. So, so yeah, so, uh, what seems to be such a kind of everyday product US chocolate is actually could uncover this larger story of smuggling and imperial entanglements and all that.

Jake:
[17:24] A quarter century ish After your book takes place, smuggling is going to become a lot more identified as a patriotic activity in british north America, as people are evading the Board of Trade.
How did somebody choose to be a smuggler earlier in the 18th century? In the 1730s or 40s when our Captain Jackson, was more active?

Jared:
[17:44] It’s so smoking is going to be significantly less political.
It’s just probably the best way to phrase it, the better way to get you to phrase it is that it’s not gonna be political in the same way, right? It’s not going to be associated with the site of of a revolutionary movement as it would become in the 1760s and 1970s.
Um but and of course it is an inherently political act,
but the to understand smuggling and say why people would engage in it um is to, to recognize a couple of factors, the first factor being that it is so ubiquitous in this world,
You can’t live anywhere in the Americas in the, in the 18th century, 17th, 18th century and not, not live in a world of smuggling that not encounter smuggled goods in your everyday life, not be involved in the trafficking of some of those smuggled goods.
It’s just because it’s so ubiquitous there, these commodities are always flowing and smuggling gives access to things you might not otherwise be able to get.
And I think chocolates that the best example of that if you legally bought chocolate in boston, it would have to go from Venezuela.

[18:51] Where would be taxed by the spanish to spain, it would then be sold to great Britain and taxed again and then taxed again when it’s exported.
The colonies in those taxes would essentially remove the ability to consume that from the vast majority of people.
So if you want this stuff, you buy smuggled goods, this is so, so for a lot of people to get the things they want in the world, they,
They just, you know, they engage in this world of smuggling for the actual smugglers, someone like New York Jackson, there’s a few things going on.
The first is that he grew up as a, as a sea captain, so he would have started at sea or he was a sea captain. And so growing up he would have gone to see as a very young boy, 10, 11 years old, if not younger.
And he, the captain he served at her probably was a smuggler. Right? And so he’s inculcated very early on into this world. To the point, it’s probably an unthinking decision, but he would step back and think about it.
Um there, I think he would see actually a couple of things. One he what a tendency might be to think that he’s less than loyal to great Britain because he’s violating their trade laws.
That’s not the case of all at all. He, he kind of use his loyalty is slightly different. He views these laws as an inconvenience or perhaps a suggestion the way we view speed limits.

[20:09] Um, right, we we all speed on the highway. This is something similar.
Um the other thing is that we have to ask, where does his loyalties lie?
Certainly is a loyal british subject and you can see that in his life and in the books he reads and things like that, but he’s also, he’s a bostonian first and foremost.
And and he envisioned himself very much as a bostonian.
And if we wanna talk about patriotism, this is a good example of it because he would have seen himself as providing chocolate to boston to his fellow townsman and women.
And of course he’s profiting off of it, but he is providing them a good and service um that the british empire’s trying to restrict as a whole, so his loyalties very local,
uh and it’s to the people he knows in in boston by and large and maybe a few other business associates around the atlantic.
But for him, by and large, this is a he’s serving boston’s needs by smuggling.
And I think that’s the way a lot of smugglers kind of you what they’re doing, they’re serving local needs.

Jake:
[21:13] You say that he has this very sort of narrow local loyalty to Boston? Do you know whether he was from Boston? I know that by 1735 and some of the documents you uncovered, he’s being described as being of boston, but that may not be the same thing.

Jared:
[21:28] It’s not actually is not from boston, He was not born there. Um, I’m the records don’t show where he’s from.
This is, you know, the crazy thing about the records we had covered in this study is,
you know, I can I can tell you in grisly detail the, you know, a lot of things I can tell you, you know, how they’re smuggling and the methods and things they’re using and,
and other other piece of, of, of information.
I can’t tell you where he’s born. The documents just don’t exist. I have some speculation.
I, you know, I have some ideas. I think he’s probably from essex County, uh north shore, perhaps Marblehead or Gloucester.
Um There’s a, there’s a few reasons for that. The other men in the smuggling ring where all essex county men or had ties to essex County. So, George Ledain um, Gedney Clarke are both from essex County.
Um, And in his in likewise and Jackson’s probate inventory.

[22:21] It lists him as having a land grant in new Hampshire.
And if you look up the, the origin of this land grant, it’s granted to veterans of the campaign to capture Port Royal and what’s today nova Scotia.
Um, as a 17 11 military campaign and then they got a land grant in New Hampshire for their service and that’s given to largely essex county men and some of the recipients of that had the surname of Jackson.
So, I kind of wonder if he didn’t inherit that from a father or an uncle or something like that, who had served.
Um, but then I don’t even know what year he was born in. He was kind of mid thirties, probably in 17 43 but that’s that’s all I really know, but he’s not from boston, but he is by 17 35 of boston.

Jake:
[23:05] And that essentially means that he’s made boston his adoptive home. He identifies with boston by that time.

Jared:
[23:10] Absolutely not only has he made his adopted home, but he’s recognized as a standing member of the community by everyone else in boston. So he has essentially assumed the rights and responsibilities of being a, it’s a reciprocal relationship of of being of boston.

Jake:
[23:26] And there’s a distinctive phrase and I don’t have the book in front of me, but I believe you refer to him trying to establish a competency.
Can you tell the listener what it would mean to try to create or establish a competency and then how that might also factor into his choice to engage in smuggling?

Jared:
[23:43] Yeah, so, you know, a competency is a term in your c pop up in and all across early America in the 17th, 18th and into the 19th century, even early american, like in the early american republic, they’re they’re talking about, you know, building a competency,
and it really means to establish an independent income for oneself, or or enough of an income to be an independent actor in the world.
And so it’s a very it’s a very vague term because the idea of a competency could differ from person to person to person.
So a farmer is going to have a very different idea of what his competency is. I e, a little bit of land, uh some, you know, some some craft skills to do work for neighbors, that sort of thing.
Versus someone say, like Jackson, whose idea of a compensation might be significantly bigger, significantly larger, right?
He wants, he might want uh he may want,
to own ships, he may want to own um or have access to various trade goods right to ensure that he has an independence or a source of income that allows him to kind of live in an independent life.

Jake:
[24:49] Sounds like almost what we would consider the phrase a self made man today, it’s sort of equivalent to establishing a competency then.

Jared:
[24:55] Yes, absolutely. I mean, there is a little more of a communitarian focus on the idea of competency and in the sense that like, why, why do you establish a competency?
So you’re not a you know, so you’re not a burden on the community that you’re you’re able to function essentially as an independent adult or independent man in the community.
Um And, you know, the thing is that I think the idea of a self made man is is because it does drive a sort of historians have shown this, it drives us sort of, um, there’s psychological implications to this, right?
The this is this is what’s driving a lot of anxiety of early americans and moments of economic crisis, are they going to lose their competency?
Um, and it might cause them to engage in behaviors that, that we certainly might consider morally ambiguous or or even worse, right? Like smuggling.
Um, and incentivizes that sort of behavior.
But it also incentivizes things like owning enslaved people, uh, slave trading.
Right? That this this desire to establish this independent income,
might cause folks to to turn a blind eye to, to some of the morally questionable activities, even even things that are morally question in their own time, certainly legally questioned in the case of smuggling,
but things that, that there that are morally questionable.

[26:13] Um, it creates a deep drive, you know, to to continuously, you know, borrow money to further expand your economic activity. So, you know, end up in a lot of debt.
Um, these are all the sort of anxiety is coming out of this desire to build a competency.

Jake:
[26:30] Well, speaking of ending up in debt, you, at some point in your research, you did the 18th century equivalent of pulling Newark Jackson’s credit report. So what did that tell you about him as a sea captain?

Jared:
[26:42] He’s nearly insolvent by the time of the beauty in 1743 would be the short answer.
Um he’s borrowing significant sums of money and it’s unclear to what ends he’s doing this for.
Um I I think it’s too, he’s his hands are and he like when I said, you know I talk about competency building a lot of times.
What that means is your hands are like someone’s hands on a lot of different pots and that’s certainly true of new york Jackson because he’s a sea captain that’s like his main job, his main, but he’s also, he owns a shop in boston.

[27:13] It’s probably run by his wife Amy when he’s because he’s out of town as a sea captain so much.
Um But he in that shop serves chocolate.
But he also he’s buying all sorts of real estate up in the north end of boston workshops, uh you know, dwelling homes, things like that.
He’s um he’s investing in other ventures. He’s buying parts of our pieces of ships like he’s buying, you know a share in a ship. So he owns half a ship at the time of his type of time of the mutiny.
Um And so what this, so but as he’s doing this, he’s overextending himself, he’s, you know, he’s borrowing money.
So a lot of that real estate actually mortgaged um a lot of his cargoes for his ships.
He’s are collateralized by him too, he’s borrowing money to buy the car goes and hoping, you know it sells for enough to to to service his lenders.
Uh So yeah, he’s deeply, deeply in debt.
Um, at the, at the time of the mutiny. Um, and you know, the, he’s essentially insolvent.
I tried to calculate its probably the deaths probably about 1.5 times or so the value of his estate, that debt is part of competency.

Jake:
[28:23] Mm.

Jared:
[28:26] Built right. He’s so focused on building a competency for himself that this is causing him to turn a blind eye to debt.

Jake:
[28:33] As Jackson is becoming more and more established as a ship captain, he’s taking on more and more debt at some point in The 1730s, maybe the mid 1730s,
his name disappears from the official records of cargoes that arrive in boston.
That’s sort of the marker of going deeply into the world of smuggling, I guess, and that’s about the time that he starts to really trade in Suriname Before we go any further.
We we’ve mentioned this colony a couple times, so it’s a place that our listeners probably don’t know that well, can you tell us just a quick overview of what life was like in colonial Suriname.

Jared:
[29:09] Generally speaking as a hellscape for the vast majority of the population is how I would describe it.
Um so Suriname is at least out of the northeastern coast of south America um in in the area of known as the G honest and it’s today, what is the country of Guyana, Suriname and french Guiana?
And what’s interesting about this area is it’s essentially it’s all rain forest. And so there’s the there’s there’s highlands that separate the Guyana’s from the amazon river basin.
And so these highlands, they drained both to the amazon to the south, but also they drained north out of out of south America.
And so what really characterizes these these places in the Ghana’s and Suriname certainly are are all these rivers and the rivers all flow out to the atlantic ocean.

[29:50] And this is perfect for building a colony because it’s essentially a highway out to the Atlantic,
and so you just build your property right up next to the to the to the river and you sail out and the climate there is its equatorial and so it’s great for growing tropical uh commodities, sugar, coffee and Cacau.
Um and so, Europeans had taken interest in this very early on Walter Raleigh writes a book about it in the 1590s.

[30:15] Um and then in the case of Suriname it’s actually first settled by the English in the 1630s.

[30:21] Um but then the Dutch take it over in 1667 becomes a Dutch colony and they focus on developing it and it very quickly models the west indian colonial model, i.
E very small population of free whites and a very large enslaved population.
Um The numbers of course change over time, but in the 17 forties, there’s about 50,000 enslaved people live in Suriname and about 2000 free people.
That’s including free free slaves, and and but also whites.
Um and and so for those enslaved people, that this is it’s it’s it’s it’s hell.
Um it’s it’s incredibly hot. It’s incredibly dangerous, right? This is this is jungle.
So, you’re talking about all the things that live in the jungle, jaguars, but also fire ants.
Um uh the weather that is just, you know, it rains a lot, it’s conducive to to mosquitoes and malaria.
So it’s a really disease wise. Um it’s a bit of a and whites also dying high rates.
Um it’s a bit of a hellscape, as I said, but it’s also incredibly lucrative uh those commodities being produced using in slave labor.
The sugar, the coffee, the cow is is incredibly valuable, and Suriname is generating lots and lots of wealth for the Netherlands.

Jake:
[31:46] So Suriname is a place that legally and technically should not be trading with british sea captains like Newark Jackson.
And yet in the book, you include a copy of a painting by john Greenwood that’s called sea captains, Carousing and Suriname So who are these captains in the painting? And what are they doing in the painting? What does this portray?

Jared:
[32:06] In theory, uh, New England ship captains aren’t supposed to be trading in Suriname it’s against the law for foreigners to be trading there.
The problem was that first of all the foreigners came anyways, and in a place like Suriname it’s pretty easy to buy off colonial officials.
But also these foreigners are providing things that people need.
And in the case of New Englanders going to Suriname they’re providing livestock, especially horses.
Uh they’re shipping horses from New England to to Suriname And those horses, they’re, they’re riding horses, they’re used in um, to run mills, they’re called Suriname Horses are actually bred specifically for Suriname and they’re transported on the ships.
And so in 17 oh four, the dutch government kind of the dutch government concerned, which is actually run by a private company.
It’s just this whole uh, the whole layer of things that add some confusion.
Uh, the Suriname is governed by this private company, they recognize that they just can’t, they can’t just say have this blanket ban on foreign trade because it’s happening anyways, so they might as well, you know,
uh, you know, open the door a little bit because they do need stuff from these foreign traders, They want the salt cod, they want the livestock, they want the timber from New Englanders.
So they opened the door and they allow knowing owners to trade as long as they bring horses with them.

[33:21] And so what will happen is a lot of times you find uh, you know, when a ship comes in and always notes in this in the records and certain how many horses are on board and as long as they have a horse on board, they’re allowed to trade.
But even that trades really restricted, they’re only allowed to trade agricultural goods by and large.
Um and there’s certain things that they cannot export, so they can’t um they can’t export uh, Cacau and they can’t export coffee, they are allowed to export some types of sugar and molasses, but everything else, they’re not.
So essentially they’re allowed to bring horses and fish and timber. They can trade that Suriname and they can buy sugar molasses and that’s it.
But the thing is though, the moment you open the door to the legal trade, all that illegal trade is going to be happening right beside it.
Uh and that’s exactly what happens here. And so this, this trade grows dramatically throughout the 18th century.
Um The horses do keep arriving over 30,000 horses are bred in New England and sold to Suriname over the course of the 18th century.
Um a significant number of uh um.

[34:25] A significant number of uh, of, of the foreign trade, like it’s like three quarters of the foreign trade in Suriname which is the bulk of its shipping is actually new England merchants uh, trading there.
And so this brings us to that painting, john Greenwood sea captains cruising and Suriname John Greenwood was a Boston-born painter, um and in the early 1750s, Boston’s economy or early 1750s, Boston’s economy was not doing so hot.
So he moved to Suriname to look for patrons. Um and then these ideas, he’s saying Suriname for not very long, get some commissions, make a bit of cash and then going to europe to master his craft. He had not learned perspective and some other parts of painting it.
The thing is though, that he gets there and ended up staying for five years because the money is really good and he makes something like,
Like £3100, which is an insane sum of money in the 18th century by the time he left, but he’s commissioned to paint this uh this portrait by to Rhode island ship captains.
So this painting, and if you take a look at it, I hope you can link to a jake.

Jake:
[35:26] Yeah well include this in the show notes.

Jared:
[35:28] Yeah, because it’s it’s a wonderful painting. It’s it’s not particularly well done per se.
It’s like I said, he’s still learning perspective, but these, these new England ship captains just, they have the upstairs of a tavern and Paramaribo, the capital, Suriname and they’re just profusely drunk um partying it up there being served by enslaved people.
And it shows the sort of lifestyle that these these men led when they were in Suriname They they’re completely comfortable there there there there there associated with each other while they’re there.
They, you know, all of these things. Um, and you know, a lot of folks for the longest time thought that this was supposed to be some kind of implicit critique of, of these captains.
The thing is, it was commissioned by the merchants. They saw this as humorous their behavior in Suriname and because it’s part and parcel of the wealth they were making while they were there.

Jake:
[36:18] So when did Newark Jackson first voyage to Suriname.

Jared:
[36:22] His his first documented voyage. We have 17 36. Um, and there’s a record from 17 38 suggesting another voyage and then we have the 17 43 voyage on, on the rising sun.
But there are probably more voyages. So in the mid 17 thirties he begins going to Suriname.

Jake:
[36:40] What sorts of goods is he taking? Both legally and then below board on these these voyages to Suriname and other than Cacau, what is he hoping to come home with?

Jared:
[36:49] Yeah, so he’s taking a mixed cargo. Uh, he’s taking all the produce of New England.
So salt cod, other types of salted fish, which they’re getting from largely from the fishing banks of Newfoundland buying in uh, from essex county fishermen and fishing trades, um, timber, all sorts of timber from from Northern New England, once again.

[37:10] Um agricultural goods.
Um So corn, apples, salt, beef, salt, pork, stuff like that grown and produced in New England, um also, um, probably some cider, things like that.

[37:24] Um so that mixed cargo, but he’s also taking stuff that’s all technically legal. As I as I mentioned, livestock as well. So is 1736 words. He took a horse.
Um There’s all these, there’s all sorts of stories about taking horses on, on board ship. It generally wasn’t a good idea, but when you talk about that more, if you would, uh, you take horses.
Um but also, so that’s illegal goods, but you also take manufactured goods from great Britain, especially cloth, um And even manufactured goods from New England.
And so one of new york Jackson’s, the, the executors of his will of his estate was a man named thomas Griffith and thomas, thomas Griffith made instruments.
He was an instrument maker, navigational instruments, compass is Sexton’s things like that famous, You can still actually find them today.
Um and he would take those as well. Now, both of those, the cloth from great Britain and the navigational instruments were technically illegal.
Also a number of Spyglass, like eyeglasses and things that they bought in Britain.
Um those are technically illegal to trade, but he took them anyways and sold them.
The other part of the cargo he took. Um, and it’s unclear from the earlier voyages, but certainly by 1743 were enslaved people from West Africa.
Many of these would have been picked up in the West Indies, most likely Barbados, I’m sure we’ll talk about that more later.

[38:41] And taken then to Suriname And it seems,
that over time, uh, this smuggling ring, which is, you know, using new England ships and ship captains, um, some doing a ship captain, certainly and crews to go to Suriname to acquire Cacau increasingly over time,
they become more and more reliant on the trade in enslaved people.
Um, in return for for all that mixed cargo of slaves, people, horses, what not?
They are receiving Cacau, coffee, molasses, sugar, um, also cloth.
So they’re taking a cloth getting Britain for cloths and get in the Netherlands also asian goods.
Um, So, t especially t porcelains from, from the east.
And these are our, you know, once again, that’s illegal to export out of out of Suriname It’s against the trade laws, it’s, it’s illegal to import into the british empire, but they’re doing it anyways.
So on both end, he’s smuggling on both ends.

Jake:
[39:42] So for somebody who’s always sort of hovering on the brink of insolvency, who finances Captain Jackson’s voyages to Suriname in other places, how does he get the money to purchase trade goods, including enslaved Africans?

Jared:
[39:56] So by the cargo’s um there on the ships, the the owners of the ships, the merchants that hire them, their their purchasing that, but he does have to pay for a lot of things in a pocket.
He has to anything he takes. So one of the perks of being a ship captain is you get what’s called a private venture, which is a certain amount of cargo space that you can you can use for your own purposes without, you have to pay freight fees or anything like that on.
Um So any of that cargo, he has to pay for himself, he has to pay his crew in advance and then hope the merchant pays him back for for wages.
Um He has to pay any repairs on the ship. He has to, he has to essentially pay for that first and then be reimbursed.
And in fact we have a lawsuit of Jackson suing a merchant who sent him on a voyage for not paying um for for wages and and repairs on a ship.

[40:42] So he has to front a lot of the money. Um And the thing is that he’s only as long as he’s always making enough to service the debt.
It’s only when something happened right, that’s what it shows that he’s actually insolvent.
Um And so he’s always making enough to service the debt because he’s making some commission off off cargoes, he’s making wages, some depending on the type of voyage, either commission or wages.
Um He’s he has his own private venture, he has his shop, so he is making money and enough to kind of services debts.
But in any way to expand his business, he’s having to borrow more and more.
And so in theory over time he would eventually come to own enough of the kind of means of of maritime commerce, i.
E. Enough ships, enough, you know, he enough commissions, things like that as a captain that he’d be able to pay off that debt and gradually himself transformed into a creditor. But that doesn’t happen.

Jake:
[41:36] In the meantime, who’s he borrowing that money from?

Jared:
[41:39] All sorts of people. Um So he it’s a it’s a veritable who’s who of boston’s Anglican community.
Um It’s James smith who’s a very wealthy merchant in boston.
Uh some names that the listeners probably familiar with Peter Faneuil was one of his his creditors actually in fact uh,
about a £400 debt, which significant sum of money uh kind of comes to the surface shortly after the mutiny in 17 43.
Um between Faneuil and and the firm of Faneuil and about now who is?
Peter Faneuil is business partner. So yeah, it’s it’s you read this list and you look at who are the leading merchants in boston, it’s it’s Peter, it’s like the it’s like men like Peter Faneuil James smith is, he’s really prominent merchants.
James allen Who were the kind of in the middle of the 18th century were the wealthy movers and shakers of Boston Society.

Jake:
[42:29] And you refer to to some of these, uh, creditors as the Anglican elite. So these are folks that the Jackson would know through his network at christ Church, Old North Church.

Jared:
[42:39] Yeah, absolutely. So it’s and it spans both the anglican churches in boston King’s Chapel.
Um And what’s Christchurch, which is today? Old North Old North? The younger congregation Christchurch started in the 16 eighties Old North starts in 17 23.
And and the thing is that so many wealthy merchants are King’s Chapel um that uh like it’s really hard for young merchants to afford a pew for example, to buy a pew.
So many of them moved to Old North um to to kind of as a kind of sight of sociability as a site of where they can associate with each other and kind of flaunt their own wealth and status as pew owners.
So they go to Old North. But the connections in the Anglican community remain.

Jake:
[43:23] After the book introduces us to the character of Captain Newark Jackson as you build toward what’s going to be his final voyage in 1743,
You introduce a few different sets of characters who are going to play into that 1743 trip to Suriname in sort of the middle chapters of the book that are titled the Cartel, the cargo and the crew.
I’d like to also sort of bring in some of these supporting characters, starting with the cartel off the top.
I’d like to ask why you use the term that today we associate with cocaine smuggling, to refer to this group who were smuggling Cacau into boston.

Jared:
[44:04] I I think you you you answer the question um it was to be provocative, right?
We’re talking about a smuggling ring that trafficked enslaved, trafficked human beings in addition to all these other goods in exchange for chocolate.
And so using the term cartel, I wanted to imply a sort of nefarious nous that we do associate with, say, cocaine trafficking today, because that’s that,
it is, it’s a fairly nefarious business and and the sort of behavior that these men were engaging in was fairly nefarious behavior.

Jake:
[44:38] Not to put too fine a point on it, but at the time trading and enslaved human beings wasn’t itself illegal? What the illegal part was where they were taking them, right?

Jared:
[44:46] Exactly, yeah, exactly. In their world, these are respectable men.
It’s totally legal to to buy and sell people in this world. It’s it’s just where they’re buying and selling them is the issue or how they’re buying and selling them.

Jake:
[44:59] The group that you refer to as the cartel, there are basically three central members you have and in in my head that these aren’t your terms, but in my head I’ve been thinking of them as the money man, the inside guy,
and the brains of the operation.

Jared:
[45:16] I mean it’s like, it’s like Goodfellas, right?

Jake:
[45:18] Mhm. So in my mind, George Ledain who’s in charge of sort of the new England cartel operations, was the brains of the operation.
What was he doing in the smuggling operation? And how does it sort of his family history and his career up to that point, bring him into this business?

Jared:
[45:37] Yeah, he has this kind of interesting background, He’s from essex County, he’s the one of the essex county man um ladin is actually as it sounds french, but it’s actually asserting from the isle of Jersey in the english channel,
and if anyone knows that they’re essex County history that in the in the 17th century a sizable number of Jersey man,
ended up in essex County as indentured servants and working in the fishing trade and everything like that.
So if anyone knows the Salem witch trials, Philip english who was kind of part of those trials and who’s accused of witchcraft. He he was also a Jersey man and ladin is a descendant of Jersey man.
And what’s interesting about the Jersey man is they they’re they’re they’re ethnically kind of french but they also but they speak both, they speak a dialect of french, but they also speak english.
Um but they are committed and deeply, deeply committed anglicans. This is a really central part of their identity. They don’t remain catholic, they become deeply committed anglicans.

[46:31] And so this kind of flexible identity when they come to New England, they largely assimilate into and they become very wealthy merchants and craftsmen and traders and all that, but they remain committed Anglican they never joined the congregational church.
And so that’s that’s a key part of George Ledain identity is that he’s an Anglican um which explains why he’s affiliated with Christchurch but he also um he’s from New what’s today Newburyport, which was then part of the town of Newbury.
Um He married a woman named mary Adams in 17 28 and she was the daughter of a boston. Shipbuilder named Isaac Adams.
And when Isaac Adams passed away in 17 32 his son Isaac Adams JR inherited the the shipbuilding operation,
and you can see why, you know, having being a smuggler and having a brother in law that owns a shipyard could be a really useful thing.
And so this gives ladin access to ships much like Jackson.
We have, we have a number of shipping records related to ladin going back to the early 17 thirties that put him in boston.
He he moved there and with his wife and his in laws In the in the in the late 1720s and he’s in the West Indies.
We have him very early on 17 34. And Suriname and records, he realizes the money that’s to be made there, especially in Krakow, but really in all the Suriname trade.
And so yeah, he kind of becomes the, I like that that term jake the brains of the operation um of.

[48:00] Hiring ship captains for this for this trade to Suriname um recruiting captains, recruiting probably helping to recruit crews securing cargoes of New England goods. That’s kind of what he’s up to.

Jake:
[48:15] So then for him to be able to secure these cargoes and higher the captain’s, he’s got to be bankrolled, so the money man again my term. So I’m sorry if it’s not how you would envision it is Gedney Clarke and clark is from where he lives in Barbados.
So what was Gedney Clarke is connection to boston to these, the money man and then the actual ship captains coming out of boston.

Jared:
[48:38] Yeah, I I like to call Gedney Clarke the godfather to continue our mafia terms.
But money man is also good Gedney Clarke Yeah, he’s in, he’s a merchant in Barbados and if you didn’t know any better it would seem a very odd connection.
But he was actually born in Salem massachusetts. So he’s another essex county guy.
Um And as a in the late 17 twenties he moved to Barbados, early 17 thirties, he moved to Barbados and,
his he’s of a very wealthy family, the Clark family of Salem and his mother was a Gedney Clarke his name.
So these two wealthy merchant families from Salem, he’s the he’s like the son of of these families and he wanted to get rich.
So he moved to Barbados which is what you would do if you want to get rich. He moved to the West Indies and there he married the daughter of a planter.

[49:28] Um and so very quickly starts amassing. Not only does he have his family wealth.
Um Not only is he a merchant, but he begins amassing plantations as a plantation owner. And as a merchant, he becomes very close with a man named Henry.
Uh Lascelles and Henry’s brother Edward Lascelles,
these were men, they were the customs collectors in Barbados which might be funny to think of a merchant engaged in smuggling being befriending the customs collectors, but that’s because the customs collectors are smugglers to And so he befriends this.
The last cells and the cells are once again very wealthy family from Yorkshire in England,
um they become involved invest in a lot of plants, they own hundreds of, I’m sorry, a number of plantations in the West Indies, hundreds upon hundreds of enslaved people in Barbados, Jamaica and other places.

[50:18] Um, that work those plantations.
So they’re filthy rich and they realize that the big money in the West Indies trade isn’t being on the ground in the plantations, you can make money, but the big money is doing consignment work as a major merchant house in London.
And so in the mid 17 thirties, Henry Lascelles, now good friends are Gedney Clarke moves to London,
and he begins investing in all of these sort of schemes that the clark is, all these kind of mercantile schemes that clark’s emergent schemes that clark’s engaging in.
And one of those is his work with George Ledain to hire new England ship captains to go to Suriname So he’s essentially being bankrolled and doing bankrolling himself.

Jake:
[51:01] And then sort of the third member of this, this cockle cartel is Edward Tothill who I like to think of?
Toggle Edward Tothill Well, I like to think of it as the man on the inside. Um so he actually lives in Suriname my belief, right?
So he arranges the sale of these cargoes that are being brought in, whether there legal or less than legal.
How did he end up with a life that took him from new york city to boston and then to Suriname.

Jared:
[51:35] You know, he’s a, he’s a fascinating figure and probably the person I became most transfixed within this project.
Um, and and who he was in his background. So his, he’s from, he’s born in new york city.
His father’s man named Jeremiah Toddle and Jeremiah Toddle moved there shortly after the english conquest of, of new york or of New Netherland in 16 64.
Of course, New Netherland was a dutch colony taken over by the english and in typical, so he’s this kind of small time Jeremiah, total Edward’s father is this kind of small time english merchant who saw the opportunity and married a daughter.
Yana can decay who was a daughter of one of these, these wealthy dutch families in new york city and so thus joining the sort of english,
you know, with the dutch and so totals mother’s dutch and, and so he grew up speaking dutch in the household and this is important.
He’s one of nine Children.
Um, and he’s the second youngest. So there’s not a lot of prospects for him in new york city,
but his father, while while in new york city made, made a name for himself, he was an alderman and kind of, you know, may became quite quite wealthy and,
he made good friends with new york’s cubano community.

[52:49] Um, including the Fanjuls. Uh most importantly, Benjamin Faneuil who was the father of Peter Faneuil of boston and so much like Peter Faneuil moving to boston.
Um, Edward Tothill did that as well. And so he went in part because of his father’s, you know, connections, but also because of his mother’s side.
On his mother’s side, he had a cousin who married a man named Abraham Windell, Who is a wealthy Dutch merchant from from a Dutch, wealthy Dutch family from Albany New York.
And the windows moved to Boston in the 1720s.
And so Edward-tothill kind of because of these family connections himself ends up in Boston.
And so and of course the this window families of Oliver Wendell Holmes that fame, New England family, this is this is that family, if you’re familiar with your new England history, they become very, very wealthy merchants, much like Peter faneuil in in boston.
And so Edward Tothill he settles in boston and there he meets George Ledain we don’t I don’t know the context, We could never find the context of their meeting.
But what we do know is from all the records that George Ledain and Edward Tothill were quote good friends.
All the records in english and dutch, they all refer to them as good friends And this is a really important term for the 18th century because the way that people would speak is that the term friend was thrown around quite casually.
So essentially your friends were people you did business with.

[54:15] So that that modifier, good to be a good friend that really matter because what it meant was that that person, your good friend would put the relationship ahead of the business interest.
The friend couldn’t be trusted to that, but a good friend could be trusted to do that.

[54:32] Edward Tothill at George Ledain become good friends. Edward Tothill is joined Christchurch, he’s he’s some sort of merchant in boston and then in 17 37 or so, his wife passes away, they have three minor Children.
Um but toddle uh it seems that family networks either to the windows or or to the Fanjuls something spurred Edward Tothill to move to Suriname in 17 38.

[55:02] Without his kids, he actually leaves them in boston um and that’s a whole other story um But he he moves to Suriname he has the language skills because he grew up speaking dutch, he has these connections to these new England merchant houses,
and he he kind of lands in Suriname immediately marries a widow of who owns plantations.
Um So he you know ingratiates himself in that in that in that world um but then he also essentially becomes an agent representing the interest of new England merchants across,
all of them who are training to Suriname um And so yeah he’s the he kinda he’s the the inside guy um and he becomes very, not just you know, not,
only is he an agent well known by all these new England merchants going to Suriname,
he comes well respected in the in the white community and and Suriname as well, he becomes a burger which is like a citizen, the equivalent of a citizen, it’s a an honorific, he holds a couple of minor offices um until he and he actually died in Suriname in 17 48.
So he he kind of remain there as this agent on the ground.
Um Facilitating trade between between new England and Suriname and especially with George Ledain his good friend. And when George Ledain joins forces with Gedney Clarke in the in the chocolate smuggling ring, he’s the guy that’s kind of making it all work on the ground and Suriname.

Jake:
[56:16] It’s funny as you describe, that’s some good friend.
And that title is is Ladin’s Good Friend. I’m reminded of nothing so much as uh the movie Donnie Brasco and johnny Depp’s character explaining the difference. A friend of mine, he’s a friend of ours, you see a friend of ours and he’s a friend of mine.

Jared:
[56:26] Yeah. Uh huh.

[56:31] Yeah definitely. It’s it’s a very similar to because in correspondence they refer to each other as friends but these guys they’re actually a lot of hate each other but they’re calling each other their friend, it’s because they’re doing business together.

Jake:
[56:44] So now we have Ladin and Clark and toddle essentially,
set up in business together and whether they’re working through Newark Jackson or I’m sure one of a number of other sea captains, there’s this exchange of money and goods between,
british boston dutch, Suriname and french cayenne is thrown in there and then back to british Barbados.
Can you describe how these men would have been moving money and goods between these different ports to give their cargoes at least, a veneer of legitimacy when they get back to boston.

Jared:
[57:18] The movement is key. Um and to keep things moving and to have the paperwork denoting that movement.
And so um so yeah, so they would, they would, one of the things that captain’s did is they actually, most of them departed from, they would go to Barbados and then board a different ship.
And so a lot of those ships were built in in New England, but then we’re kind of their home port was was Bridgetown in Barbados.

[57:43] Um So they wouldn’t use the, they wouldn’t use their new England ships, they would use their west, indian ships, which they use, they use different types of ships to, they tend to be a little bit bigger.
Um So that was the first thing, right? So they were not used, they would not risk uh this long voyage. It’s rather these shorter voyages from Barbados to to Suriname and then to cayenne, which is right next door to Suriname to its east.
And and so that that was the first step. So they would, they would kind of, they would kind of change out ships thinking about kind of like a getaway car, right?
They would they would have these special ships they were using, but they would also they would also always list their destination as cayenne.
And and it’s it’s unclear why so cayenne is the capital of french Guiana.
It’s what cayenne peppers name for. It is perhaps most famous the thing, it was famous for uh it’s it’s it’s no longer, but it used to be an island at the mouth of a river on the coast of, of french french Guiana and it was its capital and french and french Guiana.
Uh It’s really undeveloped. There’s like 5000 people there in the 17 thirties and forties.

[58:42] Um It’s it’s neglected by France and so the question is, you know, if you present that paperwork to a customs official that says you’re coming or going to cayenne, do they even know where that is? They?
You know, where is that place or they just kind of turn a blind eye to it because it was technically illegal to be trading there.
Um But but if you don’t know where it is right, you just got to kind of shrug it off.
And it also it made the whole process seem much more convoluted because if you go to Suriname if you come from Barbados and then you go to certain um.

[59:15] But it says, you know your paperwork is is you’re going to cayenne but you’re not going back to Barbados that what’s going on with that and then the ship captains themselves throw confusion in the mix because if you look at the entry of,
of the Rising Sun and Suriname it doesn’t note that the ships from Barbados, it notes that new york Jackson is from boston.
So it creates this really convoluted situation with with all these sort of unknowns and and that’s that’s deliberate.
You don’t know where people are coming or where they’re going and so it’s just easier to kind of stamp the paperwork, you know, or ignore it and just kind of move on.

Jake:
[59:52] And if you happen to be friends with a semi corrupt customs official, it helps them to just look the other way if it’s a complex chain of paperwork.

Jared:
[1:00:00] Exactly. That’s that’s also key, right? So it creates cover for those customs officials, uh to to claim ignorance, to claim duplicity, right, that they can also cover themselves, use it because of this. So it’s incredibly complicated.
And the fact that they, many of these ships were going to cayenne, so the Rising Sun was headed to cayenne. We we know a number of the ships went to cayenne as well.
Um and it makes sense because it was a it was a pretty good market for a lot of these goods because it was so neglected from, by France.

Jake:
[1:00:29] So you use an interesting phrase in the book. You say that essentially as,
the cargos are being laundered through this complex paper chain of movement through different ports, the people involved are also, they’re laundering their reputations through Old North.
What do you mean by that turn of phrase?

Jared:
[1:00:48] It allows them for when that stuff lands in Barbados, it can become Barbadian goods and and thus laundered and you know, kind of launder it through there. So that’s, it’s legal to be sold the british empire.

[1:00:58] And that’s exactly what the old North is serving the same purpose for the, for the personalities, Even by the standards of the 18th century.
The this is kind of duplicitous, it’s shady, it’s reliant upon, you know, corrupt officials And you know, taken individually trafficking enslaved people, right?
Taking individually in the 18th century, none of these are kind of morally condemnable, taken together though they don’t look so great even by 18th century standards, something’s wrong with the character of those engaging in all these activities and doing all these things.
Um, so what an institutional affiliation like Old North does. It allows these folks to uh, to to to be standing good members of the community.
And so this is Old North Star is a really important function for the smuggling ring.
All the folks in boston who were in boston at any point.
So everyone we’ve talked about so far is save Gedney Clarke So new york Jackson, George Ledain Edward Tothill were all members of Christchurch, they all donated money to the steeple.
They all George Ledain in new york Jackson’s own pews. Other captains hired by by George Ledain were members of Old North and donated money and so by, by being church members by, by donating money and time.

[1:02:19] This allowed them to kind of launder their reputation through this institution because you start to question George Ledain character then you say, oh, but he owns pew, 13 year old North, he’s donated all this money to the steeple.
Maybe he’s not, maybe he’s not such a bad guy, maybe he’s doing what a good community members should do.
Um he’s participating in, in, in in in in society in a proper way.
And you can even see this with, with, with Gedney Clarke Gedney Clarke donated £100 sterling, which is in a very large sum of money in the 18th century to purchase Old North spiel a Bells in 17 43.
And George Ledain secures that donation. So we have a thank you letter from the best treatment of Old North to Gedney Clarke Um and also thanks to George Ledain for securing the donation.
So all of these men are using this, the sort of institutional affiliations uh and philanthropy to kind of launder their reputations as upstanding members of the community.

Jake:
[1:03:18] So now we have the captain and we have the cartel as you build towards sort of the climax of the book and the 1743 voyage to Suriname you also introduce,
The cargo on that voyage, and of course, there was Cacau on board.
There are other goods on board, but obviously the focus is the human cargo on board.
So how many newly enslaved people were on the rising sun for this 1743 trip?

Jared:
[1:03:46] We don’t know. That’s the short answer. Probably about 50 I estimate based on some of the evidence we have.
Um, one of the frustrating parts to step back for a second from the history itself to the, to the research is um, the evidence we have of, of this part of the voyage, It was a slave trading voyage.
I’m fully, I lay it out in the book, I’m fully convinced of it, but there’s no actual evidence that says this was a slave trading voyage.

[1:04:15] There’s all this circumstantial evidence surrounding it. Um but what most of the cargo of that 1743 voyage on the sun,
was was enslaved Africans, about about 50 of them, certainly most valuable cargo, um that had been transshipped from uh, from West Africa to Barbados and then put on board the rising sun to be taken to Suriname,
Um the evidence we do have of this um is there was an insurance policy filed for the Rising Sun, It was not common to insure voyages smuggling voyages like this.
So, the fact there’s an insurance policy already suggest that something’s a bit off um that it’s different, I should say it’s off, It’s it’s different.
Um The insurance policy is also what’s called a value policy where it valued the cargo before it departed.
Um and there’s reference later to the quote ship in the negroes, being the value cargo once again, strongly suggesting that uh, that this was this was a slave trading voyage primarily, or at least what was insured was the slave trading voyage.

[1:05:21] Um There, there’s, there’s a number of other piece of evidence as well, that, that, that being one of the main ones.
Um but the other one is that there’s an inventory taking to the ship in 1743.
Uh and there are 15 enslaved people onboard.
13 of them are Children, two of them, young, young adult men, probably late teenagers early twenties who are also on board the ship, who would probably were. The remainder is from the smuggling voyages. Suriname they who they couldn’t sell.
And so the question for me is a historian and writing this is if we’re going to center the different experiences of the people involved in this in this voyage, new york, Jackson, George Ledain Gedney Clarke,
Um Edward Tothill We also have to uh, in the, in the rest of the crew we’re talking about a bit.
Um we also have to center the experiences of those enslaved people try to envision what their their experiences were like. And this is really hard when we only have one piece of concrete evidence, the ship inventory, uh and then a bunch of circumstantial evidence.
So how do we do that? How do we piece that together? Well, we have to look at the activities of Gedney Clarke we have to look at the activities of the Lascelles who I mentioned earlier,
and it just kinda and you know, put this and and into its context to try to figure out who these, who these, these enslaved people were.

Jake:
[1:06:39] And some of my recent episodes, I’ve realized that,
primary sources about slavery in 18th century New England, especially when I’m sure other places make it a lot harder to use primary sources to talk about any enslaved persons lived experience than just sort of broad terms about the institution.
So knowing that how did you try to fill in the lives, either from scraps of primary sources or from parallel lives? What we know about other people’s experience of being enslaved.

Jared:
[1:07:11] That’s one thing, right? I kind of understood the broader institution, what slavery was like, uh, say in Suriname um, and what that experience was like. But.

Jake:
[1:07:20] Was that was the experience in Suriname different than in other colonies or other slave societies.

Jared:
[1:07:25] Yes, yeah, it definitely was. Um, you know, it’s it’s most similar to that in the West Indies I talked about, you know, Suriname this kind of hellish place earlier.
Um, It was, but it, but it was, you know, long hours in the sun growing these, these cash crops,
um, you know, driven to death, worked to death, literally in many cases subject to want an abuse from both whites and from, from drivers meant to extract labor.
Um, yeah, so in that sense there’s a.

[1:07:57] Yeah, it’s very, it’s very similar to say, west indian slavery is very different from, from what’s happening in New England.
Certainly there’s, there’s abuse and all that New England, but just the nature of this, this is plantation slavery. So, you know, large scale large groups of enslaved individuals, uh, working on, on growing crash cash crops.
Um, so yeah, that, so that was an important kind of piece of the, of it.
Um, and certainly has some unique features. It’s, it’s kind of how big the plantations are, the sort of drainage system that’s used to make sure the lands fertile and remains doesn’t flood.
Um, so there are some unique features, but also, you know, institutionally, but also what all the people involved in the smuggling ring, we’re all connected to slavery. So what were their connection to slavery?
And most importantly, to answering this question with the activities of Gedney Clarke who we have, we have a lot of records of his slave trading activities.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that he’s also, you know, selling enslaved people on board on board the Rising Sun selling them and Suriname because he’s selling enslaved people from Barbados to Virginia Barbados, to south Carolina Barbados to other parts of the Guyana’s uh, and to Jamaica and to new york.
Right, So we have all this record of him as a slave trader in the exact same time period. He becomes one of the key suppliers, despite it being illegal to the Dutch colonies, to the west of Suriname So Berbice.
Um essequibo and demerara, he becomes a chief supplier there in the 17 fifties and 17 sixties trafficking enslaved people.

[1:09:23] So that alone kind of suggests that Yes and so so what did his slave trading activities look like?
Um, and then to, to make the west african picture, I look to the Lascelles and the last cells in addition to doing all sorts of consignment buying and selling sugars and coffee and Cacau and all that, They’re also invested in slave trading.
Um, and had devised a scheme called the floating Factory, which was off the west african port of anna mobo, which is in today’s Ghana.

[1:09:53] And so they stationed a ship that was there permanently uh meant to be anchored permanently just south of in the water off of on a mobo and essentially admit that ship captains could stop their fill their holds with with captives and move on.
So that would prevent that meant the captain’s wouldn’t have to go from port to port to port buying captives before crossing the atlantic. So this made things a lot faster, A lot less deadly for the captains and crews involved in in, in, in slave trading.

[1:10:20] Um, the scheme falls apart, but not before the voyage of the Rising Sun. So some of the last voyages from the floating factory Uh were in early 1743.
And I speculate and that many of the captives on board the Rising Sun were from some of these final voyages from the, from the floating factory.
And so that then, okay, so if they’re captured in on a mobo, what, what is, what, what’s that like?
You know, what was that experience of being captured? And we have narrative. So we have the narrative, a man named Venture smith who was enslaved in Connecticut actually and later sat down to relate his his life story.
And uh smith talks about being captured in the hinterlands of automobile and being sold there as a boy.
He’s about 8 to 10 years old of being sold. So now we have an experience of a young man of a boy being captured in the same region as many of the captives on board the Rising Sun. And, and like I said that the ones the captain’s we know most about where Children.
So venture smith’s narrative can be used as a bit of a stand in for their experiences.

Jake:
[1:11:27] By the time this human cargo is loaded onto the rising sun, they’ve already been at sea for weeks, or maybe more from the coast of Ghana to Barbados, Right.

Jared:
[1:11:37] Yeah, probably months. My my guess is there was a short period of convalescence in Barbados that have been offloaded, put into what’s called a pen P in um in uh like probably Gedney Clarke owned.
They would have been fed um and and watch someone may have been sold to plantations locally, but they would have been put in a holding pen until they would be reloaded on the rising sun. Now, how long a week?
Two weeks. A month. We don’t, I don’t know.

Jake:
[1:12:05] What were the conditions on the rising sun have been like? It sounds like as a smaller ship. It was different than sort of the sketches or diagrams we’ve all seen of, you know, a West African slave voyage.

Jared:
[1:12:18] Definitely. So the, it was, it was both in some ways that have been like much worse in some ways, it wouldn’t have been much better now. We have to remember we’re talking about slave trading. So it’s all relative here, it’s all horrible.
Um but but being put on the right toward the rising sun, 50 people on board a ship that was probably 70 ish tons, so not very big,
A cargo hold, you know, that that it’s the tallest is nine ft by 60, some odd feet long, nine ft tall, by 60 ft tall.
Um It would have been very crowded.
Um much probably even perhaps more crowded than the transatlantic vessel.

[1:12:58] But, and they had to squeeze in between all the other cargo. The Rising sun was carrying the barrels of fish, the bolts of core, you know, cloth, the timber, all that stuff they’re carrying.
Yeah, but on the other hand, they would have been chained. Uh they,
because the thing is chains and handcuffs and ankle cuffs, those create marks that uh and the voyage to Suriname from the rising sun would be very short 55 to 7 days at most.
Um, and so, you know, plenty of time for those sorts of wounds to develop from chains, but not to heal.
Um, And the food would have been much better. They would have had, they would have taken on freshwater in Barbados.
Jackson would have been able to buy fresh produce in Barbados. Um, So, so it would have been just a diet of, you know, preserve carbohydrates or yams or whatever they’re feeding um there, or salt rations.
It would’ve been a much healthier diet as well.
Uh, It’s a much shorter voyage would be the key.

Jake:
[1:13:55] And just to be clear, both the improved provisions and the not changing them to avoid visible wounds.
Neither of those are about kindliness, there, about resale value.

Jared:
[1:14:07] Absolutely. It’s about, it’s about preservation, preserving the cargo for sale. Yeah, absolutely.

Jake:
[1:14:13] On that depressing note.
Um, we we’ve introduced our captain, our cargo are cartel, the thing that’s, that’s missing.
To take us up to the sort of the, the deadly mutiny that’s going to happen in just a few short pages, is the rest of the crew.
So For the 1743 smuggling voyage, with this human cargo of about 50 people on board New York, Jackson is going to be the captain.
George Ledain is going to be on board, but then there’s also a larger crew.
Everybody from the captain’s boy to the first mate, who were the rest of the crew members on this voyage.

Jared:
[1:14:54] So all told there probably there are 11 people on board the ship. And so there’s new york, Jackson, the captain George Ledain the super cargo or merchant who’s in charge of managing the cargo.
Um But in addition to them, you have uh ladin has a clerk, a guy named john McCoy or john McKay.
Depending on the record. You look at um you have a cabin boy, john skinner, who who’s who’s,
like Jackson’s apprentice and ladin is kind of a servant, you have to to refer to as lads in the document, their young sailors um uh named um,
josiah jones and henri de Vries. De Vries is from boston.
I don’t know about jones. Um you have the ship’s mate, William blake, the ship’s bosson or spell boat saying, but pronounced Dawson john shaw.
And you have three able bodied sailors who were recruited in Barbados to serve on board the ship,
hired by Jackson and whose names were Ferdinand acosta, thomas Perea, I’m sorry, joseph Maria and thomas Lucas,
and the latter three are referred to as Portuguese sailors.
Um And so they were the they were the, what are called able bodied seaman. These are men with, they have decades of sailing experience between them and would have been kind of the rough and tumble of sailors on board the ship.

Jake:
[1:16:22] So why would new England officers have hired and brought on board sailors from such an incredibly different background than themselves?

Jared:
[1:16:31] My guess is that these three men, joseph Maria fernanda acosta and thomas Lucas were, had been slave ships sailors.
They had experience handling in slave cargoes. They had probably been discharged by a slave ship in Barbados. This was incredibly common for slave ship captains. Trying to save money would discharge crew members so they wouldn’t have to pay them.
Um, once they got to, once they got to Barbados, and my guess is these have been, and these these these are men.
Um Two of them are, are mixed race thomas, Lucas and Jason prey are mixed race.
Uh, There are three kind of poor sailors. They’re, they’re, they’re easy to uh, to discharge and to kind of castaway, um, given the social order of the time.
And so, so given their years of experience sailing, their experience handling enslaved cargoes, uh, Jackson saw an opportunity because he needed a larger crew to manage that many enslaved people on board the Rising Sun.

Jake:
[1:17:29] And Jackson, in his final moments, may have regretted that particular, higher that this sort of brings us to the event that you actually start the book with?
That I’ve been dancing around as we’ve been talking here. So On June 1, 1743, some of the members of the Rising Suns crew carry out this really shockingly violent mutiny.
Can you lay out who among the crew were the mutineers and then who were the victims of that mutiny?

Jared:
[1:17:58] Yeah, definitely. So about about 11, 11 30 or so on the night of june 1st 17 43.
Uh there’s there, they’ve just said they’re starting to do what’s called tacking the rising sun is starting to attack eastwards. Which is a sailing maneuver to sail against the current.
To to say against the current to go to cayenne and john shaw, the boston of the ship is at the helm.
Um it’s it’s the captain’s watch. So there’s two watches on board the ship mates watching the captain’s watches, the captain’s watch, Jackson, the captain of course has the privilege of going to bed despite it being his watch.
He’s just retired for the night, went down to his cabin, falling asleep, john shaw’s at the helm,
and talking to him is joseph Perea and begins questioning shaw about um about where they were, about the distance to,
a place called Orinoco which is in today’s Venezuela, john shaw didn’t see any harm in it and answered the man’s questions and then then told him to fetch him a dram.
A drink of rum. Uh parade goes down beneath deck shaw here.
Some talking Comes back up and asked him the exact same questions, but no dram Shaw’s annoyed, answered his questions again to order to fetch a dram.
This all this took place over about 15 minutes.

[1:19:16] Shaw is still above. When he hears all hell break loose.
Down below joseph Perea had woken up,
uh woken up thomas, Lucas and Fernand acosta and they grab axes and knives and they go into the cabin, George Ledain cabin and new york Jackson’s cabin and began stabbing.

[1:19:37] The two men flee. Uh So in Jackson’s cabin is john Skinner, the cabin boy who was able to slip out and go up to the deck.
Um Jackson also was able to slip out while being stabbed to go up to the deck.

[1:19:51] Um And as uh thomas Lucas is about to follow him up.
George Ledain also comes out stabbed um and grabs the and grab the ladder, starts you up and he’s uh he’s stabbed as well but but once again goes up the ladder and is able to get up on deck.
Meanwhile um they go after john McCoy, the Dean’s murder clerk, they stabbed him nine times and,
Uh he was who’s probably would’ve been stabbed to death by Perea had Jackson today not gotten up on deck which distracted him.
And so McCoy drags himself deep into the hold. Now this is after they’ve traded to Suriname and there are still 15 enslaved people on board who are watching this happen.
Um and John McCoy crawls of course they’re down there watching this as he’s crawling to hide below deck, the three mutineers are then do go up on deck to to finish their job.
Um And when when uh Fernando Dacosta gets up on deck, he he drops his acts to turn his attention to George Ledain and Jackson grabs the Acts, he’s laying on the deck, grabs the Acts to defend himself.
Um And that’s when uh Lucas according to the two cost his own testimony so we can’t we can’t we can’t trust it fully Lucas tells the cost to grab the action to begin chopping.

[1:21:08] Uh Meanwhile George Ledain has his is just laying bleeding out on the deck.

[1:21:14] Jackson screams, wake William blake up who’s asleep in his uh in his his cabin and his birth and he comes up the ladder and he stabbed in the shoulder.

[1:21:26] Um He lays on the deck and he watches the rest unfold.
They Perea begins had grabbed Jackson’s cutlets out of his cabin and was slashing at john shaw.
Um but right when he’s about to dispatch john shaw, the bison, um he’s called over to help throw George Ledain body, throw Jackson’s body, sorry, overboard and shaw is able to get below deck.
Um the mutineers uh then throw Jackson overboard, throw lindane Jackson still alive when he goes over and he’s screaming as he,
plunges into his death, ladin’s tossed overboard, uh john skinner is, he’s a young boy, he’s maybe 10 years old, he’s scared, understandably, he goes up the shrouds of the ship which you’ve ever seen a sailing ship.
These are the rope kind of the rope netting that goes up the mast, he goes up the shrouds and refuses to come down uh.

Jake:
[1:22:17] At this point, there’s almost like a beat where the Attackers can sort of catch their breath and they can decide who’s gonna live and who’s going to die.
From this point, they decide to murder some of the folks who made it through the initial attack, and then to spare some of the crew members who they had initially attacked and badly wounded. So who do they choose and why?

Jared:
[1:22:39] Yeah you’re absolutely right. So now the question is who lives and who dies? And so we have john you know john skinner up on the shrouds, we have john McCoy down below deck bleeding out. We have john shaw below deck bleeding out of his birth.
And William blake wounded on deck blake springs into action.
He knows that the mutineers can’t sail.
They they have decades of sailing experience but they don’t know how to pilot a ship or navigate.
They need William blake for that. And this is probably why they only stab blake and the shoulder initially to mobilize him but then to use him later to get to Orinoco.

Jake:
[1:23:16] And this is just to interject for our listeners. This is a point in time when while you may be a sailor and you know how to raise the main sheet navigation is a very academic art.
Still, at the time, it’s a practical art, but it involves a lot of book learning.

Jared:
[1:23:32] Yes, absolutely, yeah. Being a mate requiring a mate which is essentially the pilot and navigator of the ship requires quite a bit of knowledge and expertise. Both learned and book experience, right?
You have to you know both book and and kind of train actually on the job training and that’s and so that’s why they keep blake alive.
Um and so john Skinner. However the cabin boy, he’s he’s a liability because he was you know, new york Jackson’s apprentice.
And so they actually coax him down off the shrouds um with a promise that there let him live in the moment his feet hit the deck Fernand acosta charges him bludgeoned him to death and throws his body overboard, 10 year old boy,
same thing’s true of john McCoy ladin’s clerk, his loyalties to lindane, he doesn’t or at least they don’t think he has the skills to navigate the ship.
So they go below deck and finish the job and and throw him overboard.
That leaves john shaw the boston, the the other ship officer besides William blake.

[1:24:34] And they actually wanted to kill john shaw. But William blake intervened.
He essentially said that uh that john shaw had been quote many voyages to essequibo, which essequibo is the river to the to the west of Suriname on the way to Orinoco. So he’s telling them that and he speaks very good dutch.
So he knows this region really well and will be an asset to them for navigating.
And that causes the mutineers to back off and allows blake and shaw.
They allow blake and shaw to live along with the two young sailors, josiah jones and Henri de Vries, who they don’t really see as a threat to their power and perhaps potential allies as fellow sailors.

Jake:
[1:25:18] As I read, sort of the account of the mutiny and then the following couple of days, it doesn’t seem like their plans were very well thought out to the extent that there was a plan at all.
What did these three so called Portuguese sailors planned to do with the ship and the cargo that they were getting after they took over.

Jared:
[1:25:38] That’s a good question. And you’re, I think you’re right, it was a hastily made decision, it seems without a lot of forethought and planning.
But I think what happened is they took a look around at the cargo of the ship when it left. Suriname it was loaded with Cacau with sugar with molasses. But the leftover enslaved people, the Children and to young adults.
There’s also a lot of gold and silver on board the ship.
And this is something that, that I’m still confound. I wrote a book that I’ve still confounded as to why I I think um there’s a number of reasons, but I think Edward Tothill was facilitating cash sales for for enslaved people.
Um and and is that was relatively rare in Suriname but it did occur.
Um and the idea was to take that gold and silver back to boston, to the Windle’s tidal’s backers were involved in what’s called the Silver bank, which was an attempt to make a bank which would back paper currency with silver.

[1:26:33] Um And so I think that’s what’s happening, but what it meant was in the moment there’s a lot of gold and silver on board the ship. In addition to both Jackson and ladin, they were wealthy men, even if what I was deeply in debt.
And they ladin especially seemed to love to flaunt his wealth.
He wore silk clothes, he wore lacey wigs, he wore, you know, gold buckles on issues.
And so he, it’s a lot, so there’s a lot of money on board the ship.
And so if you could seize that cargo and the ship itself, which had value and sell it somewhere, you might be able to make a pretty good life for yourself.
And they settled on Orinoco, which is today part of Venezuela, its eastern Venezuela on the border with what’s what’s today Guyana.

[1:27:13] And it’s a, it’s a big river basin essentially. And the idea what, and the question is how much of the mutineers know about Orinoco and what did they know? What did they know?
Did they know for example, that the spanish welcomed runaway soldiers and sailors and slaves, if they would pledge loyalty to the spanish crown and become catholic?
Well, the three men are already catholic, so all they would have to do is pledge loyalty to spain and they might, you know, might not be many questions asks.
Um, so, so why would they want to go? There is a bit of a question and how much did they know about the place they wanted to go?

Jake:
[1:27:48] In the book, you noted that the part of the reason so many of those questions are unanswered is because the dutch officials who eventually interrogate the mutineers,
had a lot more questions about what and how than why they wanted to establish guilt, not really motive.

Jared:
[1:28:03] Absolutely. That’s, that’s fairly standard for, for legal procedure at the time, especially in the dutch system, but really across the, across europe and european colonies, America’s uh, courts are much more concerned with what happened and to establish guilt than motive.
They don’t, they don’t care about motive at the end of the day, like we might care about motive because this was mutiny, it was murder, It’s going to result in a, you know, in a death sentence, it’s a capital offense,
and so why there’s not, there’s not many shades they’re they’re not like trying to difference between manslaughter and murder here, they’re just trying to establish guilt.

Jake:
[1:28:37] For a death sentence and a guilty finding to result, these guys have to get caught, and so that really is going to fall to blake and shaw.
And you describe the morning after the mutiny, the mutineers going back up on deck and,
scrubbing the deck like they would on another day, except this time, they’re trying to scrub away the blood and they put a phony captain at the helm, so if anybody’s looking, it’ll look, everything will look like it’s normal on board the rising sun.
So while the mutineers are trying to conceal everything that’s happening and put up a good front, how are black and shaw passively fighting back?

Jared:
[1:29:17] Well, they hold the cards and I think they very quickly realized that, that they can navigate the ship.
Um, and it’s between blake’s knowledge of navigation and shaw’s knowledge of the coast of that region.
They know that they can kind of by time and eventually, uh, you know, in this mutiny and ensure that these mutineers are caught and brought to justice.
And so what they do is um, they essentially, it’s the geography of the, of the sea in that region is kind of interesting.
There’s this, there’s a current that runs from all the way from west africa across the atlantic and up to the lesser Antilles really to Barbados and, and in the caribbean called the south equatorial current and it runs up the kind of northeastern coast of south America.
So if they were serious about going to Orinoco, all they would have really had to do was turn the ship due north catch the current.
And they would actually, and they would be there in a couple of days, it would drop them near the mouth.
The Orinoco, they could sail out of the current and go down into the river, but instead because the mutineers have no knowledge of the region or of sailing.

[1:30:22] They essentially just turned the ship due due west out in there and near the coast and so they’re not in the current.
And so the ship just kind of lumbers along the coast of Suriname very slowly for about for about four days actually, um until they come to the mouth of this giant river and um,
blake tells them that this is they believe this is the orinoco.
Um And so they sail up the river except for it wasn’t the Orinoco.

Jake:
[1:30:52] So eventually the mutineers and their newly acquired ship arrive at a colonial outpost, But it wasn’t this friendly, spanish backwater they were hoping for where were they?

Jared:
[1:31:00] Yes.

[1:31:06] No. And so the river they entered was the quarantine river, which to this day makes up Suriname is western border.
Uh It’s a it’s a really it’s an undeveloped place in the 18th century.
Uh there’s there’s next to no habitation. And so the ship enters.
So these rivers their title river. So they have a really strong current out at low tide and a really strong currents in at high tide.
And so you you you time with the tide. And so when the morning high tide comes and they catch the tide to go up the river And they just they go and it’s just jungle on both sides, this jungle, jungle, jungle, they come to bends in the river and it’s just jungle islands of there, there’s just more jungle.
And finally they get about 60 miles in river, which takes, you know, takes a number of hours to move that far with the even with the current and they see an outpost and this is the moment.
And blake tells the mutineers that yes, this is uh this is this is the spanish outpost, I’ll stake my life on it. He says, you can cut my head off if you don’t and don’t believe me.

[1:32:10] And so fernanda Costa puts on uh George Ledain closes silk clothes and his lacey wig and his his laced hat and his wig pretending to be the captain.
And they all except for john shaw board the ships boat and they go ashore and a group of men come out to greet them.
White men and they all speak dutch. Uh,
yes, So this was a dutch outpost um that that sits on a set on a footpath that that went between, then went across the footpath runs between the dutch colony Burb east to the west into Sirte.
On its four interior trade, especially with the Amer Indian peoples that lived in the interior.
And so this outpost was there to conduct trade with Amer Indian people and to kind of kind of patrol, keep a dutch presence in the area.
And so it’s it’s corporal john Heiss is in charge of the post, along with a few soldiers and a couple of translators and some Amerindian allies are hanging out there when the mutineers arrived.

Jake:
[1:33:09] The mutineers and and Blake go on shore. How does blake let the dutch post holder know what’s happened on the rising sun?

Jared:
[1:33:18] So he plays dumb. He essentially, he asked if they’re in Orinoco, he’s like, I don’t know how they’re communicating because blake can’t speak dutch.
Um and none of the, none of the rest of the crew could speak dutch except for john shaw. So they must get to communicate.

Jake:
[1:33:30] Who’s back on this ship and not going on shore?

Jared:
[1:33:33] And so he could, they must have communicated by hand signals or something and they find out that they’re not in Orinoco.
So blake plays dumb and says, oh I have to go back to the ship and get my my navigational instruments, get the charts, get the maps, and so he goes back to the rising sun and he grabs all this stuff and john shaw.
So they go ashore and john shaw then explains what’s happened and um they’re they’re long into the evening that the the post entertains them thinking they’re just lost sailors, right?
They kind of play along despite the fact that they know what’s happening because corporal Hice had explained to to like that’s gonna take him time to a symbol of force.
He doesn’t want to, there’s two things kind of anything his mind the first is he doesn’t want to risk his soldiers entirely,
and he wants an overwhelming force to take the mutineers of of of Amer indian allies of, of native peoples that he’s allied with, but that they can be a bit finicky,
um and are not all and to put them in danger like this is going to do, he’ll have to pay them and it’s gonna take a bit is essentially what he said.

[1:34:41] So um there there late in the evening and so sean blake pretend like everything’s, you know that they’re going to get back on the ship and sail back out and head to the Orinoco.
Um They get back on the rising sun, the ship’s boat is still in the water beside beside the rising sun.
And blake and shaw are confronted because the mutineers know that they, they’re not dumb right, They know that shaw’s told the, the official john heiss exactly what’s happening.
Um they want to just a Prius as they should kill shaw right then and there.
Um but Fernando Costa says no we need to leave, we need to get out of here now the tide’s going out, it’s getting dark, we have to go now.
Um when the two men getting an argument shaw seize the opportunity, he jumps overboard, remember he’s been wounded, he’s been slashed but he jumps overboard into the ship’s boat r and and and and rose ashore.
Um and they, instead of going after him uh Dacosta and Lucas and pray freak out, they cut that, they literally cut the anchor cable uh to the ship and it takes off down the river.

Jake:
[1:35:51] But it’s just drifting right, they’re not navigating down.

Jared:
[1:35:53] They’re not navigating. No, it’s and it’s getting dark, it’s dusk, the rivers, the currents flowing out fast with the tide and they run aground the next morning.
Um They get up, there’s no sign of shaw, there’s no sign of heis.
Uh They’ve moved up the river a little bit, the tide comes back in so the ship float because there’s more water and they begin moving, they begin going up river a little bit This time of course they’re fighting the tide be,
the moment the tide begins letting out again, they run aground.

[1:36:24] So now we’re, it’s june 7th 17 43 2 days.
And on that morning after they run aground um they see three ships of, they wake up the next morning hoping the ship will float again and they see uh these c three boats coming at them.
The first is the Rising Suns boat And John Heiss and and and John Shaw in it, along with the Dutch soldiers flanked by two canoes of Amer Indian Warriors, probably about about 30 men and all.
Um all told there’s a movement to joseph paria wants to load the rising sun does have a couple of guns on it. He wants to load it.
Um But they very quickly realized that that there’s no sense of fighting praise, not a skilled gunner, there’s not enough gunpowder on board to hold him off.
So at this moment josiah jones and henri de Vries jump overboard and swim ashore.
Um And the three boats around the rising sun ever on boards.
Um And in the in this in this moment joseph pray actually jumps overboard and swims ashore and runs into the jungle uh and and disappears for a bit.
Meanwhile john Heiss arrests both Fernand acosta and thomas Lucas. And so this is how they’re apprehended and blake and shaw take the rising sun back to the outpost on the quarantine.
So so the mutiny is now over at this moment.

Jake:
[1:37:47] But Per is still on the run, How does he end up getting recaptured or what I should say what becomes a friend?

Jared:
[1:37:52] What becomes a parade? He’s on the run. It’s unclear how long, a few days certainly.
And so heiss, the first thing they do is they sent out a search party almost immediately.
And I mean this is incredible. It tells you the the anger and frustration that blake and shaw and jones endeavors have with these mutineers because they actually joined the search party.
I mean they’re blake and shaw been wounded severely and they’ve joined the search party to go into the jungle and find them and they can’t find them immediately.
So they go back to the post and the quarantine uh the quarantine and um heist hires a significant a pretty good sized uh posse of Amer indian warriors to most likely um Colin ago.
Um I’m sorry Kalina, her or Carib is there sometimes known to,
track Perea through the jungle and they eventually find him after a couple of days um and they find him and they surround him and he actually kills himself.
He pulls his knife and stabs himself uh to to to avoid being captured and then to prove that they apprehended him.
The the the party actually beheads him to take his head back to to prove to heist and then later to the governor of Suriname that that he has been been captured and killed.

Jake:
[1:39:10] And mentioning that his head’s taken to the governor brings up a good point that the trial of the two surviving mutineers isn’t going to be Held in this tiny little outpost 60 miles up river on the wrong river.

Jared:
[1:39:23] No, it’s going to have to be held in the capital.

Jake:
[1:39:25] What was that process of investigation, interrogation and trial, like both for the two defendants, the mutineers, and then the rest of the crew members who would have been participating in the trial as witnesses?

Jared:
[1:39:39] It takes about a week to, to go from this post on the quarantine,
to Paramaribo, the capital of certain because you have to sail up the river, sail along the coast and then back down the river to Paramaribo like this really make a like an upside down U shape.
Um and that takes some time or you can go over land which would take even longer.
And so um that’s one of the reasons the timeline. So one of the things that heist does is they get the Rising sun back to the post in the quarantine and he takes an inventory of the ship, everything on it.
And then he sends shaw and blake and Lucas and Perea back to Paramaribo with a group of Amer indian warriors of allies of the dutch.
Um this is probably gonna, this probably slowed things down quite a bit because they’re gonna go in canoes, they’re gonna go very slowly and deliberately to ensure that their prisoners don’t get away.
So they reach Paramaribo and it’s there that there’s an initial inquiry done of a testimony of William blake and john shaw is taken.
Um and then the mutineers as they begin gathering evidence for the trial of the mutineers.
But the the governor and the rad fiscal or the Attorney General of the colony uh are reluctant to begin the trial until they somehow apprehended the third mutineer.

[1:41:01] So that’s so things are in limbo until they hear of praise death a few days later, about a week or so later.
Um and the ship itself is actually left at the post and the quarantine for a long time with josiah jones and Henri de Vries who are in charge of the ship now and have all these enslaved captives are still there too on board the ship.

Jake:
[1:41:22] Those are the two just the ordinary seaman right here, the able seamen who are left now in charge of all the goods and the enslaved people.

Jared:
[1:41:29] Yes. Yes. Who are probably no more than 20 years old. They’re not much older than the enslaved people on board the ship.

Jake:
[1:41:35] Big promotion for them.

Jared:
[1:41:35] Yeah. Yes. Big promotion. And of course the Dutch soldiers are there and stuff too. But but yeah, big promotion for them.

Jake:
[1:41:42] So once word has traveled back to the rest of Suriname that we have the head of the third mutineer. Um, what does the trial consist of beyond just the testimony of blake and shaw?

Jared:
[1:41:55] So yeah, so they bring the Rising sun back as well. So it can be inventoried and inspected josiah jones and Henri de Vries come back as well um Along with the cargo.
Um the inside Children. And so the first thing that’s done is a group, a group testimonies taken of the four men jones de Vries, shaw and blake.
They all sign it and it’s essentially a collective testimony very similar to that offered by blake and shaw earlier.
Actually lacking in even more details. It’s just really an account of the mutiny itself meant to establish the guilt of the two men that will be put on trial.
Um The two men are then put on trial. Um and and by that they’re they’re interrogated.

[1:42:35] Um So the way that what’s again the dutch, the dutch legal process, there’s no assumption of innocence.
Like the the there they know that they’re guilty now they just have to establish that guilt.
Um So what we today have think of presumption of innocence that’s just not there.
Um And so yeah, they they essentially they just lay out questions because they want to figure out what exactly happened um during this and then once they questioned them, they get them to confess.
Uh they both signed their confessions and then they can move on.
Um There was it seems Fernand Acosta is very clear that he knows it’s over it.
You can see that in his testimony, he answers all their questions, he freely confesses to freely confessed to what happened Thomas Lucas did not, he’s much more obstinate. He start, he only answered about a third of the questions.
Uh so there’s like 70, some of the questions that the officials asked them, he only answered about a third of them.
Um and then he also refused to confess. Um and his answers at one point were so misleading that he’s actually forced to sit in the room with uh with with Fernand acosta whose confirming or arguing against him at that point.
So it’s unclear they do eventually get Lucas’s confession.

[1:43:52] It’s unclear if they use torture or not. The Dutch were not afraid to use torture even by this point, even by the 1740s, it was still, especially in Suriname it was commonly used.
Um so there is a potential they actually had to torture him to get his confession.

Jake:
[1:44:09] And quite honestly, the means of execution aren’t that different than what we might call torture. So once they secured these men’s confessions, they’re obviously found guilty.
Then the death sentence that was probably inevitable from the beginning of the trial is on the table, and it’s up to the the colonial governor to decide the method of execution.
So it sounds like they have to both choose something that will fit the crime and also serve as a deterrent to anybody else who might be another sailor who might be tempted to mutiny in the future. So what was that?

Jared:
[1:44:46] Yeah, it was uh it had to be as much performance as it was execution right, just going out and hanging these men,
or beheading them was not going to cut it because the governor says he has to send an example to sailors and and so what he decided on is that he actually decided he would use the rising sun as a prop,
in this uh in this spectacle.
So he had the rising sun more in front of forts Islandia, which is the main fort in uh in Paramaribo actually built by the english. But it’s the, it’s the center of dutch authorities that they were, there’s a dungeon there and that’s where the mutineers were held during the trial.
Um and so the rising sun is moored right there at the fort um and they put a beam across the main mast of of the schooner.

[1:45:32] And the two men are holed up by their own armpits and and put and hung there by their armpits up on this board.
Um and then the the executioners who are intend to be there free black or enslaved people in a slave society like Suriname they use red hot pinchers to pull off skin where they were, where they had stabbed uh every all the other crews.
So Jackson lindane uh skinner McCoy blake and shaw,
they would, they use hot pictures to pull off their flesh, the places they were, they had stabbed other people um and they were left to hang there for for 24 hours um or they were left to hang there for a bit longer and then the they were taken down,
and the dutch authorities.
This is a common torture and punishment. Suriname They took a giant iron hook and rammed it through the rib cages of the two men and hoisted them back up,
on the, the yardarm that they had built on the ship and hung them there for 24 hours according to the accounts of the execution.
One of the two end, I’m not sure it was Lucas or Dacosta was still alive 24 hours later, I hadn’t perished and they are then beheaded and their heads are put on display to uh as a warning to sailors coming into Suriname.

Jake:
[1:46:47] So that is the gruesome end of our surviving mutineers. How does word get back to boston? How do Jackson and Ladin’s families and the boston public eventually learn about the mutiny on the rising sign?

Jared:
[1:47:02] It’s an interesting question because letters start drifting back very, very quickly after blake and shaw get to Paramaribo.
And it’s pretty clear, I mean if you read in those letters are sent to boston and they’re pretty much published, some of them verbatim sometimes summarized Depending on the newspaper in late July 1743.
Um and so it’s most likely it is certainly the ones in boston that are published are from Edward Tothill It’s clear there’s also, but there’s also the stories picked up in the, in the new york press as well.
There’s on august 15th 17 43. There’s a very long story in the new york weekly journal about the mutiny and it’s, it’s blake and shaw’s testimony.
Their initial testimony they offered when they first got to Paramaribo and it’s unclear if Edward Tothill sent that or not,
but there are there is a sizable community of english merchants and british american merchants in serfdom and they’re probably sending they’re sending letters to to boston into to new york.
Um and then eventually the stories picked up. So the mainly the boston stories are reprinted in philadelphia, but also in great Britain itself, um in London and Ipswich and in Dublin, that that’s even picked up.
Um and and some other Newcastle Upon Time, all of others newspapers pick up these stories, both those printed in boston and then also in new york.

Jake:
[1:48:27] William Blake continued keeping his log not the captain’s log, stardate 2021, but the his mates log after the mutiny,
was that eventually copied and sent around as part of the record or the publicity around this trial.

Jared:
[1:48:45] Yeah, so he kept, he continued keeping his log after the mutiny. So both captains and mates keep logs of the joint.
So he continued keeping his log and that became the basis of of evidence for the for the crew and the basis of the account.
And so when they essentially, it seems that the accounts that are published in boston and in new york seemed to have been William blake’s account,
augmented or William blake uh his log augmented by john shaw’s testimony because they both tend to be signatories.
Um and Edward Tothill probably helped them prepare that testimony.
So so yeah, his his log is one of the key piece of evidence we have for understanding the beauty because he continued keeping it even after.

Jake:
[1:49:33] And at some point as the tale of this, this mutiny is spreading.
You note that there’s a shift in describing the mutineers as three Portuguese fellows to describing them as Portuguese negro sailors.
Why do you think that linguistic shift was important or resonated with readers in the british atlantic world, including here in boston.

Jared:
[1:49:59] Yeah, you’re absolutely right. So the the the their identity gradually changes as the story travels, and especially in the british press, but really everywhere,
they transform from being these Portuguese just called Portuguese sailors, or Portuguese fellows to Portuguese negro sailors and that the element of races introduced.
And I think really in this, I argue this in the book is that it essentially makes the story more digestible.
It takes what what was a seemingly senseless event and adds adds a key piece of context for understanding why it happened, essentially, it blames this mutiny on these men’s inherent blackness on their on their race,
that they are, you know, that that’s why they did this, that they’re they’re multi, they’re they’re they’re black men who could not be who, well, they couldn’t be trusted and they’re duplicitous and so they committed murder.
And so it becomes it becomes a racial story, um by the end.
Um, and that adds a sort of a piece of context that allows, allows this story to be understood by the british, atlantic reading public, who would who would have indulged their own prejudices, write their own racism, uh, to to make sense of this story.

Jake:
[1:51:14] And an execution sure sounds final, but that’s not really the end of the story, because now, Edward Tothill is left to recover a ship that everybody knows was used as a smuggler, and he’s got a cargo that everybody knows was contravened, hint,
so there’s gonna be a sort of a push and pull between toddle the dutch governor, the attorney general, over what should become of the rising sun.
Can you describe what that argument was like?

Jared:
[1:51:41] Yeah, so there seemed to be of course Edward Tothill just want everything handed over to him and he would take care of it, that wasn’t going to happen.
Um, so you have to, other to other figures come into play here, the first, the governor johan Mauritius, uh, as the governor and the rad fiscal or Attorney General, Yak abdel data, Hawaiian,
he’s Hawaiian thinks that the ship should be seized the ship and its cargo should be seized, It’s all contraband.
Um, he also argues that because the mutineers were not, they don’t, they were not of an allied nation to the Netherlands, right?
So they were Portuguese, they’re not british in Britain and the Netherlands were allied since they’re not of an allied nature nation, the ships actually liable for seizure as as as both contraband, but also as um,
essentially they committed piracy and so you could seize the, what would he call piracy, so you could seize the vessel.
Um, Mauritius is much more hesitant on that.
He thinks that the cargo that Jackson, everyone knows that that ship was british.

[1:52:50] And his reasoning behind this is kind of funny, he said, um, everyone knows it’s british because everyone knows new york, Jackson and George Ledain who were british subjects because everyone is dealing with smugglers, right?
So everyone knows everyone knows them. So we should allow these goods to be sold to both british and dutch subjects.
Um, and so they essentially, they tussle, they,
this is a tussle back and forth a bit and eventually agree that, yes, these, these can be the ship should not be seized, that it should be eventually the ship should be released to its owner in this case, Gedney Clarke and mary ladin, George Ledain is widow.
Um And the cargo should be divided up and sold to both dutch and british merchants.
Um but with the condition that how wayne the Hawaiian, the the rad fiscal, he will oversee all of this, he’ll take an inventory of the ship and he’ll impound the goods and make sure they’re being sold properly.
Now, what adds a twist of this? Is that helping how wine take that?
The the inventory is Edward Tothill So, and it seems that over time, how I really softened,
um and in much a lot of kind of nefarious underhanded activity happens around the cargo to sell it to the people who Edward Tothill What’s the salad too?

Jake:
[1:54:10] And then, just to point out that sort of the centerpiece of that remaining cargo,
It’s 15 Children and they’ve been on the ship now on the rising sun for weeks and weeks since the mutiny, and then months, before that since they left, Ghana.
How much could you uncover about what eventually became of those kids?

Jared:
[1:54:32] Not much at all. What I do. What I do know is that that was that was where, how wine drew the line, He would not allow them to be sold.
So there were two inventories taken to the ship after the mutiny.
The official inventories by Hawaiian and title. The one was of the cargo, the other is the ship and the cargo was missing.
And we don’t know why, but it’s not there anymore. It’s in an index for the book, but it’s not in the book itself.
It’s unclear why exactly. That’s the case. Why? Why that’s the case.
But what we do know is that in the the enslaved Children are listed in the ship’s inventory, I. E. That they are property of the ship and could not be alienated from the ship.
And so I that’s pretty clear that was a legal maneuver by how wine to prevent the enslaved Children from being sold.
Um in Suriname and forcing them to leave with the ship when it’s sent back to Barbados to Gedney Clarke So they are on board.
So there, you know after the beauty of their trial continues there there there now being shipped back to Barbados and from there they kind of disappear.
I have circumstantial evidence for two of them and they’re both kind of tragic. So I this is, this is the story though um Is the first is one of the little girls of the 13 boys and girls, one of the little girls.

[1:55:46] Um if you follow the correspondence between Gedney Clarke and the merchant form a firm of sweat and hooper in Salem massachusetts.
Beginning in March 17 43 robert hooper, one of the members of this firm begins asking Gedney Clarke for an enslaved girl for his household to work in his household.
It keeps ask every across all summer through spring and summer, 17 43 continues asking Gedney Clarke for an enslaved girl.
And finally, Gedney Clarke sins and enslaved girl in september 17 43 to robert Hooper.
And I’m pretty sure she was a girl off the Rising Sun, um, that he had just gotten the ship back needed to dispose of,
of the cargo and that was remaining on the ship, including the enslaved Children because he was not going to get an insurance payment for them because they were still on board the ship.
So he couldn’t get a, he couldn’t claim them. So he had to sell them himself or dispose of them himself.
So he sent this little girl to robert hooper, she died uh, less than 24 hours after arriving in Salem massachusetts.
Um, and if this little girl was as expected the book, this little girl was from the Rising Sun and she had been through that it was, it was probably, she was probably so weakened from months on board a ship and held and held on the confines of this tiny ship.

[1:57:02] Uh, and she probably probably perished after this final final voyage from Barbados to massachusetts.
Um, the other enslaved person we know is there’s an enslaved man named frank listed in new york Jackson’s inventory.

[1:57:17] And after, you know, as their accounting for his inventory and his name is called frank from Barbados and he sold almost immediately after arriving in boston.
And so I speculate in the book that frank was one of the young men from the, one of the two young men from the Rising Sun and he sent to boston and as to pay new york Jackson’s widow, Amy Jackson,
uh, as part of his, to pay part of what Gedney Clarke owed her, wrote him new york Jackson from the voyage.
And so when she receives frank, she immediately sells him in boston. And it’s, it doesn’t say to who, and I’m unclear of frank’s fate from there.

Jake:
[1:57:55] That leads us to these three newly widowed women back in boston, we have Amy Jackson, mary ladin and jean McCoy. How how did their lives and fortunes change in the years and the decades after the mutiny?

Jared:
[1:58:09] Gee McCoy we don’t know much about. She was john McCoy’s wife.
They were young, probably mid twenties. Uh and he didn’t have many debts.
His estate was also wasn’t particularly valuable. So she disappears after, after dealing with the probate, you know, pro baiting his inventory and his estate.
Um, My guess is she remarried. There’s evidence that they were from the Merrimack River Valley in New Hampshire. So she may have returned uh to return there.
Um Amy Jackson uh,
saw an incredible decline in her fortunes because all these deaths of her husband’s surface, um no longer able to service those debts because he’s new york. Jackson is no longer in the picture are working.
Um She has to pay them and there are many um are called do um So many debts are coming out of the woodwork that she has to issue.
Take out an advertisement in a newspaper to for people to come forward if if new objects owned them, owed her money.
It takes um nearly three years to settle all the accounts.
Um and requires selling an extensive amount of the family property, including all the enslaved people they owned.
So they own three enslaved people and frank the man I just mentioned who arrived from Barbados.

[1:59:22] Um She received some of the gold and silver off on board. The rising sun is payment for her husband’s final voyage.
She spent all that covering debts. Um so a significant decline in fortune.
She’s able to hold onto the pew until I believe 1748 at old north,
but from there she disappeared from the record, I think she may have remarried uh Merchant by the name of David Gardner, Her daughter’s uh one I think that the sun may have passed away.

[1:59:51] Um And the two daughters, they also marry um Elizabeth Jackson,
new york Jackson Amy Jackson’s oldest daughter later married um merchant and Newburyport massachusetts, once again the essex county connection um named Isaac walker and they named their son Newark Jackson walker.
So that’s that there is some legacy um and the family did continue to own a little bit of property in the north end that’s still referenced in deeds and stuff like that up through the 17 seventies.
So there is so so they see a significant decline. Unfortunately they are able to hang on a little bit.
Uh yeah, moving forward, mary ladin probably was the one who fared the best um Jackson.
Alright, I’m sorry, George Ledain they prepared, you know for they she was financially well off and most importantly in in in in this case uh,
is that mary ladin had Edward Tothill in her corner, right that her husband’s good friend who was going to watch her back before he watched Gedney Clarke back.
And so almost immediately upon learning of her husband’s death, the first thing she does is she gives the probate court and issues,
a power of attorney for Edward Tothill to take care of all the affairs and Suriname And he does, he serves her interest and and recovers quite a bit of quite a bit of wealth for her, a lot of money.
Um And so she fares, I mean she lost her husband. Um but and financially she’s probably the kind of fares the best.

Jake:
[2:01:20] So we see that this works out pretty well for Maryland, and you say that she lost her husband, but financially she comes out more or less ahead. What does that say for how? Gedney Clarke is fortune fared in this period?

Jared:
[2:01:34] His fortune fares pretty well, What we have to remember is that Gedney Clarke hands on a lot of different pots and so this is one of many things he’s involved in in terms of this venture, though, it doesn’t turn out particularly well.
Um, he’s left to fight with the insurers, um, and the insurers.
So they, essentially, what happens is, um, they acquire the insurance in London from a group of underwriters, um, one of the main underwriter of £1500 of insurance, so significant amount for both the ship and its cargo.
And like I said, probably what was most insured were the enslaved people on board.

[2:02:10] And the underwriters, one of the largest underwriters, Henry Lascelles at £500, but the other £1000 comes from a group of of various merchants who chose to kind of chose to underwrite the venture and they refused to pay.
Um They claim that uh they have to see exactly what they want to see.
A full accounting of the ship and its cargo, how, how much damage to the ship sustained and what’s it worth? How many enslaved people were left on board that they don’t have to pay out for him because they could be sold elsewhere.
Um How much of what, how much money did you make off the cargo that’s left that we won’t have to cover, Right? They want all of this information.
And the only source of the, especially regarding the cargo, the only source of information is Edward Tothill And he essentially, he just plays the long game.
He doesn’t really refuse per se, but he sends some accounts here and there, He sends some, he always promises, I’ll get you the paperwork, I’ll get you the paperwork or oh the fiscal, the rad fiscal, he needs the paperwork.
And then then once I talked to him, I’ll send you the paperwork, right?
So there’s this constant um, so there’s constant kind of deflecting, deflecting, deflecting um any making it even worse, the Lascelles appointed an agent in Amsterdam to take care of this for them to communicate directly with toddle.
Thinking that the rad fiscal had had kind of forced this like that. They could only work through the dutch essentially, which of course was not the case.

[2:03:36] So toddle just kind of plays the long game and essentially they never get paid.
Uh, the only, it’s unclear if the insurance claim ever went through, it probably didn’t.
Um, but the, the only payment that clark and the Lascelles his investors ever obtained,
was payment for the, was what he sold the ship for and what he sold the remainder remaining enslaved people for that’s all he ever made from the voyage.
Um, and so it caused a total breakdown between certainly between Edward Tothill and Gedney Clarke Um, and it tells you, you know what the importance of being a good friend, right?
Like like total serving the ladin’s interests first and then Gedney Clarke interest.
Um And so in, in this is happening at the exact same moment that clark’s relationships with other new englanders are falling apart.
He’s having a couple, he’s having another business argument with the sweat hooper who I referenced and Salem with Edward Brownfield in boston.

[2:04:39] And so what you begin, So this is a turning moment. Edward Gedney Clarke career because he essentially comes to see that maybe New England is not the place where his fortune lies working with new Englanders.
He maintains family connections, of course, he maintains some friend foreign relations, all of those fall apart too with the windows over a business dispute, but he really turns his attention to,
cultivating his London investors like the Lascelles like others and essentially putting money into buying up plantations, uh, and enslaved workers in, in the Guyana’s and in other places.
And so his entire focus kind of switches, uh, he switches focus, um, essentially it moves away from New England as a whole.
And that’s kind of indicative of what’s happened, What’s going to happen in the, you know, the 2030 years before the american revolution is this kind of separation between the West Indies, which had been so close With, uh, with, with British North America.
That separation begins to happen. And this is a great microcosm of that.
Um, and it works out really well for getting Clark. He’s the probably the richest man or one of the two richest men in the British Empire at the time of his death in 1764.

Jake:
[2:05:50] Not a bad gig. If you can get it.
You wrote about how you first encountered Jackson or you re encounter Jackson in this conversation with Old North.
And now your research has led to a lot more of the details about Jackson’s role in human trafficking and enslaving being rediscovered.
An Old North has had to re examine their relationship with, with Jackson.
They’ve taken their his name off their historic chocolate program. They’ve started to reinterpret, uh, or add new interpretation around his his role as a captain in enslaving people.
But you point out that there’s nothing unusual about Jackson.
There’s nothing unusual about this voyage, right up to the moment when the mutiny begins.
What does that tell us about how many similar captains or similar voyages or similar human cargoes would have been out there that aren’t recorded in a trial? A mutiny trial that comes out of them?

Jared:
[2:06:48] It tells us there’s a lot, I mean, and that’s the kind of short answer, right, is that this is one of many types of the these voyages that’s happening.
And not only that, but this was this was something that people did not want to be seen. Like they don’t want this to be seen, they don’t want this to be on display.
Um and so this opens a window on something that’s very common that that’s happening all the time in the 18th century, especially before the American Revolution.
That this is this is fairly commonplace that this this connection between kind of smuggling and slavery.
Uh that it’s totally commonplace and that that we when we think about smuggling,
or we think about slavery that we should also be thinking about the you know, they should be thinking about the other one that these two, these two practices smuggling of slavery are deeply interconnected and interlinked and former cornerstone of the the early american economy.
And and as I say in the book, the kind of rise of of capitalism in America.

Jake:
[2:07:46] And as we think about how central to merchant boston’s identity smuggling was in the decade or so before the american revolution, maybe we should re examine what that means for the connection of boston to slavery as well.

Jared:
[2:07:58] Absolutely.

Jake:
[2:08:00] The book again is mutiny on the Rising Sun by Jared Ross Hardesty Jared. If people want to follow you or learn more about your work online, where should they look for that?

Jared:
[2:08:12] Yeah. So you can find me to places one is my email which you can find on my department just just google my name and it will come up at western Washington University and send me an email or I am on twitter and my twitter handle is at dr Hardisty.

Jake:
[2:08:27] And do you have any book events coming up in the boston area where people can come out meet you learn more about the book in the time around its release.

Jared:
[2:08:35] Yeah, there to virtual events. So I won’t be in Boston itself, but you can hear me talk more about the book.
I’m doing an event on November three, the evening of November three at the old North Church, uh sponsored the research, talking about the book.
And then um, on november 10th at the boston public Library, I’ll be doing A Q and A about the book. A virtual Q and a for the book At six p.m.

Jake:
[2:08:58] And we’ll link to both those in the show notes this week, as well as a purchase link for the book and of course our painting of the sea captains, Carousing and Suriname Dr Jared Ross Hardesty I just want to say, thank you very much for joining us today.

Jared:
[2:09:12] Thanks for having me jake. Great time.

Jake:
[2:09:15] To learn more about dr Hardisty. Captain Jackson are the connections between a secret of chocolate cartel, human trafficking and Old North Church.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 234.
We’ll have a link where you can support the show at the fraction of the purchase price when you buy the book.
I’ll also include information about dr Hardisty Earlier ebooks, links to his author page and twitter profile and information about his two upcoming boston area events.
Plus we’ll include a copy of the painting, sea captains, Carousing and Suriname by john Greenwood which reveals so much about how these men saw themselves and about the open secret of their smuggling concerns in Suriname,
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at club history dot com.
We’re hub history on twitter, facebook and instagram. Or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
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Music

Jake:
[2:10:28] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.