Unsung History31 Mar 2025

The Enslaved Mariners on the Crews of Brazilian Slave Ships

On the slave ships that sailed between Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and the West Coast of Africa from the 16th through the 19th Centuries, the crews included not just white sailors but also Black mariners, including a significant number of crewmen who were themselves enslaved. These enslaved mariners were not just a source of inexpensive labor but were also valued for their geographic, linguistic, and cultural skills, and they, in turn, could use the opportunity of labor on slave ships as a means of social mobility and eventually legal emancipation, or sometimes the chance for flight. Joining me in this episode to discuss these mariners is Dr. Mary E. Hicks, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Bahia Sunrise,” used under the Envato Market License - Music Standard License. The episode image is “Night Chase of the Brigantine Slaver Windward by HM Steam-Sloop Alecto,” Illustration for The Illustrated London News, by Frederick James Smyth, May 1, 1858; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

“A Brief History of Brazil,” by José Fonseca, The New York Times 2006.
“A Chronology of Brazilian History,” The Atlantic,” February 1956.
“2.3 The African Slave Trade and Slave Life,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
“4.2 Slavery and Abolition in the 19th Century,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
“The Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831-1845,” by Robert Conrad, Hispanic American Historical Review 1 November 1969; 49 (4): 617–638.
“‘We need to tell people everything’: Portugal grapples with legacy of colonial past,” by Sam Jones, Gonçalo Fonseca, and Philip Oltermann, The Guardian, October 5, 2020.

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