Jenni Ockelmann - assignment 2

Dear Charles Roberts,

We do not know each other, but I see from your former master's advertisements that you are a runaway slave, searching for some place where you can be free in a way you currently are not. I write, not so much to encourage you to adopt a lifestyle such as mine, but to inform you of what I have learned in my years as something similar to what you currently are – neither wholly enslaved nor wholly free. I am a sailor, and though I am also a slave, I spend my daily life much freer than many free black men who live in fear of capture on land.

The life of a sailor, and particularly of a black sailor, is not necessarily something to be envied. It is difficult work, and you will face many challenges that you would face were you to live as a free man at shore – you will be treated poorly for your color, beaten, given the worst jobs and the least rations. You may encounter pirates and the accompanying temptation to join them. It will be alternately bleak, dull and dangerous.

And yet despite all of this, despite the differential treatment among shipmates and unfairness of jobs, you will in some ways be just one of many sailors on board the ship on any given day. You will, along with white shipmates, be told what to do and how and when to do it, but you will not be subject to the physical and intellectual chains that you encounter on land. You will see new places and people, and you will freely exchange ideas among the communities you visit. You have already re-fashioned yourself as a free black after your escape from your master, and at sea you can again take on a new identity, this time as a sailor among many others. You may even become skilled as a seaman as you became skilled as a printer, thus once again outwitting the system and attaining a status – as a skilled member of society with a valuable and useful skill – that remaining on land could not afford you.

With these words, I simply inform you of your possibilities should you choose to join the ranks of Africans at sea. Though you will be a slave to your captain and to the sea, it is an enslavement that you may find comes with enough freedom and bodily liberty to make it worth the while.

Best,
Briton Hammon

Questions:
1.In Black Jacks, Bolster discusses that the prevailing social system continued to relegate black sailors to lower or “stereotypical” positions such as captain's servant, cook, or musician, but he also says that some blacks achieved the status of officer, while others gained some authority through their various skills and positions. How did these blacks challenge the social system set in place by whites, and what were white sailors' reactions to blacks who gained authority on board?
2.Runaway slaves and sailors both sometimes utilized specific skills to increase their viability as a free or somewhat free person at land and sea. In what ways did these particular skills – runaways use of skills such as wig making, writing, and reading to achieve their escape, and sailors use of skills to maintain a position on a ship – change the ways in which African Americans and whites viewed skilled and unskilled blacks?