To the king of Port Dauphin

Dear Abraham,

I write to you in reverence and humbleness, as I am quite impressed by you. You have garnered much notoriety amongst fugitive slaves for your anomalous achievement.

I would first like to introduce myself - I am Cuffy, alias Billy Farrell, a former slave of Richard Swan of Philadelphia. I abhor the life of a slave, and have attempted escape twice - the first was unsuccessful, and the second, well I am writing to you now so at the moment I am safe, but as you very well know, the life of a fugitive slave is precarious, to say the least.

We have heard murmurs of your achievements here in the mid-Atlantic region. Our White owners are appalled and afeared of you, and us Black slaves, and even some indentured servants, are inspired and impelled to turn to a life of seafaring because of you.

The freedom of the sea is so attractive to many of us fugitive slaves, but for me, I believe the life of a pirate is more suited for me. Whereas I may enjoy the limited freedom of embarking on a seafaring voyage to skirt the horrors of slavery for a set number of years, the life of a pirate is the most intensely attractive for me. Our lives are short. We are worked to the bone, suffer miserably, and are denied the basic rights of humanity, amongst other horrors - all of which lend themselves to a short life for a slave. Therefore, I want to be able to live my life the way I choose to lead it, even if it ends in a violent and bloody death. I cannot believe that a fellow runaway West Indian slave achieved the ranks of quarter master on a pirate ship and became the King of Port Dauphin on Madagascar. What I wouldn't give to have slaves, wives, and trading profits at my disposal! You truly are an inspiration.

The life of a pirate appeals to me also because of the relatively color blind aspect of it all. While I am a mulatto, with the blood of a terrible White master running through and poisoning my veins, allowing me to pass as a White man, I believe that the pirate life is the only way of life that allows me to actually achieve my innate potential - which can only be realized amongst fellow men of color. I can only hope that my cleverness, my cunning, and my knack for outsmarting unassuming White men could lend itself to me achieving half as much as you have.

I want freedom, I want notoriety, I want to thrive as a person out of the confines of the shackles of slavery. Therefore, the seafaring life is the only one for me. If this letter ever reaches you, I can only hope that you could put a kind word in for a fellow brother, and I hope to meet you someday on the shores of Madagascar.

With admiration,

Cuffy

QUESTIONS

(1) The concept of seafaring is discussed in detail in "Black Sailors in Plantation America" and briefly discussed in "Reading the Runaways." Do you think that seafaring as appealing to a mulatto, or someone capable of passing as white, as it was for someone who could not?