THE RETURN SLAVE TRADE IN DUMBO (1889)
Back in the 19th century, newspapers knew how to tell a good yarn. And who better to get their material from than sailors who were known for spinning a few of their own. So, in 1889, when reporters heard a rumor about a ship filled with escaped snakes and monkeys, many of the former making meals of many of the latter, they raced down to the shipyards to see what stories they could find. THE CLIPPER SHIP MONROVIA AT THE EMPIRE STORES Docked down at the Empire Stores, a chain of huge coffee warehouses strategically built near the Fulton shipyard docks – in what is today known as DUMBO – was a relatively new, 3-masted clipper bark, the Monrovia. The Monrovia’s original purpose was the Liberian trade, but as all shipping companies had to make up for costs in any way they could, they usually took on a trade in passengers. The clippers’s trade route was New York to Liberia, though, so there were few passenger sources other than missionaries – until they learned of the groups hoping to repatriate former slaves. In this case, at the request of the American Colonization Society, the Monrovia had been transferring black emigrants, many of them former slaves, back to their African homeland. OUT OF AFRICA On the date of her return to New York, the Monrovia was transporting in her holds palm oil, ginger, palm nuts, cattle hides, canewood, and coffee, the last of which, in particular, caused her to dock at […]
