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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33.4 (2003) 663-664



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The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina. By David Cecelski (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2001) 304pp. $39.95 cloth $17.95 paper


Despite the recent outpouring of books and articles about slavery, Cecelski's new book on North Carolina's black watermen is the first study of African-American maritime life in any southern state. This situation seems all the more remarkable considering the fact that a majority of North Carolina's slave population (and that of other states as well) lived on or near the water—the Outer Banks, Barrier Islands, Pamlico Sound, and Albemarle Sound—or along the riverways. Yet, The Waterman's Song is not only important because it breaks new ground. It is exceptional in its feeling for time and place, its discussions of the great variety of work performed by slave fishermen and boatmen, its descriptions of the many boats used by slaves (flatboats, barges, scows, cooners, periaugers, dinghies, canoes, schooners, and steamers, among others), and, as the title implies, its suggestion that the water seemed to symbolize freedom.

Indeed, as the author points out, it would be difficult to watch clouds roll in across Pamlico Sound, or see the sun glitter off the waves along the Outer Banks, without pondering things far away. Few slaves were able to translate their dreams of freedom into reality, and escapes to the Promised Land were few and far between. But most black watermen did gain a measure of autonomy. Working as fishermen, boatmen, pilots, sailors, sail makers, seine menders, and nautical tradesmen, they left their owners' plantations and farms for days, occasionally weeks and months. They were also hired out for various periods, and, on occasion, sold their own time and negotiated their own wages.

The volume does not ignore the brutal aspects of the slave system. In 1786, for example, the brig Camden arrived in Edenton harbor with a cargo of eighty West African men who were immediately put to work digging canals around Josiah Collins' land in Washington County near Lake Phelps, now home to Somerset Plantation. Later, Africans dug a [End Page 663] twenty-two mile canal through the Great Dismal Swamp, linking Albemarle Sound, with Norfolk, Virginia. "Canal digging was the cruelest, most dangerous, unhealthy, and exhausting labor in the American South" (109). Overseers hired by canal companies "relied almost exclusively on savage force and violent retribution" (111). Slaves suffered from malnutrition, disease, lack of proper housing, overwork, isolation, and the psychological pain of being torn from their native land.

Even what the author failed to uncover opens the door for new interpretations. Despite a prodigious research effort, Cecelski found no direct evidence of clandestine religious gatherings among slaves. The Waterman's Song is at once groundbreaking, absorbing, and a model for historians.

 



Loren Schweninger
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

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