Antelope (slave ship)

Antelope was a slave ship with more than 280 captive Africans aboard captured by the United States in 1820. It had been legally engaged in the African slave trade under the flag of Spain when it was taken over by a privateer at Cabinda. The legal case on the fate of the captured Africans, known as The Antelope, lasted for seven years, with some of the Africans being turned over as slaves to Spanish owners, while 120 were sent as free people to Liberia. Both the commandeering of the boat, as well as the ensuing trial, are the subject of the book Dark Places of the Earth, by Jonathan M. Bryant.

The importation of slaves into the United States became illegal in 1808, under the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. That act did not include any effective penalties for violation, and did not specify what was to be done with illegally imported slaves. In practice, each state auctioned off such slaves and kept the proceeds. In 1819 the Act in Addition to the acts prohibiting the slave trade gave the President authority to use U.S. Navy and other armed ships to capture slave ships, and to see to the "safe-keeping, support and removal beyond the United States" of any Africans found on captured slave ships.

Antelope was a ship of a little more than 112 tons burthen built in Freeport, Maine in 1802. In 1809 she was sold to a foreign owner, and in 1819 she passed to a Spanish owner in Cadiz, who renamed her Fenix. The new owner of Antelope was licensed in August 1819 by the Spanish government of Cuba to trade for new slaves from Africa. In early March 1820 Antelope was at Cabinda loading African slaves when a privateer flying the flag of an unspecified Latin American republic (several of which were then rebelling against Spanish rule) accosted Antelope and seized goods and supplies and the best of the slaves from the ship. After the privateer left, Antelope resumed loading slaves.

A hermaphrodite brig of a little less than 200 tons burthen named Baltimore, under the flag of the Venezuelan revolutionary Luis Brión, arrived in Baltimore in 1819. In December 1819 the ship, now named Columbia, sailed from Baltimore under a letter of marque issued by the Uruguayan revolutionary José Gervasio Artigas. The crew of Columbia had all sworn that they were not citizens of the United States, but a Revenue-Marine cutter removed four of the crewmen as U.S. citizens before escorting the ship out to sea. Once at sea the ship's name was changed to Arraganta.

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