Enterprise (slave ship)

The Enterprise was a United States merchant vessel active in the coastwise slave trade in the early 19th century along the Atlantic Coast. Bad weather forced it into Hamilton, Bermuda waters on February 11, 1835 while it carried 78 slaves in addition to other cargo. It became the centre of a minor international incident when the British authorities freed nearly all the slaves. Britain had abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies effective 1834. At that time it advised "foreign nations that any slavers found in Bermuda [and the Bahamas] waters would be subject to arrest and seizure. Their cargoes were liable to forfeiture" without compensation.

Bermuda customs officers called a gunboat and Royal Navy forces to detain the Enterprise ship so that the slaves could be freed. Richard Tucker of the local Friendly Society served the captain with a writ of habeas corpus, ordering him to deliver the slaves to the Bermuda Supreme Court so they could speak as to their choice of gaining freedom in the colony or returning with the ship to slavery in the United States. The court met from 9 p.m. to midnight on February 18, and the Chief Justice interviewed each slave. Seventy-two of the seventy-eight slaves from the Enterprise chose to stay in Bermuda and gain freedom.

The freeing of the slaves from Enterprise was one of several similar incidents from 1830 to 1842: officials in Bermuda and the Bahamas freed a total of nearly 450 slaves from United States ships in the domestic trade, after the ships had been wrecked in their waters or entered their ports for other reasons. United States owners kept pressing the government for claims for their losses. In the 1853 Treaty of Claims, the US and Britain agreed to settle a variety of claims dating to 1814, including those for slaves freed after 1834. This was ultimately settled by arbitration in 1855, establishing a payment of $270,700 against the US Government, due British subjects, and $329,000 against the British Government, due to American citizens. Ultimately some insurance companies were paid for the loss of property of the slaves.

Both the United States and Great Britain had banned the international slave trade since 1807, and both operated sailing patrols off Africa (Britain's West Africa Squadron) and in the Caribbean to intercept illegal vessels and suppress the trade. The United States in its legislation preserved the right to operate ships for its domestic coastwise slave trade among various markets along the East and Gulf coasts, which became increasingly important as the Deep South rapidly developed cotton cultivation. With labor demand at a height, in the antebellum years, nearly a million enslaved African Americans were moved to the Deep South in a forced migration, two-thirds through the domestic slave trade. New Orleans had the largest slave market and its port was important for the slave trade and related businesses.

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