Guerrero (ship)
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| History | |
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 United States
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| Name: | James Monroe |
| Owner: | Daniel Sullivan, Rennselaer Havens and Frederick Jenkins |
| Port of registry: | New York City |
| Builder: | Amasa Miller, New London, Connecticut |
| Launched: | 1813 |
| Status: | Privateer in War of 1812 |
 Spain
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| Renamed: | San Jose |
| Status: | slave runner/pirate |
| Renamed: | Pepe 1826 |
| Status: | slave runner/pirate |
| Renamed: | Guerrero 1827 |
| Status: | slave runner/pirate |
| Fate: | Wrecked in 1827 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | hermaphrodite brig |
| Tons burthen: | 323 38/95 |
| Length: | 110 ft 2 in (33.58 m) |
| Beam: | 27 ft 5 in (8.36 m) |
| Draft: | 11 ft 11 1⁄2 in (3.645 m) |
| Complement: |
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| Armament: |
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Guerrero was a Spanish slave ship which wrecked in 1827 on a reef near the Florida Keys with 561 Africans aboard. Forty-one of the Africans drowned in the wreck. Guerrero had been engaged in a battle with a British anti-slavery patrol ship, HMS Nimble, stationed on the northern approaches to Cuba. Nimble also ran onto the reef, but was refloated and returned to service. The two ships were attended by wreckers, who rescued the Spanish crew and surviving Africans from their ship and helped refloat Nimble. Spanish crew members hijacked two of the wrecking vessels and took almost 400 Africans to Cuba, where they were sold as slaves. Most of the remaining Africans were eventually returned to Africa.
The history of the ship is unclear. Because the slave trade to Cuba was illegal in the 1820s, ships that successfully delivered a cargo of slaves from Africa to Cuba were often destroyed or registered under a new name to avoid confiscation by the Spanish authorities. The British Consul in Santiago, Cape Verde reported in 1827 that the ship then known as Guerrero was the former James Monroe, which was launched in 1813 in New London, Connecticut, and had served as a privateer during the War of 1812. James Monroe made two trading voyages to France during the war, capturing a total of six British ships on those voyages. It made at least two more crossings to France after the end the war. Its later history is unclear, in part because a number of American ships were named for James Monroe after he became President of the United States in 1817.
The ship known in 1827 as Guerrero was heavily armed. She carried four long brass 12-pounder guns and ten iron 12-pounders, and carried a crew of 90 or more men. Such large, well-armed slave ships often engaged in piracy, robbing smaller ships of their cargoes, including slaves. Prior to 1826 the ship was known as San Jose. In June 1826 a brig then known as Pepe, likely the ship later known as Guerrero, sailed from Havana for Africa. A few days later a "Spanish" brig stopped and robbed a sloop on its way from Bermuda to Norfolk, Virginia. Late in July what probably was the same brig robbed two American ships anchored at Cape Mesurado in Liberia. Two British warships were dispatched to catch the pirate ship, now identified as Pepe. The British ships caught up to Pepe, but it managed to escape during a heavy rainstorm. Pepe loaded about 600 Africans at Gallinas (near the border between present day Sierra Leone and Liberia) and delivered about 570 of them to Cuba late in the year.
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Wikipedia