ISBN13: | 9781421449517 |
ISBN10: | 142144951X |
Binding: | Hardback |
No. of pages: | 352 pages |
Size: | 228x152x31 mm |
Weight: | 636 g |
Language: | English |
Illustrations: | 34 Illustrations, black & white; 1 Illustrations, black & white |
693 |
Kidnapped at Sea
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The true story of David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor enslaved on the high seas during the Civil War, whose life story was falsely and intentionally appropriated to advance the Lost Cause trope of a contented slave, happy and safe in servility.
David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor from Lewes, Delaware, was kidnapped by Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate raider Alabama on October 9, 1862, from the Philadelphia-based packet ship Tonawanda. White remained captive on the Alabama for over 600 days, until he drowned during the Battle of Cherbourg on June 19, 1864.
In a best-selling postwar memoir, Semmes falsely described White as a contented slave who remained loyal to the Confederacy. In Kidnapped at Sea, archaeologist Andrew Sillen uses a forensic approach to describe White's enslavement and demise and illustrates how White's actual life belies the Lost Cause narrative his captors sought to construct.
Kidnapped at Sea is the first book to focus on White's actual life, rather than relying on Semmes and other secondary sources. Until now, Semmes's appropriation of White's life has escaped scrutiny, thereby demonstrating the challenges faced by disempowered, illiterate people?and how well-crafted, racist fabrications have become part of Civil War memory.
Author's Note
Preface
Part I: Context
1. David Henry White and the False Cause
2. Time and Place
3. Childhood in Lewes
4. Passenger Cook
5. Manifest Destiny
6. Gulf of Mexico
7. Secession
8. The Alabama
9. Prelude
Part II: Voyage
10. Capture
11. Storms
12. Report
13. Mutiny
14. South to Galveston
15. Port Royal, Olive Jane and the John A. Parks
16. Brazil and the South Atlantic
17. Cape of Good Hope
18. Simon's Town
19. The Indian Ocean
20. The Looming Battle
21. The Battle of Cherbourg
22. Demise
Part III: Aftermath
23. Accounts
24. An Ocean of Lies
25. Aide toi et dieu t'aidera
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibiliography