For 3 1/2 hours, the slave ship Cora ducked the Navy guns and raced from the big American warship. Crew members tossed hatch covers, casks and spars overboard in a desperate bid to lighten their ship. They prayed nightfall would conceal their escape.

But at 11 p.m., when the USS Constellation loomed suddenly out of the mouth of the Congo River, the Cora gave up. In a recently discovered memoir, a member of the Constellation's boarding party recalled what happened next.

"Before we could get the hatches open we could smell [the captives] -- 705 on board," sailor William H. French said of that night, Sept. 25, 1860.

"Naked and half starved, they came swarming up through the hatches. They ran forward and crouched in the bow like so many animals. Some were scabbed with scurvy, and others filth. Oh, awful. I hope I shall never live to see such another sight."

The Constellation's service as flagship of the U.S. Navy's African Squadron was the most dramatic and important military action the vessel ever saw. From 1859 to 1861, the squadron rescued more than 3,700 slaves, arrested their captors and seized a dozen slave ships.

Until now, the public has known little to nothing about that record. But French's memoir, together with logs, journals and letters found by The Sun in the National Archives in Washington, have filled out this nearly forgotten chapter in the ship's history -- and the nation's.

"Race, and the relationship between the races, is clearly the defining issue of modern American society," says Louis F. Linden, former executive director of the Constellation Foundation. "And the story of the Constellation is to a large extent the story of how that relationship began."

The foundation is restoring the ship at the Fort McHenry %J Shipyard,at a cost of $6 million in public funds and $3 million in private donations. Its staff is also assembling memoirs (such as the one provided by French's great-granddaughter), artifacts and documents to clarify decades of confusion about the ship's history and finally tell the true story of the Constellation and the people whose lives it touched.

'You have to tell the story'

Linden and others argue that the ship is more than a naval artifact; the Constellation's distinguished service in fighting the slave trade -- and that of its crew, both black and white -- should be of particular interest to black Americans.

Louis Fields, executive director of the Baltimore African-American Tourism Council, agrees.

"By increasing awareness of the contribution of African-Americans and Africans to the abolition of the slave trade, and the building of these ships," he says, "the Constellation would be a very historic point of interest, not just for African-Americans, but anybody who comes to Baltimore. But you have to tell the story."

The Constellation sailed for Africa in July 1859. A sloop of war, it was built at Virginia's Gosport Navy Yard in 1854 to replace the old frigate Constellation, scrapped a year earlier. The new ship was the last the Navy built without a steam engine for auxiliary power.

On board was the squadron's new commodore, William Inman, an aging, irritable veteran of the War of 1812. The Constellation's captain was John Nicholas. Linden believes the crew of 315 included many black sailors.

Although slavery remained legal in many states, Congress outlawed the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808. The British banned it in 1833. High profits, however, encouraged continued smuggling of slaves from Africa to parts of South America, the Caribbean and the southern United States.

Accomplished little

In 1842, the United States and Britain committed naval forces to seize slave ships and confiscate their human cargoes. For years, however, the U.S. squadron accomplished little.

Compared with the British, American warships were too few, too slow and too seldom on patrol. And Congress would not permit the British to search U.S.-flag vessels.

But by 1859, the United States recognized that it needed steam power to catch the speedy Baltimore-built clippers that slavers and their New York financiers increasingly favored. (The Pride of Baltimore is a replica of an 1812 clipper, built for privateering.)

So at least four of the seven ships arriving off Africa in 1859 had steam. Their supply base was moved closer to the Congo slave markets, and the ships were ordered to patrol aggressively.

Prize money

The crew had a financial incentive: They shared a federal bounty for each ship they caught. French said the government also paid $25 for each slave they intercepted. He boasted of "quite a little nest egg" when he quit the Navy.

"We went to Liberia first," French recalled in his memoir, a 1924 newspaper interview preserved by his great-granddaughter, Beverly M. Martinoli of Oxford, Conn.

At Monrovia, Liberia's capital, the Constellation hired 35 men of the coastal Kru tribe. The "Kroomen" as they were called, were skilled sailors and linguists. They also did the squadron's heavy labor -- rowing supplies from shore in the tropical heat. "No white man could have stood that killing work," French said.

Edward B. Latch, a Pennsylvanian on board the warship Sumpter, wrote that the Kru were distinguished by "tattoo work in the shape of a triangle on each temple, next a straight line commencing at the top of the forehead and extending nearly to (( the end of the nose. Their front teeth are filed apart reminding one of a saw."

The Constellation's crew list for that autumn reveals the Kroomen were given whimsical English names, such as Jack Half Dollar, Jack After Supper and Frying Pan.

French said the squadron then sailed for its headquarters at Loango, a coastal settlement near Pointe-Noire, in what is now the Republic of the Congo.

The slavers, he said, "had agents ashore who kept them posted on our whereabouts by code signals. We could see their signals flashing at night."

"They had big buildings in the interior, something like barracks, and these usually were full of natives in charge of drivers armed with long black snake whips.

"They got them for something like $25 a head delivered, while the slave runners averaged about $800 a head for them in the Southern slave markets."

Spot sails

At 5 p.m. Dec. 20, 1859, the Constellation's lookouts spotted sails 12 miles off and gave chase. It was 3 the next morning before the brigantine Delicia finally surrendered off Cabinda, an enclave north of the Congo.

The Constellation's captain told Inman that the Delicia's captain was at Pointe-Noire "with a large sum of money for purchasing slaves." The Delicia's mate had instructions "to keep off the Coast five degrees for 25 days; he was then to approach the coast at Loango where the slaves were to be shipped. He was in the act of approaching Loango when I discovered him," Nicholas said.

A "prize crew" from the Constellation boarded the Delicia and sailed it back to the States.

Other ships in the squadron nabbed three slave ships from New York: 997 slaves were found aboard the Erie, and 750 on the Bonito, according to the squadron's letters. Another account lists 673 slaves seized from the Storm King -- 180 women, 164 men, 68 girls and 261 boys.

All slaves rescued by U.S. warships were taken to Monrovia. In a letter to U.S.-born Liberian President Stephen A. Benson, Inman said: "Humanity forbids the idea of sending such slaves across the ocean to a country remote from their own with the inevitable loss of life attending the voyage."

But Liberia was still 1,700 miles from their homes in the Congo. Established by Americans in 1822 as a colony for freed slaves, and independent since 1847, Liberia was inhabited by black Americans and indigenous people.

Apprentice for 6 to 9 years

Benson accepted the captives. "Liberia is an asylum for the African race," he explained. They "will be fed, clothed, nursed and schooled for and during the term of one year." Then they would be apprenticed for six to nine years "to responsible persons, who will be bound to teach them useful trades."

French said slaves rescued by the British were taken to the West Indies, where they "put in a certain term of years on plantations before they were liberated. The British made a profit from it which, while it was questionable, more than paid for the cost of maintaining a fleet on the 'Slave Coast.' "

In the federal courts, slave runners fared far better. Historian Christopher Lloyd identified 60 slave runners arrested between 1852 and 1862. Not one was convicted. They were acquitted, jumped bail, or saw their cases thrown out on technicalities.

"Where they made hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single cargo of slaves," French said, "they could well afford the loss of an occasional vessel and the forfeiture of the captain's bond. Usually, they bought another vessel and went right back slaving."

The Cora, for example, had been seized in New York on suspicion of preparing for a slave voyage. But less than six weeks later, in June 1860, it was back at sea.

Morgan Frederick, the first officer, stated after his capture that the Cora sailed for Africa "upon a voyage represented to me to be legal." It arrived Aug. 27, 1860, near the Congo River and lingered there a month.

Then, on Sept. 24, the Cora "took on board 705 African slaves," Frederick said.

The next evening, the Cora was spotted by the Constellation's lookout. French said Inman "climbed into the rigging to have a look at her and I heard him declare, 'She's a slaver all right.'

"He got up the carpenter to spruce up the rigging. Once in a while we'd fire a shot, but that didn't scare them any, because we didn't try to hit them."

Inman guessed that the Cora would turn and run downwind under cover of darkness. Its captain would expect the Constellation to stay on course during the night and sail out of sight by dawn. Anticipating the ruse, Inman ordered Nicholas to turn downwind.

It worked. At 11 p.m., the Cora was nearly run down. "Our jib was almost in her rigging when the lookout shouted a warning," French said. After boarding, French and his mates tried to relieve the captives' misery.

'Nearly starved'

"It was a fearful job, cleaning and doctoring those natives. They were nearly starved, but they responded to treatment. And after keeping them awhile we landed them in Monrovia," French said.

Marine Lt. Benjamin T. Loyall inventoried the slave deck: "There are of men 175; boys, 320 (small and large); women, young girls & babies, 199; in all, 694. Her hold is well stowed with beans and water. On her slave deck are about 15 tierces of rice in good condition." A tierce is 42 gallons.

Three officers and the cabin boy were sent to face justice in the United States. Twenty-one others, claiming European citizenship, were put ashore in Africa. A prize crew took the Cora first to Monrovia, with orders to provide the Africans with "as much pure air as possible."

In all, Inman said, the U.S. squadron rescued 3,754 slaves during the Constellation's 22 months on station -- nearly half the total seized since 1850.

The Constellation's last capture, on May 21, 1861, was the slave brig Triton, out of Charleston, S.C., with no slaves aboard. A month earlier, Southern forces had fired on Charleston's Fort Sumter, igniting the Civil War. By seizing the Triton, the Constellation had unwittingly made the war's first naval capture.

With a war raging, and fever and scurvy plaguing its crew, the African Squadron was ordered home in August 1861. The Constellation would spend the war in fruitless pursuit of speedier Confederate raiders and blockade runners.

In June 1862, President Abraham Lincoln cracked down on the slave trade, allowing Britain's African Squadron to search American shipping. No longer able to claim the protection of the U.S. flag, Americans left the West African slave trade, bringing it nearly to a halt.

In New York, the federal courts in 1862 produced their first convictions for slave trading, and the first American ever to face the death penalty for slave trafficking was hanged.

Pub Date: 7/12/98