The Amistad Sails Again

By Jeffrey Kluger

It's probably best not to think about the flock of satellites that will help guide the great sailing ship being built in Mystic, Conn. Construct a 19th century boat according to 19th century plans, equip it with 5,200 sq. ft. of 19th century-style sails, and you'd like to think its crew will be steering by the stars, not by some 21st century machines flying high overhead.

But the big wooden ship will indeed get an occasional hand from satellites--as well as from twin diesel engines and onboard radios. Yet for all these nods to the modern era, the 129-ft., twin-masted boat is a decidedly vintage vessel, and one with a decidedly historic name: Amistad.

For the past two years, shipwrights at the Mystic Seaport have been busily hammering together a $3.1 million re-creation of the Amistad, an otherwise unremarkable schooner that figured in a remarkable page in American history. In 1839 the ship was making a slave run in Cuban waters when the 53 kidnapped Africans it was carrying rose up in revolt. The mutiny was ultimately put down when the remaining crew secretly steered the boat to Montauk, N.Y., and the Africans were taken into custody. They eventually went free when the U.S. Supreme Court declared their enslavement illegal. More than a century and a half later, director Steven Spielberg told the tale on film--modern America's equivalent of a marble monument to the event.

Even before Spielberg's Amistad hit the screen, however, Mystic's Amistad was in the works. The ship had long been the stuff of maritime legend, and the folks at the Mystic Seaport--who maintain and exhibit more than 500 historic vessels--figured there was no better way to honor the Amistad story than to build the ship anew. On March 25, the reborn boat will at last be launched. Says Quentin Snediker, the project's coordinator: "This vessel will be part ship and part floating museum."

The boat that took two years to build took two dozen years to plan. The idea of re-creating the Amistad was first floated by Warren Marr, former editor of the N.A.A.C.P.'s national magazine, during the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations. That summer, harbors around the U.S. were bobbing with tall ships participating in Operation Sail, and Marr couldn't help noticing the underrepresentation of African Americans in the event. Rebuilding the Amistad, he figured, might be just the way to remedy that.

For more than 14 years, Marr worked to stir up interest--and find the financing--to get the project going. In 1990 he at last approached the Mystic Seaport for help; by 1998 a combination of state money and corporate donations allowed building to begin. "He found very interested ears when he came here," Snediker says.

Since construction of the Amistad got under way, more than 170 blacksmiths, sailmakers and carpenters have worked on the ship, often using such traditional tools as sharp chisels and broad axes. Of these laborers, only 28 have been full-time professional shipwrights. The rest have been students, volunteers and part-timers from as far away as Milan and Liverpool. The work has taken more than twice as long as it took to build the original. One reason: today's shipbuilders don't keep the sweatshop hours common among the workers on the original Amistad. Another reason is that the first Amistad, like many boats of the era, was intended to sail for no more than 10 years before being scuttled for scrap. "Our new ship is built to last decades," says Snediker.

As the ship is eased into the water this week, it will break a ceremonial chain, while its bell peals 53 times--once for each African. The ship is to be christened not with champagne but with a mixture of waters drawn from Connecticut, Cuba and Sierra Leone, the home of the kidnapped Africans. The Amistad's first stop after it leaves Mystic in July will be Operation Sail 2000 in New York harbor on July 4. Once that coming-out party is done, it will tack off into coastal waters, sailing from ports in the U.S. and perhaps Cuba and Sierra Leone to carry the tale of the long-ago ship in whose memory it was built. After 161 years, the Amistad name may at last be redeemed.