Newport, an Enslaved Man
Among the enslaved people transported from Rhode Island to the Bay of Honduras was a young African man named Newport, originally “from the Gold Coast Country.” Captain Oliver Warner enslaved Newport, but hired him out to William Cahoone for the latter’s logging crew. After Cahoone’s death in 1768, Newport cut mahogany for himself, got married, and essentially lived as if he were free beyond the reach of his enslaver back in Rhode Island. Jonathan Card inherited Cahoone’s mahogany works and enslaved laborers, including the lease for the enslaved woodcutter Newport. In 1770, Warner ordered Jonathan’s brother James Card to retrieve Newport along with a cargo of mahogany. Soon the Card brothers ran into conflict with Warner and each other, when Newport was nowhere to be found. Captain James Card wrote to Warner, “[I found] by sum Negroes where his Wife Lived, but Can’t Come at him … I believe it will not Be in my power to Git him.” As their letters reveal, Newport apparently managed to evade them and remained free with his wife in the Bay of Honduras.
The document, signed by William Cahoone in 1762, certifies that “a Negro man named Newport of the Gold Coast country aged about twenty-five years or thereabouts and now is in the possession of my Attorney on the Mosquito shore & hath been in my possession” since 1759, and “hath been solely employed in my service.”
Sailing orders, like this 1770 document addressed to Captain James Card from the ship’s owner Oliver Warner, detailed a shipmaster’s responsibilities for the voyage. It reads, in part:
“While you remain at the Shore you are to make enquiry for a negro man of mine named Newport, a proof of his being my property you have with this under Mr. Cahoone’s hand writing; whom when you get knowledge of you are to take on board and bring home with you; but if you should find that while you remain there, he secretes himself so that you cannot obtain him, you are then to offer him where ever he may be for sale for £100 Jamaica Currency Cash, or something less, & take in payment any produce of the Mosquito Shore that may be to my advantage.”