Engel Sluiter’s ‘New Light on the “20. And Odd Negroes” Arriving in Virginia, August 1619’

Ever since the publication In April, 1997 of Engel Sluiter’s very brief article in The William and Mary Quarterly, it has been taken as highly probable that the two English privateering vessels that apparently seized about 60 slaves from the Portuguese vessel, the Sao Joao Bautista, in the Bay of Campeche in the summer of 1619 were those responsible for landing some of their captives at Point Comfort in Virginia at the end of August in that year and the rest, subsequently, in Bermuda. A small historiographical enterprise has since grown up tracing the origins of these people to the African Congo. That they were taken from the Portuguese vessel by force has been regarded as axiomatic.

There are, however, a number of problems with this view. One obvious issue concerns the voyage of the Portuguese vessel after its encounter with the alleged English privateers. The passages quoted by Engel Sluiter from the Spanish archives offer two differing accounts. The first taken from Contaduria 883, Archivo de Indias (AGI), Sevilla indicates that:

Enter on the credit side the receipt of 8,657.875 pesos paid by
Manuel Mendes de Acunha, master of the ship San Juan Bautista,
on 147 slave pieces brought by him into the said port on August
30, i6i9, aboard the frigate Santa Ana, master Rodrigo Escobar.
On the voyage inbound, Mendes de Acunha was robbed at sea off
the coast of Campeche by English corsairs. Out of 350 slaves, large
and small, he loaded in said Loanda (200 under a license issued to
him in Sevilla and the rest to be declared later) the English cor-
sairs left him with only 147, including 24 slave boys he was forced
to sell in Jamaica, where he had to refresh, for he had many sick
aboard, and many had already died.

This quotation appears, prima facie, to indicate that, after the encounter with the English vessels, de Acunha sailed his ship to Jamaica - which is much further away from Campeche than Vera Cruz was - where he took on stores and sold 24 captive boys. He, his sailors and captives must have been picked up later by the frigate that conveyed them to Vera Cruz.

The second original source cited by Engel Sluiter from Indiferente General 2795. AGI suggests a different course was followed:
there is a "Relacion" confirming the above entry in the account book, stating that Mendes de Acunha was "robbed by corsairs on the coast of Campeche, and from there the civil authorities transported them [the I47 blacks, to Vera Cruz] on the frigate, master Rodrigo Descobar, who entered the said port on August 30, i6i9."

If this account is correct. De Acunha plus his crew and its human cargo must have sought refuge on the coast somewhere near Ampeche and then been transported to the port of Vera Cruz.

Both accounts cannot be simultaneously accurate. It is just possible that neither was entirely true. Might de Acunha have sold some of his captives to the English privateers? I ask the question but do not try to answer it.

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