Shedding Light On Forgotten Dimensions Of The Underground Railroad

BREWSTER – At the Brewster Historical Society’s annual meeting last Saturday, guests heard about little-known aspects of the Underground Railroad, some of which hit close to home. 

This talk was led by Dr. Timothy D. Walker, an expert on nautical components of the underground railroad whose work entirely reframes the way people think of the ways people escaped from southern slavery. Walker, along with nine fellow historians of vastly varying backgrounds, produced the book “Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad.” 

“We all grew up thinking of the underground railroad as a land-based thing…but I want to push back,” said Walker. The underground railroad many learn about in school, a long, overland trek spanning hundreds of miles from the deep south all the way to Canada, is a false representation.

It was incredibly difficult for escapees to travel by land, even locally, due to law enforcement interference and other obstacles. “The overwhelming majority of cases of people escaping through the underground railroad over land…began with just a couple of days' walk to a free state,” said Walker. “People were not escaping over hundreds of miles on land from the deep south.” 

But enslaved people certainly escaped from the deep south. So how did they achieve this? Many traveled by sea. Enslaved individuals escaping from these states would try to get aboard a ship bound north, destined for a free port. However, as Walker said, “Only a certain number of people had that opportunity, the people who worked in or lived near the ports.” 

 Due to the speed of maritime travel, the legal neutrality of international waters, and the number of ships making routine passage from the south back north in the golden age of maritime travel, this was arguably the most effective and successful form of escape.

Slave states realized the number of people escaping this way and instituted laws so extreme they even dissuaded captains from enlisting freed Black crewmembers. However, the persistence of the human spirit is indomitable, and countless individuals were saved this way until the end of the Civil War. 

Given that the transportation of escaped slaves was a clandestine operation, very limited documentation exists of the majority of these voyages, and, according to Walker, “as the maritime industry fell out of fashion, maritime history fell out of common knowledge.” It is this phenomenon that allowed this aspect of the underground railroad to fall out of history books, until now. 

Through the study of newspapers, shipping logs, art, magazines, and more, Walker and his colleagues uncovered the stories of numerous individuals who found their freedom through the sea, spreading their stories of perseverance, sacrifice, and bravery. 

Many of the people escaping through a nautical route were skilled in maritime industries. These talents secured them jobs in free ports, such as New Bedford or on Nantucket, where the whaling industry was at its peak. Walker emphasizes the importance of whaling logs in the unearthing of this passage of history, as it proves that in whaling hubs there were high concentrations of southern-born Black crew members. This trend was so prevalent that New Bedford had the most concentrated African American population of any city in the Union, including iconic individuals such as renowned abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass and inventor and whaler Lewis Temple. 

This new understanding of a long-forgotten aspect of the African American experience makes it possible to expand the contextual lens with which we view our national history, he said.