Historical Lessons Learned from My WIP

The history of the West Indies in the Age of Sail is steeped in exploitation, greed, piracy, colonialism, and slavery. The Spanish, English, French, and the Dutch were all involved in extracting heavy quantities of treasure from the Caribbean lands. In countless movies, books, and popular culture references, life in the Caribbean during the Age of Sail has become romanticized and popular to replicate. Yet many of the stories of this time and place have yet to be told. During the colonial time, millions of people from the continent of Africa were shipped directly to the West Indies to labor as slaves. They worked hand in hand with Irish and other European indentured servants and slaves. Yet, even though there were much fewer European slaves and indentured servants than those taken from Africa, you might still find true and fictional stories based on their experience; such as the fictional Captain Blood. But I was hard pressed in my research to learn about many individual African persons, stories, or experiences. What were the dreams and desires of these people? How did some of them break away from the chains of slavery to a life on a pirate ship? To represent this gap that still remains in our popular culture, I was inspired to write my current WIP. I’m 1/3 of the way in and there’s so much I’m learning just by writing a fantastical historic tale. One of those lessons include the story of the Black Bermudians who became expert shipwrights, blacksmiths, and joiners. These enslaved people were responsible for building fleets of schooners and sloops that were used extensively throughout the Age of Sail and afterwards. Not only did they build ships, but because of the fear of their numbers on Bermuda, many of these men were mandated to serve on the crews of every Bermudian vessel. Wow. How many of these men served on merchant ships and privateers? How many of those ships were taken over by pirates? How many of these men found themselves serving on pirate ships…finding freedom through one of the most brutal organizations in world history…the Brotherhood.