Update on Alexander Hudgins

I mentioned the Slave Wrecks Project in my last post, Reshaping the Narrative: Alexander R. Hudgins. After posting, I decided to take a stab at contacting someone with the Project to see if they might have heard of the Brig Ann. I was delighted to hear back from Steve Lubkemann the very next morning! He and an associate filled out the story.

"Quelimane was the largest source of slaves from Mozambique (then Portuguese East Africa) because it was at the mouth of the Zambezi river," said Steve, "in essence a highway into the deep interior where most of the enslaving took place." He explained that maritime archaeology is not done in the waters off of Quelimane itself because the Zambezi delta is a very challenging dive location with treacherous water, bull sharks, and 20 foot long crocs! They dive in other locations on the coast such as Mozambique Island, Inhambane,and Maputo (Delagoa Bay), and have folks involved in various levels of archival work on the whole coast. 

Steve put me in touch with Kate McMahon, an archivist at NMAAHC who has insight into a variety of lines of the project research. And yes indeed, the Brig Ann is in her database of American slave ships operating in Brazil. According to Kate, during the 1840s, a man named George William Gordon of Massachusetts was the consul at Rio de Janeiro. Gordon was an abolitionist whig who called out Americans participating in the illegal foreign slave trade. He watched and created lists of these American ships, slave traders, and the merchant firms that consigned them in Rio, as well as information about the captains and crews. 

Kate found the Brig Ann in Gordon's list: “To Africa yr ending 12/31/1842” and “arrivals at Rio year ending 12/31/1843”. The Ann actually departed Rio on November 24, 1842 under the consignment of the American merchant firm Maxwell, Wright & Co., for the merchant Manoel Pinto da Fonseca. He was the most active and wealthiest slave trader in Rio and, in fact, all of Brazil. This fact alone means that the Brig Ann was almost certainly a slave ship. "He essentially had almost a monopoly on the illegal slave trade to Mozambique during the 1840s, and was hiring dozens of American vessels per year to transport tens of thousands of enslaved people to his plantation and auction facility in Ponta do Caju, southwest of Rio," said Kate. "Fonseca’s only businesses were slave trading and sugar production using enslaved labor."

But did the ship wreck? Looking at the dates, probably not. "It appears the Ann did not wreck during this trip to Mozambique and successfully landed a cargo of enslaved people in Brazil in July 1843, if this is the same vessel, which given the timing seems very likely." Kate thinks that Uncle Alexander was a crew member and a regular sailor, not an officer, given his age. He must have died "At Quilliman" in Mozambique, like the death announcement says. I was wrong to assume a ship wreck. "During this time, there were massive outbreaks of yellow fever ravaging different parts of Africa and Brazil, directly tied to the transmission of diseases by slave ships," said Kate. So this may have been the cause of death.

Kate adds another important, albeit sad, note. "If your ancestor was a regular sailor, he may not have even known that the journey was a slave journey." She said crews were not often told they were going to Africa after Rio. A 6-month contract journey they thought they had signed on for would last a year or more. Kate concluded, "There are a lot of records of complaints by crews because of this and they actually make one of the richest sources for information about the operation of this trade."

As my research continues, I'll be looking for other links between Mathews men and this scheme.