By David Pendered
Fort Macon State Park, NC – March 3 – An 1857 court ruling speaks to the value some slaveholders placed on enslaved people who were able to build the vessels needed deliver the region’s corn and wheat from farm to market in antebellum Eastern North Carolina.
The ruling was cited in a lecture that examined the role of slaves in shipbuilding. The topic was included in the presentation, “The Maritime Dimensions of Coastal Plantations,” by David Bennett, curator of maritime history at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort.
At the time of the lawsuit, Eastern North Carolina was the state’s center of power and finance. Corn and wheat were cash crops. Vessels were the most economical means of transport. Producers sought to boost their profits by building their own vessels, rather than paying shipbuilders for that service.
This is the climate in which slaveowner James W. Bell and shipbuilders Caleb Walker and Jesse Herrington came to an impasse that landed them in the North Carolina Supreme Court.
A copy of the 1857 ruling by the state Supreme Court fills in the details in the broader remarks provided by Bennett during his event, which was hosted at the state park while the museum is temporarily closed for renovation.
According to the ruling, Bell placed three slaves – Peter, Woden and Abbott – into the custody of Walker and Herrington, in Washington County. Terms of the deal called for the slaves to spend four years learning by doing the trade of shipbuilder and caulker. The shipbuilders were to pay Bell $100 per year per slave for work done.
For Bell, the incentive included the increased value of Peter, Woden and Abbott once they had the knowledge to build vessels – an estimated $300 per slave, according to the ruling.
Things didn’t turn out as planned.
Peter learned to cut and haul lumber, and some ship carpentry skills, but was not taught to caulk boats, the procedure that prevents water from leaking into vessels. Woden and Abbott learned nothing. According to the ruling, the defendants contended of Woden and Abbott, “They repeatedly declared that they would not learn the trade; that they were unwilling to be taught; that repeated efforts were made to instruct them; that they were taken away from several jobs, upon which they had been put, because of their bad work; and that they were kept at such work, relating to the business, as they could do to the best advantage.”
The ruling granted Bell $600 payment for what amounts to beach of contract. The shipbuilders should have coerced Woden and Abbott to learn by “by such means as the law allows to masters, to enforce obedience from their apprentices….” The sum was based on Peter’s not learning how to caulk a vessel and Woden and Abbott learning nothing about shipbuilding. The ruling concluded: “The slaves were four years older, with habits of obstinacy increased by indulgence, and it would be almost impossible to ascertain, with any reasonable certainty, how much it would cost the plaintiff to have the slaves taught and made as valuable as they would have been, had the defendants performed faithfully their covenant.”
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