The Ship
La Amistad was a 19th-century two-masted schooner of about 120 feet (37 m). Built in the United States, La Amistad was originally named Friendship but she was renamed after being purchased by a Spaniard. Strictly speaking, La Amistad was not a slave ship; she was not designed to transport large cargoes of slaves, nor did she engage in the Middle Passage of Africans to the Americas. The crew of La Amistad, lacking purpose-built slave quarters, placed half the captives in the main hold, and the other half on deck. The captives were relatively free to move about, which aided their revolt and commandeering of the vessel.
La Amistad engaged in shorter, coastal trade. The primary cargo carried by La Amistad was sugar-industry products, and her normal route ran from Havana to her home port of Guanaja. She also took on passengers and, on occasion, slaves for transport. The captives who revolted while aboard La Amistad had been illegally transported from Africa to Cuba aboard the slave ship Tecora.
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)