Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The 1723 Elizabeth Mutiny: An Atlantic Slave Revolt Aborted
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've covered a lot of slave ship rebellions in this series — the Amistad, the Creole, the Henrietta Marie as a wreck. But one of the most dramatic and least-told stories is the mutiny aboard the Elizabeth in 1723. It happened on a British slaver out of London, and it nearly succeeded. Luna: I don't think I've heard of that one. What made it different? Lucas: Well, for one thing, we have an unusually detailed record — the Royal African Court in London put the survivors on trial, and the ship's log and depositions survived. So we know the names of the ringleaders, how they planned it, and exactly where it went wrong. Lucas: The Elizabeth left the Gold Coast in early 1723 with about 230 captives. Most were Coromantee — that's the English term for Akan-speaking people from the interior, many of them war captives from the ongoing Asante expansion. And the Coromantee had a reputation among slavers as the most dangerous to transport. Luna: Right — they were known for rebellion. We've talked about that with Tacky's War. Lucas: Exactly. So the captain, a man named William Harding, knew he had a volatile cargo. He kept the men shackled in pairs, and he had a crew of about thirty armed sailors. But the captives still managed to organize. Lucas: The leader was a man the English records call 'Cudjoe' — which is just an Akan day-name for a male born on Monday. His real name is lost. He and two other men, 'Quamina' and 'Apong', worked out a plan over several days. They communicated in whispers across the hold, using the Fante language, which the crew couldn't understand. Luna: So the language barrier worked in their favor initially. Lucas: Yes. The plan was to break free on a moonless night, overpower the guards, and then take the ship. They'd been watching the crew's routines — when the watch changed, where the arms were stored. They even managed to work a few shackles loose using a piece of iron they'd hidden. Lucas: On the night of May 23, 1723, about four weeks out from the coast, they made their move. The ship was somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, maybe three hundred miles west of Cape Verde. Twenty-three men, all Coromantee, rose up. They rushed the main deck, seized some handspikes and knives from the galley, and attacked the night watch. Luna: And then what happened? Lucas: At first it went well. They killed two sailors and wounded several others. The mate was stabbed but survived. The rebels managed to get to the armory and started handing out muskets. If they'd secured the captain's cabin, they might have taken the ship entirely. Lucas: But then something went wrong. According to the log, a group of captives from a different ethnic group — likely from the Fante coast, who were enemies of the Coromantee in Africa — refused to join. One of them alerted the crew. The captain rallied his men and barricaded himself in the quarterdeck. They had two swivel guns mounted there. Luna: So it turned into a standoff. Lucas: Yes. The rebels held the main deck for about two hours. But they couldn't break into the quarterdeck, and they didn't have enough ammunition. When dawn came, the crew counterattacked. The captain fired the swivel guns into the crowd of captives on deck. It was a massacre. Lucas: By the time it was over, at least eighteen captives were dead, and many more wounded. The ringleaders — Cudjoe, Quamina, Apong — were captured alive. The captain put them in leg irons and doubled the guard for the rest of the voyage. Luna: So they were taken to Barbados anyway — as punishment? Lucas: They were sold there, but not before the captain filed a report. The Royal African Court in London got involved because the murder of a crew member and the attempted seizure of a British vessel was a crime under admiralty law. The Crown wanted to make an example. Lucas: Three of the leaders — Cudjoe, Quamina, and a man named 'Tom' — were brought back to London for trial. They were held at Newgate Prison. The trial was at the Old Bailey in 1724. It's one of the few trials where we have a transcript of enslaved Africans speaking through interpreters. Luna: Did they have any defense? Lucas: They argued that they were free people in their own country, captured in war and illegally enslaved. Cudjoe said through an interpreter that 'he was a king in his own country and ought not to be sold.' The court didn't accept that. The legal principle was that they were property, not persons with rights. Lucas: All three were found guilty of piracy and murder. They were sentenced to hang at Execution Dock in Wapping. The sentence was carried out in February 1724, and their bodies were left in chains on the Thames foreshore as a warning. Luna: That's horrifying. But also — they fought. Lucas: They did. And the story of the Elizabeth is important because it shows how resistance was constant. Every slave ship was a potential battlefield. The captains knew it — that's why they packed men separately, kept them shackled, and used ethnic divisions deliberately. The Coromantee were feared precisely because they kept trying. Lucas: And we have to remember that for every successful rebellion like the Amistad, there were dozens of failures like the Elizabeth. But each failure still cost the slavers — money, time, lives. And each one chipped away at the system's confidence. Luna: If today was useful to you, the way these episodes stay ad-free is through listener support. You can help at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. It's because of people who find value in these deep dives that we can keep doing them without any commercial breaks. And this one — the Elizabeth mutiny — is a story that doesn't get told often enough. Lucas: So if you want to learn more, I'd recommend looking into the Old Bailey Proceedings for 1724 — they're online and free. The transcript of Cudjoe's testimony is chilling. He wasn't just a rebel; he was a man who believed he had been wronged and tried to take back his freedom. Luna: Thanks for bringing this story to light, Lucas.