Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The 1723 Slave Mutiny on the Elizabeth: A Caribbean Revolt Aborted
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've covered slave revolts on land — Haiti, Jamaica, even the Creole on the high seas. But there's one shipboard uprising that almost never gets mentioned, even though it's one of the earliest fully documented cases. Luna: Which one? Lucas: The Elizabeth, in 1723. A Royal African Company ship, 143 captives from the Gold Coast — modern Ghana — headed for Barbados. And three days out, the enslaved men and women nearly took the ship. Luna: Wait — three days out? That means they planned it while still anchored off the coast. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes it so remarkable. The Elizabeth left Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast in early September 1723. The captives were mostly Coromantee — Akan-speaking people from the Asante and Fante states, many of them taken as prisoners of war. They'd been held in the dungeons for weeks, sometimes months, before boarding. So they had time to communicate, to form a plan, and to smuggle a few precious items on board — including gunpowder. Luna: Gunpowder? How do you get gunpowder onto a slave ship? Lucas: The court records are vague, but it seems some of the women were allowed to keep small bundles of trade goods — cloth, beads — and they wrapped the gunpowder inside. There's also mention of a goldsmith's file, probably used to sharpen a piece of iron into a weapon. The leader of the revolt was a man named Cudjoe — not the Maroon leader from Jamaica, but a Coromantee prisoner of war. He seems to have been a military commander in his own society, because the other captives immediately recognised his authority. Luna: So he was a wartime leader, captured and sold. Lucas: Exactly. And he apparently had a lieutenant, a man named Quamina — another common Akan day-name. On the third night, after the ship had cleared the coast, Cudjoe gave the signal. The captives broke their shackles — how, we don't know, but possibly with that file — and rushed the crew's quarters. They seized muskets, knives, and an axe. For a few hours, they controlled the main deck. The crew barricaded themselves in the forecastle and the quarterdeck, firing down at the rebels. The ship's log records that the captain, a man named John Peers, was badly wounded in the initial rush. Luna: So the Africans had the upper hand. What happened? Lucas: The crew had one decisive advantage: they had the ship's cannons. The mate, a man named Thomas Pyke, managed to load a swivel gun — a small cannon mounted on the railing — and fired into the mass of rebels on the main deck. The grapeshot tore through them. Then the crew counterattacked, hacking and shooting. By dawn, at least forty captives were dead. Another thirty were badly wounded. Cudjoe and Quamina were among the survivors, captured alive. They were clapped in irons, and the ship proceeded to Barbados. Luna: And then what? The authorities in Barbados would have made an example of them. Lucas: They did. But first, there was a legal wrangle. Under English law, slave revolts on the high seas were tried not in colonial courts but in the Vice-Admiralty Court of London, because the ship was considered a piece of English territory. So the surviving rebels — about fifteen men — were shipped back across the Atlantic to stand trial at the Royal African Court in London. Luna: They shipped them back to England? That's a huge expense. Why not just hang them in Barbados? Lucas: Partly because the Royal African Company wanted a show trial to deter future revolts. And partly because there was a legal question about whether killing slaves at sea counted as murder — which would affect insurance claims. The company also wanted to recover its investment: if the slaves were executed in Barbados, the company took the loss. If they were condemned in London, the Crown might pay compensation. So the fifteen men spent months in a London gaol while the company built its case. The trial was held at the Old Bailey in early 1724. Luna: What was the verdict? Lucas: The court convicted twelve of the fifteen — including Cudjoe and Quamina — of piracy and murder on the high seas. The sentence was death by burning alive. But here's where it gets strange: the king, George I, commuted the sentence to hanging, because burning alive was considered too brutal even for slave rebels. So on a cold morning in March 1724, Cudjoe and his men were hanged at Execution Dock in London, on the Thames. Their bodies were left in chains as a warning. Luna: They were hanged in London. The heart of the empire. That's a long way from the Gold Coast. Lucas: It is. And it shows how the Atlantic slave trade connected the coasts of Africa, the Caribbean, and the metropole in a single system of terror. But the Elizabeth mutiny also reveals something else: the extraordinary courage and organisation of the captives. They had almost no chance of success — the crew was armed, the ship was a floating prison — and they still tried. And they almost succeeded. If the mate hadn't reached that swivel gun, the Elizabeth might have ended up like the Amistad, a hundred years later. Luna: Speaking of things that almost didn't happen — supporting this show is a lot like that rebellion. It's a small act that keeps something bigger alive. Lucas, if someone listening feels like today's episode was worth a coffee to them, there's a link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, that's exactly it. This is a listener-supported show — no ads, no sponsors — just people who want deep history without the noise. And every little bit helps us keep digging into stories like this one. Luna: Honestly, if today's episode made you think, that's the place. So back to the Elizabeth — what happened to the ship after the trial? Lucas: The Elizabeth itself went back into service, but the revolt had shaken the Royal African Company. They ordered that future shipments from the Gold Coast be more heavily guarded, and that captives be 'seasoned' — held longer at the forts — before embarkation, so they'd be too weak to rebel. But the mutiny also had an unexpected legacy: the trial transcripts survive in the National Archives, giving us a rare window into the voices of the enslaved. The court record includes testimony from the crew, but also statements from some of the African captives — filtered through interpreters, yes, but still preserving fragments of their perspective. One of the men, named Cudjoe, said simply: 'We would rather die than be slaves.' Luna: That line gives me chills. Lucas: Me too. And it's a reminder that every slave ship was a potential battlefield. For every successful revolt we know about — the Amistad, the Creole — there were dozens like the Elizabeth, brutally suppressed. But the spirit of resistance was constant. The Elizabeth mutiny is a small, bloody, forgotten moment in a vast system. But it's also a monument to the humanity and the defiant will of the people who lived through it. Luna: And it's a story that deserves to be remembered. Thanks for bringing it to light, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks for listening. If you want to read the trial transcripts yourself, they're digitised — I'll put a link in the show notes. And next time, we'll look at another rebellion that almost was: the 1766 slave conspiracy in Antigua. Until then, take care.