Tall Ship Amistad Makes Visit To Greenport For Maritime Festival

The annual Maritime Festival is a highly anticipated event in Greenport, set this year for September 24 and 25, and there is perhaps no tradition that fits in as well with the spirit of the festival as the arrival of historic tall ships in the harbor in the days leading up to it.

Festival organizers had arranged for as many as seven tall ships to be on hand for the festivities in years past — that’s how many arrived in 2012, and in 2005, six ships made their way to the North Fork town for the two-day affair.

This year, organizers will welcome one of the most sought after tall ships, offering festivalgoers a chance to step inside history and revel in the majestic and towering beauty of a floating homage to maritime and American history.

The Amistad, a 130-foot schooner, became a household name when it was the subject of a 1997 feature film, directed by Steven Spielberg, about the uprising that happened aboard the Spanish ship in 1839. A group of men who had been forcefully taken from their homes in what is now Sierra Leone in Africa gained control of the ship while it was off the coast of Cuba. It was a pivotal moment in American history, as the uprising happened around the time when the idea of emancipation for enslaved men and women in the country was starting to gain traction, leading up to the Civil War.

Robin Hogen is the co-chair, along with Bob King, of Discovering Amistad, the educational nonprofit that owns the ship, which is a replica of the original vessel. He said that the Amistad is unique among tall ships for several compelling reasons.

“This is the only ship, to the best of our knowledge, that is a monument to the bravery of the African prisoners who escaped from bondage,” he said, pointing out that they were never enslaved, and ultimately made it back to their home country. “We think of it as a monument to their leadership, perseverance, bravery, tenacity and brilliance, that they could commander this ship off Cuba and survive the trip, which was supposed to end up back in what at the time was called Mendeland, and is now known as Sierra Leone.”

What the Africans aboard the ship did not know was that, at night, the Spanish captain surreptitiously set sail up the coast, rather than steering the ship back to Africa, which is how it ended up off the coast of Montauk. Hogen explained that the ship was never intended to sail across the ocean.

“It was a coastal schooner,” he said. “More like what you’d consider as a delivery truck today, except it was delivering human cargo from Havana to plantations several hundred miles up the coast of Cuba.”

The ship was ultimately seized by the U.S. Navy off Montauk, and transferred to New Haven, where the Africans were put on trial for murder and mutiny. Thanks to the efforts of abolitionists and Congregationalist ministers in Connecticut, the men won their freedom, and ultimately returned to their homeland, which was an unlikely outcome and incredible triumph.

“That was the beginning of the idea of the abolition of slavery, and it was the first real test for navigating the legal system in that regard,” Hogen said.

The 1997 film put the ship and its story “on the map,” Hogen said, and Discovering Amistad has been dedicated to bringing the ship’s story to as many people as possible, capitalizing on that enduring name recognition.

“We’ve been able to keep that story alive and open people’s eyes to the way we treated enslaved people years ago,” Hogen said. “And to start very difficult conversations about race that most people aren’t having today.”

Hogen said that bringing ships to festivals in towns like Greenport allows people to come on board and engage with that history in a tangible, visceral way, with the ship serving as a “starting point” for important conversations that have continued relevance today.

“You can talk about these heroic Africans and what they did almost 200 years ago, and then fast forward and talk about today,” he said, adding that many school districts have planned field trips to see the ship when it is docked at nearby ports.

Because of its 10-foot keel — extremely long, by boat standards — the Amistad is limited when it comes to choosing towns and ports it can visit, but Hogen said that Greenport is a great location because the harbor waters are deep enough to accommodate it. The ship has a professional captain and crew who are called on when the ship needs to be moved, and they will either motor or motor-sail (employing the ship’s twin diesel engines) to various locations.

“Greenport is a great historic port, and we’re excited to be coming back here,” Hogen said, adding that the Amistad visited the festival three years ago.

The schooner is nearly 130 feet long, and weighs more than 100 tons, somewhat small by tall ship standards, but the 10-foot draw makes it a “big, heavy, powerful ship,” Hogen said. The real power, he added, is in its ability to “bring history to life.”

The Amistad will be at the festival from September 23 through 25 and could possibly arrive a little earlier, giving local schools a chance to organize field trips to see it.

Paul Krielling is the chairman of the East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation, located in Greenport, and said that foundation board member Beth Haskell deserves most of the credit for bringing such a large number of tall ships to the festival in recent years.

“She’s been instrumental in contacting the ships and trying to get more boats,” he said. Finding available dockage space has been an issue because so many of the marinas are full, Kreilling said, adding that the Amistad will dock at the fisherman’s docks behind the museum at the base of Third Street. He added that while finding dockage can be a bit of a challenge, Greenport has been uniquely positioned to invite the tall ships because of its history as a whaling port.

“In 1830, as whaling became more profitable and there were bigger ships that couldn’t get into Nantucket, that’s when Greenport and Sag Harbor really blossomed,” he said, explaining that the shoals in Nantucket were too shallow to accommodate the larger ships. “Greenport has always been a deep water harbor. It’s one of the reasons we’re still on the circuit for the tall ships, because we have a harbor that can handle them.”

Krielling pointed out that the museum is currently in the process of doing a capital campaign to raise money for rebuilding the Long Beach Bar Lighthouse at the entrance to Greenport Harbor.

He said museum members and other festival organizers are excited to have the Amistad on the schedule for the festival.

“I think it’s a terrific addition,” he said. “It’s amazing that we got them.”

For more information on the East End Seaport Museum, visit eastendseaport.org.