MOSAIC

Slavery’s Start

Four centuries ago White Lion, a British privateer flying a Dutch flag, landed at Old Point Comfort on Chesapeake Bay. Today the site of Fort Monroe National Monument, the point was where the White Lion crew delivered some 20 people kidnapped by Portuguese colonists and Imbangala mercenaries from Ndongo, a village in what is now Angola—the first Africans forced to toil in an English colony in North America. The quadricentennial of this transaction, prelude to nearly 250 years of African enslavement in English North America, is being remembered all year at Fort Monroe. Activities August 23-25 will highlight the captives’ arrival and promote a newly opened visitors’ center.

The Africans had been aboard -, a Spanish slaving ship had seized thinking it bore treasure. Records show that at Old Point Comfort the crew traded the captured Africans to Sir George Yeardley, the Virginia Colony’s governor, and supply officer Abraham Piersey, for food and supplies.