The Old Man
and the Sea

By Vincent F.A. Golphin

On the surface, William Pinkney looks old. Yet, beneath the close-cropped gray hair and wrinkles, almost invisible on his coffee-colored skin, the 65-year-old sea captain gives off an optimistic spirit and energy a person 20-something would envy. Even as the mariner speaks of the latest endeavor-commanding the new, 129-foot schooner, Amistad-his eyes seem to look beyond the room toward whatever comes next.

"One thing," he says while settling into a chair, "I don't take myself seriously. I take the things that I'm involved with seriously-what one can do when you have the opportunity that I have." That opportunity is to teach young people about leadership and cooperation.

AMISTAD America, which built the reproduction of the 19th century cargo ship that was involved in a major slave revolt, plans to use the vessel as a floating laboratory for the study of history, cooperation and leadership. Those lessons are easily drawn from Amistad history. Pinkney said that is a small start compared with how youngsters can be molded by the sea.

"The sea will test everything you've got. It will test your patience, your stamina, your wit and most of all your humor, because if you don't have a sense of humor, the sea will kill you," he said. Much of that wisdom he learned during his journeys. "You are attacked by things which are so much greater than you in such ironic ways that if you take it really too seriously, it will crush you. It is beyond what your mind has a capacity for, but if you're willing to look at the absurdity of all of that and laugh, and understand the absurdity, then that's the release."

The captain said the first lesson the sea teaches is respect. "It's bigger than you, it's not something you can conquer," he said. "I was telling the kids today, the sea doesn't care (who you are). You can't reach in your back pocket and pull out your American Express card to a fifty-foot wave and say 'Hey, check it out!'"

The mariner said the sea tests ability. "You can't do any of those things that in other circumstances could defer or deflect your ability. Your ability is what deflects them."

The two-masted schooner that put to sea for the first time on July 2 looks new, too. Officials at Mystic Seaport, where the ship was built, and the vessel's owners, AMISTAD America, stress that the $3.1 million ship is a re-creation, not a replica of La Amistad, the 19th century vessel. The term acknowledges that Amistad's builders changed the original design to meet contemporary safety standards and they plan to use the vessel to honor one of the nation's most successful victories over slavery.

In August 1839, when the 80-foot cargo schooner, La Amistad, drifted into Long Island Sound area, fishermen sent alarms that "black pirates" aboard "the low black schooner" were foraging the coast. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. The 53 Africans on board were hungry and weary after 63 days at sea, afraid to step ashore. The "pirates" were kidnapped Mende tribespeople-48 men, a woman, a boy and three girls-from what is today Sierra Leone. They were as ignorant of water navigation as they were of the Connecticut coast. They were lost, relying on the word of two Spanish kidnappers, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, who promised to guide them home.

A Marine contingent from the U.S. revenue cutter Washington boarded the tattered vessel off Montauk Point, Long Island, and seized the ship and the Africans, whom the Spaniards who spoke English quickly claimed as slave cargo. The 53 Mende, led by 25-year-old Sengbe Pieh, or Cinque, as the Spanish called him, had no means to communicate. The ship was towed to New London, Connecticut, on August 29, 1839, where the Washington's captain claimed the load as salvage. That is where Connecticut's most lauded chapter in abolitionist history begins.

Without their knowledge, a New London judge charged the Mende with murder and piracy. They were jailed in New Haven, at the time co-capital of the Constitution state, to await the next session of the U.S. Circuit Court which would be convened in the other capital, Hartford. The case rallied abolitionists throughout New England into The Amistad Committee, the most far-reaching effort birthed in the state since the American Anti-slavery Society.

The Africans were pawns in a power play between pro-and anti-slavery forces and between those who believed in the constitutional separation of powers and the supremacy of the president. If the free Mende were sold into slavery, the pro-slavery movement would rack up a significant victory. To drop due process would place skin color over legal status as a basis for slavery. Slavery's opponents saw the possibility as a deeper moral corruption of whites and a heightened threat against blacks from the peculiar institution. Constitutionalists did not want the American president to act like a European king. That is why the three-branch U.S. government gives Congress power to make law, the court to the right to judge them, and the president authority to execute the other branches' wishes. The fear was then-President Martin Van Buren might bypass the court to appease the Spanish queen.

In swift summary, the trial in the Hartford circuit court began on September 19, 1839, and ended after three days. The presiding justice ruled that since the alleged murder and piracy took place in Spanish waters, the court held no jurisdiction. He told Ruiz and Montes they could appeal to the United States District Court to reclaim the alleged slaves as property. That trial, which began in New Haven on January 7, 1840, opened other issues because the Mende were able to tell their story through James Covey, a translator. The tale of kidnapping and illegal enslavement outraged even the pro-slavery Judge Judson. On January 23, 1840, he declared the Africans free and ruled that they be returned to Sierra Leone. President Van Buren asked for an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court. On February 22, 1841, the trial began with former President John Quincy Adams as defense counsel. The scene was far from that created in the Steven Spielberg's Amistad, but Adams prevailed. Justice Story ruled on March 9, 1841, that the Africans were "illegally kidnapped and had the right of self-defense from their captors." They could go home. The next eight months is when the least known part of the saga takes place.

The Amistad Committee needed time to raise money for a ship to send them home. That is when the refugees were housed, fed, clothed and taught English in Farmington, Connecticut. On November 27, 1841, five white missionaries, 53 Mende men, a woman and three girls left New York harbor aboard the Gentlemen for a 52-day trip home. After that, the Amistad story became one of the great tales of the sea.

Pinkney is also a maritime legend. He is one of less than a handful of black licensed ship captains. More than that, he is the only African American to sail solo around the world, a feat accomplished by only 40 people worldwide, and only three other Americans. In 1999, he took that celebrity a step further navigating the infamous Middle Passage slave route, from Africa to the West Indies, to American shores.

"I have the opportunity to do the continuation of what I started with the solo around the world trip," said Pinkney, who used the 27,000-mile, two-year voyage as a means to teach Chicago elementary students about geography and the sea. They communicated by video "postcards" and telephone.

"The idea there was to set a benchmark for my grandchildren, to set a obstacle lesson for the kids who grew up in my neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, who were told as I was told that they weren't going to amount to much, and that their outlook was pretty grim," Pinkney said. "What happens is those kids buy into that, and they buy into it because no one tells them it's not so. They look at the major things that tell them what they are, and what they can be-it's not just the general market magazines, it's the magazines that tell them for the most part that they're going to be either rap stars, jocks, or football or basketball players. It doesn't tell them that they have the possibility of doing anything they want to do, and not be limited by what someone else defines as their limitations."

Pinkney always pushed the limits. The sea captured his imagination before he could swim. "I almost drowned as a kid," he recalled. The mariner said he still is not a great swimmer.

"I knew about the sea, and read some adventures and that sort of thing, but, a seventh grade book that I loved was called 'Call It Courage,' by Armstrong Sperry," he said. "Call It Courage" is about Mafatu, a 12-year-old Polynesian boy who conquered his fear of the sea. He sailed out on his own and became a local hero.

Pinkney said Sperry's "All Sails Set" inspired him, too. It tells of the 19th century maiden voyage of the legendary Flying Cloud, which sailed from Boston to San Francisco around Cape Horn. Both stories mirror Pinkney's sea adventures. During his circumnavigation of the globe, he rounded five of the world's southernmost capes, skirting the tips of Africa, Tasmania and South America.

He enlisted in the navy in 1953 as a high school junior. After his last year at the all-male Tilden Technical School, where he studied to be an x-ray technician, he went on active duty as a medical clerk.

"I wasn't going to walk, couldn't fly," he said with a grin. "I've always had an affinity for the sea and travel. It was a way to get out of Chicago. It was a way to expand my possibilities and see what I could potentially do. So I've always been a dreamer."

His Navy career ran from 1953 to 1960. He was on active duty from 1956 to 1960. Because of his advanced training in the reserve, Pinkney began active duty as an ACPO, acting chief petty officer. He was in the medical corps with four other blacks, one of whom was Bill Cosby. "We knew each other. He was in class 52-56 and I was in class 53-56," said Pinkney. That is probably why Cosby, an acclaimed actor and comedian narrates The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney, a 46-minute video based on the round-the-world voyage. It was released in 1994.

"He was a hospital corpsman. We were in the float years, because Korea ended in '53, Nam didn't get going until '59-'60."

Pinkney never went to Vietnam. He tried to become an officer. "There were a number of programs that lead you to officer," he explained. "I tried to do those things. I passed the written test for most of them. I got turned down in the physical for medical service corps officer-not flight officer, not line officer, not submarine officer, but medical service officer." He wore glasses. "The guys that wouldn't give me the waiver had coke bottle-thick glasses." The now accomplished seaman shuffled through the pain he still feels over the slight, then summed, "The navy was not interested in black officers."

After the Navy, Pinkney went to New York City and turned to cosmetics. "I decided I wanted to do something in the creative venue, but make money," he said. "Who has the money-women. What do women spend there money on-clothing, hair and make-up. I had a good hand for drawing, so I went to make up school."

The G.I. Bill paid for the training, which opened the door for some unusual opportunities. "I started working for some of the cosmetic companies," he said. "I did the first promotion of a black line of cosmetics in a major department store-Bamburgers, Newark, New Jersey, 1967. It was the same year as the riots."

After awhile he plied his talent in small films. "I started working the week-end films," he said. These days those small independent productions are usually the films that go straight to video. "They would get an apartment somewhere," he said, "and would shoot a film." Pinkney called them skin flicks. "Now skin flicks have nothing to do with porno and would probably get a PG rating today, but at the time it was scandalous."

Pinkney said he worked for screen credits in the beginning. After he made some connections and got a union card, he was able to do makeup for television commercials. One of his favorite was for Calgon.

"It was in a Chinese laundry," he began. "He (the customer) says how do you get this so clean, and he (the owner) says, 'ancient Chinese secret.' That was my commercial." Pinkney went on to do make up for a wide range of stars-among the best known were Jacqueline Smith, once in Charlie's Angels; Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston, currently on NBC's Law & Order and comedian Tom Poston, who co-starred in the sitcom Grace Under Fire.

Then, he went to Revlon. "Revlon was looking for someone black. They were going to do a black line (of cosmetics), which was supposed to fail, but it didn't," he said. After four years, 1973 to 1977, he went to Chicago. From 1977 to 1980, he worked in marketing with a black firm, Johnson Products. "Which is a whole other story," he said without specifics. He left cosmetics for government.

"I was with the City of Chicago for three or four years as a public information officer for their social services, which is just like marketing," he said. When Harold Washington became mayor, in 1983, he lost the job.

"At the time my wife had a bakery and I started working with her to help with that," he said. At the same time he began to work on the details of his voyage around the world. He also worked on the dream of being a naval officer.

"It took me until 1986, until I could make that fantasy a reality, when I got my masters (license)," he said. "I got my license, U.S. Maritime Service captain-four stripes (on the jacket sleeve), big gold ball (on the hat), the whole thing.

"In 1990, I took off," he said. He sailed from Boston to Bermuda to Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa, Tasmania and round Cape Horn back to Bermuda and home. The 27,000-mile voyage took two years. Pinkney said the journey was a piece of cake compared to the difficulty he had getting people to understand and embrace his dream.

"The most difficult thing, virtually impossible, is to get my people to understand the sport," he said. "None of them wanted to explore the possibility. Four (white) guys in Boston completely financed my trip, with no personal aggrandizement visible to anyone else other than themselves and their families."

He said the most amazing aspect was that the backers used their own funds. "Not their company's money, their money," he said. "Not tax deductible money, their money, because they felt that they had been very successful in Chicago. Although the company they worked with was from Boston, they wanted to give something back to the kids of Chicago through me." That was why Pinkney communicated with youths throughout the journey.

The mariner said it only cost him about $350,000 to sail his 47-foot ship around the world. "Think of this. I sailed around the world and became the fourth American to do it, the first black man to do it, five capes, the hardest weather, still only, five people backed me up," he said. "More Americans have walked on the moon than have done what I did."

He said African Americans with money turned him down repeatedly. He expressed an understanding that most people viewed him as a long shot before the around the world voyage. However, the bigger disappointment was that African-American money brokers saw no benefit in his desire to chart the journey of the Middle Passage.

Most memorable was a refusal letter from a black publisher. "This was scary," he said. "I got a form letter that came back to me. The letter had a paragraph, the date, my address, a salutation, and the paragraph that followed the one that was up there, and a signature signed in ink, and mailed to me from a major publisher. I read it and I wrote a letter back that said, 'Thank you for your response, I understand that its your prerogative not to want to support what I'm doing. However, as a major publisher, black too, I am enclosing a copy of the letter I received from your office. I am really ashamed, and as you should be, to have something (so sloppy) come out under your letterhead.'"

Pinkney said he sent the response to the publisher's home. There was no reply. He said the problem is that some African Americans believe that some dreams are white only.

"They've got black dreams. They have isolated themselves from the understanding that there's a big real world out there, and when you get a chance to hop onto it, don't hold yourself back saying, 'Well, that ain't our stuff.' Get on it, ride it for whatever it's worth.

"I went out to become the first black man to achieve something so rare, and couldn't get them to understand that. I am going back to the heritage. All these made-in-Taiwan-dashiki, Kente-cloth-wearing folks who changed their name to something they can't pronounce, have never been to Africa. I'm going to find out the roots, to be there first-hand on the ground, and they couldn't understand it."

He said most of the time, despite his accomplishments, people fail to take him seriously. "But see, dreamers are important, because if we have no dreamers, we have no people to take things beyond actions," he said. "Anyone who has been able to do anything significant mostly start out as dreamers in the eyes of other people, not necessarily in the eyes of themselves. Dreams are things that you can make happen, fantasies are things that happen to you."

He said people, especially African Americans, should never be afraid to hold onto dreams. "If you believe that there are white man's dreams and black man's dreams, then you're going to leave yourself out of something," he said. "Dreams are dreams. The human condition is not based on black or white. That's man-made. When you go to sea, you'll find out what's true and what's not true. The sea doesn't play favorites."

He said the hardest part is to learn to let go. "A dream is successful when you start it, not when you complete it, because there are things over which you have no control, over which no one has control which can prevent you from reaching the end," he explained. "The thing you have control over is starting. So when you start, you've already succeeded. So many people have dreams and don't do anything but sit. So, it's not necessarily the acquisition, pursuit is the whole thing."

Pinkney said commanding the Amistad is just one more journey. He is licensed for ocean-going vessels, but Amistad is not scheduled for foreign travel. After the July 4 debut in New York City among the tall ships of Operation Sail 2000, Amistad will cruise Connecticut River ports. On July 15, it will arrive for the first time at New Haven, which will be its home port. The educational vessel plans to cruise the Atlantic coast during 2001. During 2002, stops are scheduled at Great Lakes ports. Officials for AMISTAD America, which operates the vessel, say they hope to some day sail to Cuba, Sierra Leone and other foreign ports.

Those who built the ship say it is ready for whatever lies ahead. They see the vessel as more a work of art. She is rated 80 gross tons, for the amount of displaced water and carrying capacity. The ship, which actually weighs 136 tons, can transport a crew of eight and 49 passengers. It can sleep sixteen.

Quentin T. Snediker, Mystic Seaport's Amistad project coordinator, spent 36 months poring over custom house documents, logs, newspaper clippings and court records of the original vessel before he began to supervise the ship's construction. That, combined with a 49-year career and his experience sailing similar vessels, makes the reconstruction an outstanding feat. Snediker called it "the culmination of a life's work."

The ship's keel, deadwood and keelson are made of purple heart, a tropical hardwood that is extremely dense, hard and resistant to rot and sea organisms. The frames are live oak and some of the deck is African teak, donated by the Sierra Leone government. The masts are Douglas fir and the rest of the ship's wood includes white oak, locust, yellow and white pine. All said, she is fit for an ocean cruise, but only scheduled for river and lake cruises throughout the next two years.

Half the crew will be students who will work with professional sailors and serve as instructors for passengers. The ship's general instruction program will include communication skills, geography, math, social studies and history. Dock-side exhibits in New Haven and other places will focus on the Amistad incident and its legacy including the contributions of African-Americans and other racial minorities to maritime history.

Capt. Pinkney said people who travel under sails as opposed to powerboats are different. He said those who are hooked on power tend to focus on the destination, whereas a sailor revels in the journey.

"Life is the same way," said Pinkney. "We all know how it's going to end. We all have the same end, the only important part is the voyage in between.

"What are you doing? How do you do it? That's what's important. People are always looking at the end, always looking at the end. They fail to see what's moving past them. It's the voyage, it's not the destination."

Pinkney said that is why he was drawn to the sea. "You know what you want, you've known it all along. What you really need to do is to admit to yourself what you really want, and then discover what it's going to cost you to get it. Not in terms of money, but rather what it's going to cost you. There is a price for everything, but it is rarely about money. It's always about something else. When you figure out what that price is, the question you ask yourself is, 'Am I willing to pay that price?'" As the interview wound down, Pinkney did some accounting. His dreams cost him two marriages.

"You don't talk about things you give up," he said. "I've fit family into most of it. I've been married twice, so that's not it, but it's something that you give up. You give up some degree of it."

He mentioned his granddaughter's graduation from the University of Central Florida. He said it was some time in June. He was uncertain of the specific date. "Yeah, I'm on bad paper with her," he said. "I gotta call her." Then, he shared one last lesson: Those whom the sea teaches to savor the journey, only look forward to the next one.

"This is your life, this thing draws you into it and we become it," he said. "So far, it's been worth it, and it ain't over yet." Pinkney said he sees great possibilities in his work with AMISTAD America, but realizes that nothing lasts forever. He said he might write a children's book based on the Middle Passage voyage. The first book he wrote, after the round-the-world trip, won several national awards. At some point, he plans to put his own ship back on the seas. Pinkney said he has sailed the globe, but there are many places yet to discover.