Model of Dos Amigos, Slaving Schooner

wood-metal-clay-fabric [From an unpublished paper authored by Joe R. McCleary entitled Atlantic Slave Trade] On November 9, 1830, while commanding BLACK JOKE, Lieutenant William Ramsay captured the Spanish slaving schooner DOS AMIGOS. The slaver had been sighted near the Island of Fernando Po (Bioko) trying to make an offing to the west but had fled into the Bay of the Cameroons and then up the Wouri River (it was then called the River of the Cameroons), hoping to avoid capture. Her captain, Don Juan Ramon de Muxica, off-loaded 563 slaves and fled ashore when he realized that he was cornered. He also threw overboard the ships coppers needed to cook the slaves food. Since he could not feed the slaves if he could seize then, Lieutenant Ramsay was checked from any such attempt. Nevertheless, the ship and three of her Spanish crew were sent to Freetown for adjudication, where they arrived on December 6, 1830. After condemnation in February 1831, the vessel was taken into the Royal Navy as a tender under the name FAIR ROSAMOND. She was equipped with an 18-pounder carronade on a pivot and a 6-pounder field gun, that could be positioned as needed (some references say she carried an 18-pounder pivoted long gun and a 6-pounder shifting carronade). FAIR ROSAMOND was first commanded by Lieutenant Henry Huntley with four officers and a crew of 35 other ranks, including an assistant surgeon, three midshipmen, thirty seamen and five marines. When captured DOS AMIGOS was not coppered. This was accomplished in the spring of 1832 during a visit to Ascension Island. FAIR ROSAMOND evidently required some repairs that could not be accomplished on the African coast. In any case, she was docked in in Portsmouth Dockyard in October, 1832, and her lines were taken off. These plans are preserved in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The location where DOS AMIGOS/FAIR ROSAMOND was built is not known. Chapelle described her as being Baltimore built, while Footner thinks she could have been built in Bermuda, the Caribbean (Jamaica) or even in France or Britain. Lubbock describes her as being an American pilot boat of the deep Baltimore type…Henry Huntley commanded both BLACK JOKE and FAIR ROSAMOND. He described the latter as a fine schooner, though not equal to the sailing of Black Joke by the wind, but she was certainly her superior when going well free. FAIR ROSAMOND had a long career with the Royal Navy, serving until 1845 when she was broken up. NOTES: [History attached to model of same ship at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian] Dos Amigos was probably built at Portsmouth, Virginia in 1830. It measured 83 feet in length and 172 tons. The brigantine was designed like the swift “Baltimore clipper” schooners, which were popular in the slave trade. The design of such ships was influenced by the shallow conditions of the African slave ports, the illegal aspects of the trade, and the type of cargo. Slave ships were built to be maneuverable in the shallow African ports, and swift to evade arrest and transport their enslaved Africans quickly. They were usually schooners or brigs. Dos Amigos was a slaver, until it was captured by the British ship Black Joke on the coast of Cameroon, an island off the coast of West Africa. It was renamed Fair Rosamond, and placed in dry dock in Britain to have its lines taken off during the summer of 1832. It became a successful slave-catcher in its own right, capturing the slavers La Pantica in 1834 and El Esplorado and La Mariposa in 1836. In 1837, a drawing was made of the original rig of Fair Rosamond before it was altered. It was sold out of the Royal Navy in 1845. MODEL MAKERS NOTES: [Joseph R. McCleary, 2001] Plans for slave ships are hard to find and I decided to use Howard I. Chapelles plans from the Smithsonian collection for the slaver DOS AMIGOS. These plans are redrawn from original plans of this ship that are contained in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. However, Chapelle shows this ship as she appeared in 1832, two years after she had been captured by the Royal Navy and reconfigured to be an anti-slave trade patrol vessel. In producing his own drawing Chapelle introduced a few interpretations of his own that are not shown in the original draft. During the 19th century after slave ships were captured and condemned in a prize court, they were generally destroyed by burning to keep them from falling back into their former line of work. Only a few, such as DOS AMIGOS, which was renamed FAIR ROSAMUND, were used as auxiliary vessels to combat the trade. I needed to do considerable research to determine how she would have been configured in her previous life. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: See object file for model makers research and bibliography; Lubbock, Basil. Cruisers, Corsairs & Slavers: An Account of the Suppression of the Picaroon, Pirate & Slaver by the Royal Navy during the 19th Century. pages 140-148, 200-229, 302-341, 354. Brown, Son & Ferguson, Ltd. Glasgow, Scotland. 1993; Stephen, Sir Leslie and Lee, Sir Sidney. The Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Volume X. Y MISSY 9/7/2001 12:00:00 AM willj 6/8/2017 8:23:57 AM 28476