Tecora
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The Tecora was a Portuguese slave ship of the early 1800s. The brig was built specially for the slave trade. It was maneuverable and fast in order to evade British patrols attempting to stop the illegal traffic in human beings.
In 1839, a group of Africans were kidnapped from Mendiland, (in modern day Sierra Leone) and transported to the African slave port of Lomboko. There a Portuguese slave trader purchased about 500 of the Africans and transported them aboard the Tecora to Havana, Cuba.
Conditions were horrific for slaves on the Tecora. The captives were stripped, chained in groups of five, and packed so tightly into the slave hold (a deck below the main deck and above the cargo hold) that one person's head, when lying in rows, was forced upon another person's thigh. In the Tecora's dark cargo hold they had only 3 feet & 3 inches of headroom during the ten-week voyage. The captives were sometimes brought up on deck and fed rice. Those who tried to starve themselves, as often happened, were whipped and forced to eat. While they were at sea, water supplies ran low, and disease spread through the closely packed, unventilated slave deck. Nearly a third of the slaves died during the long voyage from disease, malnutrition, and beatings.
Because importing new slaves into Spanish-controlled Cuba was illegal, the slave traders smuggled the captive Africans ashore from the Tecora at night in small boats. They landed in a small inlet a few miles from Havana. Once on land the slaves were placed in a barracoon, or a "slave pen."
Under Spanish law, when they arrived in Cuba in late June, the Africans were technically free. However, they were fraudulently classified as native, Cuban-born slaves so they could be separated and sold. Two Spanish plantation owners, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, bought 53 of the surviving Africans; 49 men, a boy, and three girls. Ruiz and Montes packed their cargo and their slaves on board the schooner Amistad and set sail for their plantation at Port Principe, Cuba.
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