When I was wrecked in the Solomons on the
blackbirder, the Minota, it was Captain Kellar, master of the
blackbirder, the Eugenie, who rescued me.
I was mate, then, on the Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, a
blackbirder. And let me tell you that
blackbirders were
blackbirders in those days.
And how fared Captain Bateman of the
blackbirder Nari?
In this volume, first published in 1954, the late Bulpin, an author, relates the experiences of Cecil Bernard "Bvekenya" (1886-1962) as a hunter, ivory poacher,
blackbirder, outdoorsman, and conservationist.
The book's high points lay in its illumination of new material, drawn from various archives, the inclusion of period illustrations, and the presentation of compelling narratives (especially chapter three's focus on the most notorious
blackbirder William "Bully" Hayes, and chapter five's investigation of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Fiji).
A former "
blackbirder" slave ship-turned-opium schooner, Burnham's Ibis is now transporting convicts and indentured laborers, or "quoddies" and "girmitiyas" (from girmit, a corruption of agreement), between Calcutta and the pepper island of Mauritius, before returning to join the punitive adventure to Canton.
The
Blackbirder, by James Nelson (Corgi Paperback, pounds 5.99)
In the 1820s, a gang known as the
Blackbirders operated in the Five Points, seizing both fugitives and free blacks living there.
Blackbirders and recruiters introduced islanders to a wider world.
The New York governor signed off on the request, which authorized fugitive-slave hunters known as
blackbirders to capture Lee.
Then he stumbles across the deadly and dirty work of
Blackbirders (slave catchers) - men who will stop at nothing to get their slaves back once again.
The final blow to the islanders came in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Chilean
blackbirders carried away many hundreds of islanders to the guano mines in Chile, and few returned.