Ironically, the rapid expansion of cotton production in the lower South beginning in the 1820s not only enriched slave owners, merchants, and bankers, North and South, but also established a web of maritime trading routes that greatly increased fugitives’ opportunities for escape by sea. Hundreds of ships each year carried the South’s “white gold” to the port cities of the Atlantic coast and on to textile factories in New England and Europe. Rediker presents some startling statistics that illustrate the growth of seaborne commerce. By the middle of the nineteenth century nearly 200,000 seamen sailed out of the major ports each year, the largest number to and from New York City, which dominated the cotton trade. Some 20,000 of the sailors were African Americans. In 1855 American shipyards produced over two thousand new vessels. That explosion in maritime commerce, a result of slavery’s widening role in the American economy, created more occasions to steal away on ships and rendered obsolete the idea that those who fled the South did so unassisted.
Laws punishing attempted escapes by sea proved difficult to enforce. Captains were supposed to search their ships for runaway slaves, but as the coastal trade expanded this became prohibitively time consuming. The accelerating sectional conflict over the future of slavery, moreover, meant that a growing number of northerners proved willing to abet fugitives. This was especially true of members of the free Black communities that spread after northern states enacted laws for the gradual abolition of slavery. Black men were well positioned to help fugitives hiding on sailing vessels. As sailors, longshoremen, sailmakers, carpenters, and other maritime laborers, Black workers were omnipresent on the docks and aboard ships. Many kept a lookout for fugitives and directed them to people who could help. The presence of Black seamen was especially important for stowaways. Sailors were known to stack the heavy bales of cotton in a way that created spaces where slaves could fit and to provide them with food and water during the voyage.
To be sure, escape by ship carried its own risks. It was easier to hide in the woods than on a small packet boat. If a runaway was discovered, the captain and crew might turn him in for a reward. Nonetheless, Rediker argues, the chances of getting away on one of the innumerable vessels plying the Atlantic trading routes were considerably higher than those of reaching freedom on land. In 1856 Virginia established a Port Police to search all ships heading north from the state, but the officers had only six vessels for patrolling the vast waters of Chesapeake Bay. They were “overwhelmed,” Rediker writes.