Heading: (African American, 1859)
Author: Dove, Benjamin M., Captain, USS Relief
Title: Letter from a US Navy Captain describing his voyage to the West Indies, including the strange slave island of Sombrero.
Place Published: Aspinwall, Panama
Publisher:
Date Published: Sept. 17, 1859
Description:

4 pp. Autograph Letter Signed. To an unidentified friend.

The USS Relief called at St. Croix and Sombrero. The remote, desolate island of Sombrero was thickly encrusted with guano - valuable bird excrement used as fertilizer, much in demand in the South. Many of the Black miners on the island were slaves.

When the U.S. Congress passed legislation giving US citizens exclusive rights to mine guano they had discovered on any island unclaimed by another country, the Baltimore company Dove had found mining Sombrero claimed to have purchased discoverer's rights from an American captain who had first set foot on the barren island. At the beginning of the Civili War, a pro-Southern Baltimore merchant threatened to send an armed brig to capture the island by force and use it as a base for the Confederacy or even the slave trade. The pro-northern American miners begged for protection by the U.S. Navy. No shots were fired and the guano mining continued unabated, but after the War, England claimed to have bought the island and sent a British naval vessel to force the American miners to take down the American flag. The dispute was not resolved for half a century until England formally annexed Sombrero, without protest from Washington.

"...I stopped at the island of St. Croix, one of the Danish West India islands. A report had been published in one of the English papers that the island had been purchased by our government, and it was supposed that we had come there to take possession of it. The officers who went on shore were received with great civility by a large crowd at the wharf, but the people were soon undeceived. It was a gratification to feel that the change of governments would not be displeasing to them." But most intriguing was "the little island of Sombrero...I found it in possession of a company of American citizens, with our flag flying upon it...The island is 3/4 of a mile long, 1/3 broad and was found by some inquisitive yankee to be composed entirely of phosphate of lime. A company was soon formed and they are now engaged in quarrying it and loading vessels for the U.S. We found upon it 5 white men, 180 blacks from the neighboring islands, a half mile of railroad, 5 horses and a good stock of hogs and poultry. They seemed to be doing well and of course delighted to see a government ship at this little island..."

Very good.