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E515 - Andrew Sillen - Kidnapped at Sea - The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White
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Episode 515 - Andrew Sillen - Kidnapped at Sea - The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White
About the author
Andrew Sillen (B.A. Brooklyn College '74; Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania '81) is a visiting research scholar in the department of anthropology at Rutgers University. He has authored or co-authored over 50 academic and popular articles on archaeology and human evolution. Sillen was formerly Professor of Paleoanthropology and the founding Director of Development at the University of Cape Town; and subsequently Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Brooklyn College. He lives in, and writes from his hometown of Brooklyn, New York.
Book: Kidnapped at Sea: The Civil War Voyage of David Henry White
The true story of David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor enslaved on the high seas during the Civil War, whose life story was falsely and intentionally appropriated to advance the Lost Cause trope of a contented slave, happy and safe in servility.
David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor from Lewes, Delaware, was kidnapped by Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate raider Alabama on October 9, 1862, from the Philadelphia-based packet ship Tonawanda. White remained captive on the Alabama for over 600 days, until he drowned during the Battle of Cherbourg on June 19, 1864.
In a best-selling postwar memoir, Semmes falsely described White as a contented slave who remained loyal to the Confederacy. In Kidnapped at Sea, archaeologist Andrew Sillen uses a forensic approach to describe White's enslavement and demise and illustrates how White's actual life belies the Lost Cause narrative his captors sought to construct.
Kidnapped at Sea is the first book to focus on White's actual life, rather than relying on Semmes and other secondary sources. Until now, Semmes's appropriation of White's life has escaped scrutiny, thereby demonstrating the challenges faced by disempowered, illiterate people—and how well-crafted, racist fabrications have become part of Civil War memory.
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