White Lion (ship)

The White Lion was a privateer ship of English manufacture that brought the first Africans to Virginia in late August 1619, a year before the Mayflower. Though the Africans were initially sold as indentured servants, it is regarded as the origin of enslaved Africans in English colonies in mainland North America.
There had been slavery among Native Americans in the United States since before Europeans arrived, which continued with capture and purchase of Native Americans for work in mainland colonies and export to the Caribbean.

African slaves had earlier arrived on the current Georgia or Carolina coast in 1526 with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón

though they escaped,
and in Florida in 1539 with Hernando de Soto, and in the 1565 founding of St. Augustine, Florida.

The slaves on the White Lion were probably among the thousands who had been captured in 1618-1619 by a force largely of Africans, under nominal Portuguese leadership, making war

on Ndongo in modern Angola. These particular slaves were taken on the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista from Luanda, Angola, capital of the then-Portuguese colony.
The White Lion, along with the Treasurer, commanded by Daniel Elfrith, intercepted the São João Bautista on its way to modern-day Veracruz on the Gulf coast of Mexico. The two ships captured and divided part of the Portuguese ship's human cargo, under the aegis of Dutch letters of marque from Maurice, Prince of Orange. White Lion captain John Colyn Jope then sailed for Virginia to sell the slave cargo, first landing in Point Comfort, in modern-day Hampton Roads.

As John Rolfe, secretary of the colony of Virginia, wrote to Virginia Company of London treasurer Edwin Sandys:
About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett with the Treasurer in the West Indyes, and determined to hold consort shipp hetherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls (whereof he was in greate need as he pretended) at the best and easyest rates they could.

After being sold off the White Lion, two of the slaves, Isabella and Anthony, married and had a child in 1624. William Tucker, as they named him after a local planter, was the first recorded Black child born in English America.

See Also
Clotilda, the last known ship to bring slaves to America.

References

Category:Angolan-American history
Category:Slavery in the United States
Category:Sailing ships
Category:Slave ships
Category:Pre-emancipation African-American history