Captain William A. Martin

Michael A. Martin

• Birth: July 17, 1830 Edgartown, Massachusetts, United States
• Death: September 05, 1907 Edgartown, Massachusetts, United States
• Place of Burial: Hilltop (Chappaquiddick) Cemetery, Edgartown, Dukes, Massachusetts, United States

As difficult, dangerous, and sometimes financially unrewarding as whaling was, it still beat slavery by miles. By some estimates thirty percent of the thousands of whalers before the Civil War were minorities. A few even overcame all the odds and rose through the ranks to command ships. More than thirty African American whaling captains have been identified, one of whom, William A. Martin, was born on Martha’s Vineyard.

Martin’s great-grandmother was born in Guinea, Africa, and came to Chilmark as a slave in the mid 1700s. Her daughter Nancy Michael – the captain’s grandmother – was known as “Black Nance.” According to her obituary in the Vineyard Gazette in 1857, she was beloved by local children, and there were “few among us who have not at some time been indebted to her.” What’s more, she was thought to be a witch, whose remonstrations provided “good or bad luck to those bound on long voyages.”

Nancy Michael’s daughter Rebecca Ann, on the other hand, led a troubled life, marked by public drunkenness and misdemeanors. When Rebecca gave birth to William in 1827 in Edgartown, therefore, it fell mostly to Nancy to raise him. Neither woman lived to see William become Captain Martin, and though it’s amusing to wonder whether his grandmother’s supernatural powers contributed from beyond the grave to his success, the truth is he rose entirely by dint of his own talent and hard work.

He likely went to sea for the first time in his late teens, probably sailing on the Almira. Prior to the Civil War, it was rare for someone black to be able to read and write, but Martin had a good enough education from the Edgartown School to serve as log keeper on several of his early voyages. As the cooper and boatsteerer on the Waverly in 1851, he was paid more than the first mate, further attesting to his competence.

He became first mate and log keeper of the Europa on his next voyage, before sailing as joint first master on the Eunice H. Adams and finally as captain of the Clarice in the 1870s. He appears to have taken at least nine voyages before 1887, when the Eunice H. Adams, his last command, was damaged in a storm and he was injured. In that time his vessels brought back more than 2,658 barrels of the prized sperm whale oil, as well as valuable cargoes of other oil and whalebone.

In 1857 he married Sarah G. Brown of Chappaquiddick, who was mostly African American but also part Wampanoag. According to the July 11, 1907 Vineyard Gazette, they celebrated fifty years of marriage two months before his death that September, at the age of approximately eighty. He is buried on Chappaquiddick, where his and Sarah’s home still stands.

Little else remains of this remarkable man’s legacy, though one of his logbooks is at the Providence Public Library. In it, he wrote in 1853:

“Farewell to thee for a time Days lingering sun is over

this heart will never awaken it to one bright moment more

   the hope

... cherished here within day by day through life’s flow.”

Source: http://mvmagazine.com/news/2014/05/01/not-your-average-ahab

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