Introducing Capt. Jim De Wolfe, a capitalist pirate

Sea captain tried for throwing live slave overboard

    St. Thomas historian Isidore Paiewonsky tells a story that is almost hair raising. When in auld lang syne A.H. Riise was an apothecary and making his medicines, St. Thomas was a different place. Being a free port it had advantages and disadvantages. Free port status kept the port humming but it also allowed in those who might not be welcome elsewhere. Capt. James De Wolfe was one such man. He was accused of the inhumane and immoral act of throwing a living person overboard while at sea. The person was a female slave and the accusations made it too hot for him in his Bristol, Rhode Island townhouse. He and his fortune were very welcome on St. Thomas.

    A De Wolf family historian called James “tall and commanding in person and very careful about his dress.” He was said to be the “handsomest of the five brothers, with florid cheeks, a blunt nose, gray eyes, an upper lip as sheer as a carpenter’s plane, and big, capable sailor’s hands.”

    In April 1795 Capt. James De Wolfe was a Danish burger living on St. Thomas when the Justice Advocate received a complaint against him. He was duty bound to pass it along to the commandant of the Danish islands, Thomas von Malleville. The Advocate advocated, “I can by no means omit making it known to your Excellency so that De Wolf, if guilty, may be reprimanded and punished.” In other words, it was a big deal and the big wigs had to take notice. The complaint was made by Isaac Manchester and De Wolfe had to stand trail.

   Manchester complained, “Please your honor, I find it necessary to acquaint you that Capt. James De Wolfe, some time ago, on a voyage from the Danish settlements in Africa to the West Indies threw overboard a Negro woman alive.”

    Manchester said he had heard talk of this in North America. In his book Eyewitness Accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies, Isidore Paiewonsky writes, “This had induced him to bring in his complaint here in St. Thomas since De Wolfe was a Danish burger and resident in the island.” In other words, Manchester did some research, probably consulted his attorney. Certainly he knew the whereabouts of De Wolfe and it seems he made the trip in order to make the complaint. I can’t imagine someone traveling on business then saying, oh by the way, while I’m here I’ll do my civic duty by telling the officials of the rumors I’d heard in far away North America.

    Manchester “hoped that De Wolfe might be punished according to his deserts.” So it seems not only did Manchester want justice to be done, at great expense to him in time and money, by the way, but he also wanted De Wolfe done. We begin to suspect a motive in this Manchester, and rightly so.

    When Capt. De Wolfe had his say in court he “declared that in the year 1788, he commanded the ship Polly. At the Danish settlement on the coast of Africa he took on board a cargo of 142 negroes to bring them to the West Indies. It happened on the voyage that a Negro woman got the smallpox.” If you suspect she was the one who Capt. De Wolfe is accused of throwing overboard, you’d be right.

    He said he did, in fact, throw the woman overboard, but not before first isolating her and giving her the best treatment the ship could offer, then when her symptoms just got worse, consulted with his officers and crew about what they should do. You know the result.

   De Wolfe said he then sailed the Polly into St. Eustatius (Statia) and “immediately on his arrival at the Dutch island…he appeared before His Excellency Governor Johannes Runnels and had reported the incident in detail.”

    Two witnesses of the incident aboard the Polly each made a deposition which were duly sworn to before the Dutch governor who signed them. Of the infected woman one of them wrote, “In the course of three or four days, her disorder increased so as to become offensive and to render it dangerous for her to remain on board.” “Capt. De Wolfe represented to them that it would be, in all probability, at least 50 or 60 days before they could arrive at their port of destination.”

    On top of that the human cargo “were of a nation famed for its valor and inclination to revolt.” Of the crew of 15 only five had had the pox before. If the crew was struck by small pox a revolt was likely, they swore to the Dutch governor.

    “Under these circumstances, and as the severity of the disorder left no appearance of the woman recovering but on the contrary confirmed the beliefs of those who had the smallpox, that she would die in short time, no alternative was left to save the crew and cargo which consisted of 142 souls, but to throw this one so dangerously infected overboard,” Paiewonsky wrote.

    After hearing the evidence St. Thomas Judge CF Petri declared, “In consequence of which circumstances and after having been tried by a jury of respectable merchants, Capt. James De Wolfe … is cleared from all acquisitions and punishment and Isaac Manchester’s accusations against him removed and groundless.” These is no mention of a counter-suit by Capt. Jim or any other retribution against Manchester for his ‘groundless’ accusation.

    Certain merchants and tradesmen around Newport and Bristol, Rhode Island had a deeper view of the matter. Judge Petri’s declaration was made in 1795, but four years earlier, “the Federal Grand Jury, in its first session for Rhode Island, returned an indictment of murder against James De Wolfe for jettisoning a female slave who had caught smallpox on the Middle Passage aboard a bark of which he was master.” Thus, St. Thomas  was the second time De Wolfe was charged with the same murder. The years between those indictments, 1791-95, Capt. De Wolfe lived on St. Thomas.

    The year before this first indictment Capt. Jim was living the high life. He had just married Nancy Bradford, daughter of the governor or Rhode Island. He and his brothers had a business round-robin operation that “was almost foolproof,” according to George Howe, historian and relative of the De Wolfes.

    The De Wolfe brothers had sugar plantations in Cuba where they would process molasses and ship it on their own ships to Bristol where the De Wolfe distillery would turn it into rum. The rum along with other trade goods from North America would then be shipped to West Africa where they’d be exchanged for slaves which would then be shipped to Cuba where the cycle would begin again.

    By the time James was 30 he was a very rich man. Naturally that made people jealous, especially competitors who were not so successful. One of those was none other than Isaac Manchester. Isidore writes, “The evidence indicates that Isaac Manchester, the sea captain who brought charges against De Wolfe in St. Thomas, (in 1795) might well have been the ‘citizen’ who brought charges against De Wolfe in Rhode Island (in 1791). It is known that Manchester was a rival sea captain who lived in Bristol” (where Capt. James had his townhouse) “and who also traded for slaves on the coast of Africa.”

    What happened was when the first inditement came down, Capt. De Wolfe split for St. Thomas where because of its free port status he felt he would be free from being ported back to Rhode Island to stand trail. I can tell you by history and my own observation, St. Thomas welcomes people with money. It also turns its head when it comes to ones past. It welcomed Mexican General Santa Ana after his defeat in Texas and elsewhere. De Wolfe, like Santa Anna after him, established himself as a resident of the island.

    Whether or not A. H. Riise was one of those St. Thomas merchants on the jury which acquitted De Wolfe we don’t know, but it’s possible. The trail was in 1795 and A. H. Riise started his apothecary in 1838. He would have had to have been a very young man if he was on that jury, but it’s not impossible.

    I’m going to say Merchant Riise was a frugal man and sensible, not stuck on the conventions of sober society. I say this because he repurposed a slab of marble which became his apothecary stone where with well worn pestle he mashed roots, seeds, bark and beads into powders, pastes, tinctures and isolates.

    Our author, Isidore Paiewonsky, discovered the stone “more than 15 years ago, while cleaning a backroom of A.H. Riise’s Apothecary, I came across a square and solidly built stone masonry base with a white marble top. From way back in the 19th Century, Riise’s chemists had used this facility on which to mix medicine. The apothecary had been established in the year 1838.”

    “Since the top marble slab was in excellent condition, we removed it carefully. It was large and very heavy. It took several persons to lift and turn it.” On the backside was inscribed:  To the memory of Capt. James De Wolfe who died in New York City, 1837.

    “It proved to be a tombstone,” Isidore wrote.

    Very strange. The year after Capt. De Wolfe died, A. H. Riise opens his apothecary. Then somewhere along the way, he somehow acquired this tombstone. I imagine it was made locally as a tribute to Capt. De Wolfe, but how it was uprooted from its original intended place and sold as repurposed marble is a mystery. Methinks I sense the wrath of Isaac Manchester behind this minor sacrilege.

Post Script behind the Green Door