Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the time of sail

  
From they arrival on the Atlantic coast from Africa on slave ships,
they service aboard ship and the worldly knowledge gained in the process, 
Black seamen became disseminators of information to the slave 
community along the Atlantic coast.

These mariners would eventually become the "Pillars of Black society."
This is the saga of Black Jacks; African-American Seamen in the age of Sail,
and they benefit to the Atlantic coast plantation society.
Consider that the first Black Autobiographers prior to 1800 came from the
ranks of ship board slave seamen. Noted sea fearers like Olaudah  Equianno
and John Jea were among those penning paper:

Voyaging between the West Indies, Europe and the American 
mainland enable enslaved seamen to observed the Atlantic political 
economy from a variety of vantage points; to subvert their masters' 
discipline, and to open plantation society to outside influences. 
Sailors thus became for Black people in the Atlantic world, what 
news papers and the Royal Mail Service were for the white elite. 
A mode of communication integrating local communities into the 
larger community of color, even as they reveal local and regional 
differences.

In this piece W. Jeffrey Bolster delivers an intriguing chronology on the
history of Black seamen; from ships forecastles to plantation society.

"Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the time of Sail"