THE WATER THEANDBLOOD

By ROSALIND BENTLEY

for as long as michael higgins could remember, the old hickory walking cane stood sentinel at his grandmother’s house in Aiken, South Carolina. Sometimes, when his grandmother would touch it, she’d tell Higgins about her grandfather, Ward Lee, the man who carved it: he’d cradled the curved handle in his hand as he walked for so many years that the wood was burnished from the caress of his palm.

Lee’s skin was dark as molasses. He was a skilled artisan who took pride in his creativity. But above all, Lee believed in the importance of family and having a place of your own. “She said he always talked about how we had to keep the family together,” Higgins said. What Higgins' grandmother never told him was the reason Lee wanted so desperately to keep his descendants close.

Lee knew what it was to be ripped away from his family when he was a boy. He knew the ache of young muscles that could not be stretched out because they were chained in place. He knew the stench of nearly 500 bodies, including his own, packed like spoons in a cramped, stifling ship hold for six weeks. He knew the chill of ocean water against raw skin in November as he, still a child, trudged barefoot and naked onto the south shore of Jekyll Island with about 400 other Africans. Lee, whose real name was Cilucängy, and the other captives had been part of one of the most notorious chapters of American history, one that left a lasting mark on Jekyll Island and the nation.

example of elegance and luxury. Built in New York, with brass fittings, gleaming exotic woods, and bespoke details all the way down to the leather-bound volumes in its library, the Wanderer was the talk of the town. It was every bit as fast as it was stately. It was faster than just about any vessel in the New York Yacht Club.

After purchasing it, Corrie had a secret deck added to the yacht and a 15,000-gallon freshwater tank installed— necessary additions for the gruesome task ahead.

There were whispers that the Wanderer was being turned into a slave ship, but time after time, from the harbors of New York to the mouth of the Congo River in Africa, Corrie and his crew eluded authorities who were on the lookout for yachts and ships suspected of being part of the illegal slave trade.

In October 1858, the Wanderer made its way down the Congo, where an elaborate network of traders had set up barracoons to house captives meant for sale: men, women, boys, and girls. Some had been captured in raids by rival tribes. Some had been tricked into bondage. They hailed from points across the sub-Saharan portion of the continent. “They enticed kids with sweets and trinkets, and some were snatched out of their mother’s arms,” said researcher April Hynes, who has an upcoming book on the Wanderer saga.