Abstract
In his “What’s in A Name: The Voyage of the Jolly Bachelor,” Peter Fay relates his recovery of a tattered slip of paper that contained twenty names of captives who had been brought to Newport from Sierra Leone on the snow, Jolly Bachelor in 1743. His deeply researched article details the abrupted voyage that brought the enslaved captives to Newport, where they were housed in a “slave pen” and sold at auction at a local coffee-house. Most importantly, Fay asks his reader to consider the theft of birth names from those brought here in captivity. Descendents of Battah, Bungoh, Burrah, Carrie, Morandah, Simboh and other Jolly Bachelor captives may walk among us today. Peter Fay writes and lectures on Rhode Island labor history, slavery and maritime history from a Marxist perspective. He serves on the boards of several historical societies, including Jamestown, where he lives. His new book, co-authored with Valerie Southern, A Peaceful Patch of Earth: Blacks in Jamestown, Rhode Island, in a Time of Racial Turbulence in America, 1850-1920, will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing in January 2026.
Recommended Citation
Fay, Peter
(2025)
"What’s in A Name: The Voyage of the Jolly Bachelor,"
Newport History: Journal of the Newport Historical Society: Vol. 103:
Iss.
292, Article 2.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/newporthistory/vol103/iss292/2
