“Travel on the Highways of the Broad Atlantic”: Toward a Brief History of the Cape Verdean Packet Trade

Abstract

Beginning with the purchase of the schooner Nellie May and concluding with the docking of the schooner Ernestina in the Port of New Bedford, Cape Verdeans in southeastern New England and on the Cape Verde islands off the West African coast purchased and refurbished old, decommissioned ships from New Bedford's bygone whaling and fishing era. Between 1892 and 1965, this fleet of ships, named the Cape Verdean Packet Trade, specialized in the transportation of goods, people, and news between the United States and the Cape Verde islands. The packet trade was a large-scale effort that transformed the Atlantic into a highway for Cape Verdean trade, communication, emigration, and family reunification. Cape Verdeans’ radical repurposing of the packet vessels converted the Atlantic Ocean from a site of dispossession, enslavement, and immobility to a reimagined zone of possibility and freedom through mobility for African-descended peoples. These Cape Verdean–owned and operated packets assisted Cape Verdean Americans in maintaining long-term connections to loved ones separated by the Atlantic. In this way, the Cape Verdean Packet Trade's more than 1,200 voyages connected the United States to Cape Verde as part of a transnational social field and single economic universe for more than seventy years.