1841 — The Amistad Africans Sail Home

On November 27, 1841, the 35 surviving Africans of the Amistad mutiny boarded the ship Gentleman in New York harbor and sailed home to Sierra Leone. Led by Sengbe Pieh — known as Cinqué — they had seized the Spanish schooner La Amistad two years earlier. The United States Supreme Court later ruled they had been illegally enslaved and were free people, a judgment that turned captives who had freed themselves into passengers lawfully bound for home at last.

Funded by abolitionists after the president refused to pay for their passage, the Gentleman reached Freetown in January 1842 — one of history's rare successful voyages back across the Middle Passage.