Sign highlights legacy of slave ship built in Marbleheadmarking a significant step in the town’s efforts to confront its role in colonial-era slavery.
The interpretive sign, unveiled Friday morning near Marblehead Harbor, details the construction of the ship Desire in 1637, just 17 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. The vessel was specifically built to transport enslaved people as part of the transatlantic slave trade.
“Many people had come to us asking why we weren’t talking about this history,” said Lauren McCormack, director of the Marblehead Museum. “When we had the opportunity to install multiple signs throughout town highlighting various people and events, including people of color and indigenous people, we thought it would be important to inform people about this part of our past.”
The Desire’s first voyage carried enslaved Native Americans, primarily Pequot women and children, to the British West Indies. The ship later returned with cotton, tobacco and enslaved Africans who had been working on Caribbean plantations. These were among the first enslaved Africans brought to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The sign project emerged from increased community interest in examining local connections to slavery, particularly following the racial justice movements of 2020. The Marblehead Racial Justice Team collaborated with the museum on research and implementation of the new signage.
“We’re working together to amplify this history,” McCormack said. “It’s part of a larger effort to tell a more complete story of Marblehead’s past.”
The sign’s installation was funded through a combination of sources, including grants from the Essex National Heritage Area and Mass Cultural Council, along with support from the Marblehead Museum and the Racial Justice Team. No taxpayer dollars were used for the project.
The marker represents a shift in how communities approach difficult aspects of their history. In the 1930s, during the Works Progress Administration era, a mural was painted in Abbot Hall depicting the Desire, celebrating the town’s shipbuilding capabilities without critically examining the vessel’s purpose.
“Our outlook on things has changed since the 1930s, even since the 1960s and 1980s,” McCormack noted. “We’re constantly evolving in how we understand and think about historical instances. Now, we wouldn’t celebrate it in the way that article was celebrating it.”
The Desire was a 120-ton square-rigged vessel, similar in size to the Susan Constant, a ship now reproduced at Jamestown, Virginia. Historical records of the Desire are limited, with primary documentation coming mainly from the journals of John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Winthrop’s matter-of-fact description of the ship’s cargo as “cotton, tobacco and Negroes” starkly illustrates how enslaved people were viewed as mere commodities.
While the ship was built in Marblehead, it primarily sailed in and out of Boston once constructed. The enslaved Africans brought back to Massachusetts were not delivered to Marblehead but were distributed throughout the colony.
The new sign is designed to last at least 10 years in the harsh coastal environment. Unlike traditional bronze markers, it incorporates color and layered information to better engage viewers and provide context for this complex history.
McCormack emphasized that while the construction of such a large vessel in a nascent colony was a remarkable feat of shipbuilding, it’s crucial to understand the human cost of the Desire’s mission. She noted the ship’s construction marked the beginning of New England’s direct involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, a commerce in human beings that would continue for more than two-and-a-half centuries.
