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John Cohen (c.1786-1869), my fascinating and colorful 4th-great-grandfather, started life as an English Jew named "Jacob Cohen," served as a privateer for Colombia in its infancy, and ended life as "Juan Bautista Cohen," a Catholic Colombian tobacco planter. I have a separate Cohen family blog on his adventurous life and numerous descendants, and I've written previously in this blog about the two halves of Juan Cohen's life, sailor and trader, and his career as a privateer.
This third installment on John Cohen focuses on the five known ships involved in his maritime career (circa 1813-1824) as a way to explore his broader world. Earlier this year I came across digitized Jamaican shipping records that include John Cohen's Jamaican business partners and details on his trading, and I'll update this page as I learn more.
The death record of Juan Cohen, found among notarial records from El Carmen del Bolívar, Colombia, says he was born in Bristol, England, according to his son, Juan José Cohen. Bristol was a major English port, and if little John Cohen did grow up there, one wonders if that inspired him to live the life of a seaman and merchant.
By the time John Cohen was cited in newspapers as a privateer in 1813, he was around 27 years old and had an unknown number of years learning seafaring. I may never find the exact details of how John Cohen first became a seaman, but I have two examples for comparison.
Production still from "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003)
First, my step-great-great-grandfather Wolvert L. Ecker (1847-1885) was a steamboat captain, and through Ancestry I found his papers from when he earned an Ordinary Master's Certificate of Competency, in Liverpool, England in 1873. Ecker's earning a professional license to command a merchant vessel was probably a more formal process than it was in John Cohen's time, but in his application Ecker listed his 13 years' prior experience and his steady rise through the ranks:
- Boy seaman (ages 13-14)
- Ordinary seaman (age 14)
- Able seaman (ages 15-16)
- Able seaman and Mate (age 16-18)
- Quartermaster and 3rd Mate (ages 18-20)
- 2nd Mate (ages 20-23)
- 1st Mate (ages 23-25)
- Ordinary master (age 26)
- 1805 (age 14): Entered the British Navy as a First Class Volunteer. He served for the next seven years in the Mediterranean, Baltic Sea, and English Channel.
- 1806 (age 15): Promoted to Midshipman.
- 1812 (age 21): Promoted to Lieutenant.
- 1812-1813 (ages 21-22): Served in the East Indies.
- 1824-1830 (ages 33-39): Served on the Coast Blockade, stopping smugglers entering England.
- c.1855 (around age 64): Promoted to Commander, but he was already retired.
I. The Kingston Packet, a Felucca
John Cohen's first known privateering was in 1813 onboard the Kingston Packet, a felucca from Kingston, Jamaica. Nowadays, the actions of Somali or Houti pirates are rare and shocking, but more than two centuries ago privateering was commonplace. So long as two countries were at war, a ship captain could get a "letter of marque" allowing him to carry arms and attack and loot an enemy country's vessels. A "privateer" could refer to a vessel or the people aboard the vessel. Captured enemy ships were known as "prizes," and the privateer had to prove in admiralty court (usually in his homeland) that his loot, including "prizes," were lawfully taken.
In the War of 1812 alone, U.S. privateers caused $18 million in damages to British shipping (over $350 million today). Historian Faye M. Kert writes that 233 U.S. privateers (vessels) captured almost 2,000 prizes during that war.
I didn't realize that a number of these prizes ended up as merchant vessels, including the Kingston Packet. Early in 2024, I learned that Naval Office Shipping Lists for Jamaica are digitized and available online, and searching through the years 1810-1818, I found that the Kingston Packet was "a prize" registered in Kingston, Jamaica on February 15, 1811, which then returned to Kingston from Batabanó, Cuba carrying "40,000 Dollars" on March 21, 1811.
The Kingston Packet was a 65-ton vessel built in 1808 with a crew of 12, more or less. Its owner, Jacob Lindo (died 1832), was a slave owner and probable son of Alexandre Lindo (c.1742-1812), a French-born Sephardic Jew in Jamaica who made a fortune from the slave trade. From 1811 to 1812, the Kingston Packet went from Kingston to Batabanó and Havana, Cuba and back, usually trading dry goods for tobacco. Captain Philip Gomez (maybe another Sephardic Jew?) sailed the Kingston Packet in early 1811, but from mid-1811 to February 1812 Jacob Lindo sailed the ship himself.
July 1812 brought a change of captain and destination, as John L. Wilson sailed the Kingston Packet to Curacao. The following month, Wilson returned to Kingston from Cartagena, Colombia with "134 bales of cotton, 8,000 Dollars, 150 bushels of corn." Did John Cohen come along on this trip to Cartagena, which had declared its independence from Spain the previous November 11th? The "State of Cartagena," as part of the broader United Provinces of Nueva Grenada, officially established a privateering policy in October 1812, as noted by historian Edgardo Pérez Morales in his stupendous book No Limits To Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions. It's possible that John Cohen was among the first lured by lucrative prospects of privateering for Cartagena. Now the budding privateer needed a ship.
On January 12, 1813, the Kingston Packet left Kingston one more time with 10 men, commanded by Captain Henry Philips and heading for the "Turtling Keys" with "1 Bale of dry goods and 16 Packs of Twine." At some point over the next few months, the Kingston Packet fell into "Carthagenian" hands, and John Cohen, rather than Jacob Lindo, became the new owner.
The Royal Gazette of Jamaica (via The British Newspaper Archive) picked up the story with a news item on May 8, 1813: "About ten leagues from St. Jago [Santiago] de Cuba, the China was boarded by the felucca privateer Kingston Packet, under Carthagenian colours, commanded by a Capt. Philips, and owned by a Mr. Cohen, formerly of this city, which took some stores from the China, and then permitted her to proceed for her destination. The same privateer had two days before detained the Portuguese schooner Coimbra, Capt. Bragan, from Wilmington, (N.C.) board to St. Jago de Cuba, with lumber, and ordered her for Carthagena."
The China docked in Kingston on May 24, and shipping records noted its "Register [was] taken away by a Carthagenian privateer," and its remaining cargo was 8 hogsheads of molasses from Boston, Massachusetts.
On May 8, the Kingston Packet captured "the British schooner Nancy, Blodget, of St. Croix, from Port-au-Prince bound to St. Thomas," and a "prizemaster" started to sail this prize back to Cartagena, but it recaptured on May 12 "by the Golandrino and Emma, Spanish privateers."
The same day of May 12, the Kingston Packet had a run-in with another ship called The Neck and Nothing, and then shortly afterwards caught a "small Spanish schooner from Porto-Rico with cotton" named Juan y Catalina. That may be the prize mentioned in the Royal Gazette on June 12: "Notwithstanding the vigilance of our cruisers, the Carthagenian marauders Kingston Packet and Patriot still continue to infest the neighbourhood of this island. The Kingston Packet has lately taken a Spanish schooner, and sent Mr. Cohen, formerly of this city, in her as prizemaster to Carthagena." Note that John Cohen must have had a lot of sailing expertise to be a prizemaster!
The Kingston Packet arrived back at Cartagena on July 15, 1813. Later that month, the Royal Gazette wrote that the felucca had had "an unsuccessful cruise, having made only two prizes of little value. She was however refitting with all possible dispatch for a three months’ cruise between Cape Tiburon [in Haiti] and the East end of this island. Captain Phillips had abandoned her, and intended returning to his old trade of turtling." It's unclear what became of the Kingston Packet, but Henry Phillips did not appear again in Jamaican shipping records or in newpapers as a privateer.
John Cohen probably stayed on in Cartagena, as he was one of four reported British residents of Cartagena held captive in December 1815 by General Pablo Morillo, the Spaniard who had just reconquered the city. The other reported prisoners were John Macpherson, John Welsh, and Leonard Hebden. Morillo marched dozens of prisoners from Cartagena to Santa Marta, and 30 of them died. In March 1816, "46 British and American subjects," including probably John Cohen, were handed over to a British warship. Back in Jamaica, John Cohen returned to legal sea trade.
II. The Liverpool Packet, a Schooner
A Baltimore clipper, a series of schooner rigged privateers used by the U.S. during the War of 1812. (Wikimedia Commons)
Turning back to the Naval Office Shipping Lists for Jamaica, a 69-ton schooner named Liverpool Packet was registered in Kingston on March 4, 1816. It was a prize built in 1813 and owned by Mordecai Palache (died c.1837), a Jamaican Jewish slave owner. From May 1816 through June 1817 it brought dry goods and other manufactured items like earthenware, glassware, steel, and nails to Santa Marta, Colombia in exchange for mostly bales of cotton as well as unspecified hides, "Nicaragua wood," and in one case "30 Turtles." The haul in February 1817 was "10,000 Dollars & 15 hogs." Most of the trips were led by Captain Joseph Roache.
Then the Liverpool Packet got a new owner: Richard Bruce Kirkland (1785-1829), the Jamaican-born son of Colonel Moses Kirkland, a South Carolina Loyalist who fled Charleston at the end of the American Revolution. From May 1815 to October 1816, Kirkland sent his small sloop called the Duckenfield to the Mosquito Coast (now Nicaragua) and the San Blas Islands off Panama. By June 1817, Kirkland was jailed in Kingston for debt "on account of my former concerns with John Welsh & Co." I don't know any further details about John Welsh's business, but he was probably the same man held captive with John Cohen by General Morillo in 1815.
Kirkland wanted the Liverpool Packet to trade in San Blas, and he hired John Cohen as the captain. Jamaican shipping records list three voyages of the Liverpool Packet led by Cohen in 1818.
The Liverpool Packet returned to Kingston from San Blas on April 25, 1818, bearing 16 bags of cocoa, 25 tons of fustic, 60 hogsheads of tortoise shell, 1 bale of cotton and 1,000 hogsheads of sarsaparilla.
The Liverpool Packet returned to Kingston from San Blas on August 4, 1818 with 7 men. Its cargo was listed as 3 bales of cotton, 23 bags of cocoa, 10 tons of fustic, 900 hogsheads of tortoise shell, and 2,500 hogsheads of sarsaparilla.
Interestingly, the shipping journal Lloyd's List included a report of privateering from John Cohen: "Kingston, Jamaica, August 8. - By the Liverpool packet, Cohen, which arrived on 2d inst. from San Blas, we learn that 2 privateers had lately been there, said to be commissioned at Carthagena, and some of her people had been on shore at Little Pleyen Keys, and plundered several trading vessels of stores, &c."
The Liverpool Packet returned to Kingston from San Blas on September 12, 1818 with a different captain, A. Demetrius. Then on September 17 it set sail for "Old Providence" (now Isla de Providencia, Colombia) with yet another captain, William Browner.
Old Providence was invaded and seized a few months before, in July 1818, by Admiral Louis-Michel Aury (1788-1821), a French-born privateer. Aury first served as a privateer for Cartagena in 1812, and then after the reconquest of Cartagena he joined Simón Bolívar in Haiti and split with the independista cause over withheld backpay. Aury then joined Mexico's privateers in 1816 and got funding from a secretive group of New Orleans merchants called the "New Orleans Association." The group, which included disgraced New York City Mayor Edward Livingston and his wife's brother, Auguste Davezac, who was Andrew Jackson's aide-de-camp during the War of 1812, also backed Aury's failed attempts to "liberate" and rule Galveston, Texas and Amelia Island, Florida.
Aury was approached in May 1820 by a 19-year-old independista soldier named Joaquín Acosta, who requested military aid for his commander in Chocó, Colombia. Acosta, who later became a geologist, historian, and politician, wrote down this episode in his diary, and his daughter, Soledad Acosta de Samper, quoted it when writing his biography. Aury stalled and would not commit to helping the Colombian army, and Acosta finally left Old Providence for Chocó, onboard the schooner of "Mr. J. Cohen"!
Digitized Jamaican shipping records end in December 1818, so I don't know for certain whether John Cohen was still sailing the Liverpool Packet or another Jamaican ship. Acosta's account of "Mr. Cohen" (using the English title "Mr.", not "Señor"!) trading along the Gulf of Urabá does sound like his previous work: "Mr. Cohen was taking a shipment of merchandise to the coast of San Blas, where he bartered the European goods for the natural products of the country. [...] I witnessed the exchange of merchandise, and I was a witness of the good faith of the Indians. The merchant hands his merchandise to two or three Indians, only telling them the price of them. They distribute them immediately to their companions according to what each one needs. The ship leaves immediately and returns a month later (this is almost always done in the month of May, because it is the fishing season for hawksbill sea turtles [tortuga de carey]) and the Indians are already waiting to faithfully deliver the stipulated price."
Acosta then wrote, "The day we arrived, [San Blas] Coast received a dispatch from the Governor of Chocó, appointing Cacique Cuipana, Governor General of all the Indigenous people of Darién. The Cacique was a very respectable old man, and I proposed, aided by Mr. Cohen, to support the intent of the Government, which wanted to gain the sympathies of those Indigenous people. For this purpose, it was necessary to have [Cuipana] recognized with the greatest possible pomp.
"We solemnly summoned all the neighboring tribes; we hoisted the national flag; artillery was fired; the governor's dispatch and a proclamation were read to them; and finally, so the party would end happily, Mr. Cohen gave them a demijohn of rum.
"The Cacique received the staff, a symbol of command, with many signs of appreciation, and his subjects were firing shots until ten at night."
Acosta parted ways with John Cohen the following day, and wrote of his time on the ship, "I was treated like a prince." Soledad Acosta snootily commented eight decades later, "What happened to [my father] in the last few months was so bad, that the life he lived on a miserable merchant schooner seemed royal!"
III & IV. El Centinela, a Brigantine, and La Pensée, a Slave Ship
The Battle of Lake Maracaibo (1823), showing Colombian ships attacking a Spanish fort.
When John Cohen and his three fellow Englishmen were in the custody of General Pablo Morillo in 1815, it was reported that they were "stripped of every farthing they possessed in the world, and not even common rations allowed them by General Morillo. They had been ill of fever and ague for near two months, notwithstanding which, they were driven about, tied arm in arm, from town to town, without shoes or hates [sic], existing merely upon the charity of the inhabitants. All their hopes were in the arrival of a British man of war to claim them as British subjects, and to carry them off."
Cohen descendants proudly say that John Cohen fought alongside the independistas, and given how poorly he was treated by the Spanish, I would think he took the cause to heart, and was not just an opportunistic soldier of fortune. Family stories claim that he was also a Freemason who helped a fellow Mason, Admiral José Prudencio Padilla, with ships, supplies, and strategy.
The historian Enrique Otero D'Costa wrote that "Captain Cohen, a Sephardic Jew from Curacao" ["el Capitán Cohen, judío sefardita de Curazao"] took part in Padilla's naval attack on Cartagena on June 24, 1821, commanding El Centinela, a corsair brigantine. Padilla's victory against the Spanish was a major step towards Cartagena's liberation that October.
Business records present a more complicated story. Richard Bruce Kirkland, now called "Ricardo Bruce Kirkland," first appeared in the notarial records of Santa Marta, Colombia on December 11, 1820, receiving a bond of 6,000 pesos from a wealthy local, Miguel María Martínez de Aparicio, to finance his ship, the armed schooner Turco. Captain Pedro Bradford (born 1791), a Yankee from Bristol, Rhode Island, sailed the Turco "to privateer against the enemies of la República Colombiana," for "the Most Excellent Lord Admiral, Citizen Luis Brión."
The following month, on January 31, 1821, Miguel María Martínez de Aparicio bought El Centinela, a 340-ton "war brigantine" with ten 12-gauge cannons and 100 rifles, for 16,000 pesos. The sellers were Ricardo Bruce Kirkland, Juan Cohen, and Henrique Alauze (a French-born privateer). Subsequently in the registry, Martínez de Aparicio gave Kirkland and Cohen the legal power to "sell, exchange, dispose" and otherwise handle El Centinela and its armaments.
Then on March 3, 1821, Ricardo Bruce Kirkland, "in the name of my partner Juan Cohen," sold a 47-ton schooner named Ana María to Martínez de Aparicio for 1,500 pesos. Martínez de Aparicio immediately gave Henrique Alauze legal power over the ship.
These tedious legal exchanges came into play later that year, when El Centinela was captured by the U.S. anti-piracy patrol. A few days before, El Centinela had captured a French slave ship, the brigantine La Pensée, and its 220 African captives onboard as a prize. In the resulting legal case in New Orleans, Richard Bruce Kirkland and my ancestor Juan Cohen claimed in court they were the rightful owners of 220 abducted human beings.
It cannot be stressed enough, the case of the captured slave ship La Pensée was a human rights tragedy. More than two centuries later, the convoluted admiralty court case is a clear mockery of justice. Of 26 pages preserved by the National Archives at Fort Worth, Texas related to this trial, only one page reflects on 220 enslaved African people as anything more than nameless cargo — a bill for their medical treatment.
Dr. Edward Browning billed the U.S. Marshals for "attending on the sick Africans at Mazureau’s plantation on an average of twenty-two bed rid, and about twenty out of the hospital, all labouring under dysentery, scurvy, [illegible], fevers, pleurisy, etc. - $200. To attending on three sailors of brig Pensée - $30. To medicines furnished to the guards for the patients - $25. Total: $255." (The total is roughly $6,800 today.)
La Pensée was taken into U.S. custody on November 12, 1821, and court records say 2 of the 220 enslaved people had died by the time the ship reached New Orleans on December 1. Historian Jonathan M. Bryant found that there were initially 270 enslaved people on board when La Pensée left behind the Cabo Verde islands and São Tomé, off of West Africa. By the time French courts had condemned the slavers in July 1822, only 160 enslaved people from La Pensée had survived. About 40% of the African captives on board La Pensée died in transit from Africa, to the Caribbean, New Orleans, and finally France.
The court case of La Pensée also skirted around the issue that Colombia, France, and the United States had all outlawed the transatlantic slave trade by 1821. A similar case in 1819, involving a captured French slave-smuggling ship named Jeune Eugenie, ended with the abolitionist judge saying “the slave trade is repugnant to the universal law of nations.” La Pensée's case would not be as profound.
La Pensée was a 129-ton brigantine, or a "Brick Gollette" in the French documents, that was built in 1819 in Nantes. It left Nantes on April 21, 1821 with two cannons and a crew of 20 human smugglers, including the ship's captain and part owner François Courpon. It had two white passengers, the merchant Jean-Baptiste Pecarere, another part owner, and his Swedish manservant. While France officially banned its slave trade in 1818, another 305 slaving voyages, including La Pensée, would launch from Nantes through 1831.
As said before, La Pensée went to Cabo Verde and São Tomé, if not other parts of West Africa, and brought 270 abducted African people across the Atlantic, forever separating them from their homes, families, and loved ones. By early November 1821, La Pensée was approaching its final destination of Santiago de Cuba, when El Centinela attacked and captured the vessel. Richard B. Kirkland and Juan Cohen were in Santa Marta at the time, and El Centinela's captain was Peter J. Bradford, the Yankee privateer. A few days later, on November 12, 1821, just south of "Cumberland Harbor" (the English name for Guantánamo Bay!), El Centinela and La Pensée were captured by an American sloop of war, the USS Hornet, commanded by Captain Robert Henley (1783-1828), the nephew of Martha Washington.
The U.S. Navy tasked Henley with capturing pirates of the Caribbean, and to modern eyes La Pensée's case was clearly piracy. France and Colombia were not at war, so the legal fig leaf of privateering did not apply. The African captives had yet to be sold in Cuba to Spanish subjects, but Kirkland and Cohen later claimed the "cargo of slaves was taken and captured on the High Seas... on suspicion that the said slaves were Spanish property."
Henley handed over La Pensée to an American prizemaster, William M. Armstrong. A December 1821 news item quoted Armstrong saying "the inhabitants of St. Jago [Santiago] de Cuba are highly irritated and incensed against our government, in consequence of the active measures which have been taken to suppress the slave trade." He also said Cubans viewed piracy as "a fair retaliation for our interference with the African trade. This state of feeling is truly disgusting and horrible."
Henley tried to bring the ships to Pensacola, then part of the newly acquired U.S. territory of "West Florida," but a local judge refused to take on the case, saying the ships were not captured in his jurisdiction. So Henley turned to New Orleans, which was full of leading citizens who financially supported Latin American privateers. El Centinela (called "the Centinella" in American documents) and the USS Hornet reached New Orleans's harbor on November 30, and La Pensée arrived on December 1. About 218 captives were still alive aboard La Pensée, meaning roughly 20% of the Africans had died up to that point.
On December 3, Judge John Dick (1788-1824), the first federal judge in the District of Louisiana, issued a warrant for the seizure of La Pensée and its 220 captives. U.S. marshals brought the enslaved people to "Mazureau’s plantation," which was probably owned by Étienne Mazureau, the law partner of Edward Livingston, funder of privateers. A Black Creole song of the time mocks Mazureau, saying he looked in his office "like a frog / in a bucket of water." Meanwhile, Henley returned to New Orleans on December 25 with the crew of the Mosca, another Colombian privateer.
Henley filed his libel and three other claims were filed in December 1821 and January 1822:
- Robert Henley, commander of the United States sloop of war Hornet vs. The French brig La Pensée and 220 slaves - Henley sought money from the French slavers, for having recaptured their property from privateers.
- Kirkland & Cohen vs. Captain Henley & the Brig Centinella & her prize the Pensée - Kirkland and Cohen wanted their two ships back and claimed they owned the 220 captives. They asked for $100,000 in damages (now about $2.7 million). Edward Livingston and Eleazer W. Ripley, a former brigadier general who later supported Livingston's Senate campaign, wrote claims on their behalf.
- François Courpon, the captain of La Pensée, wanted his ship and human captives back.
- François Guillemin, the French counsel to New Orleans, wanted the ships and captives turned over to French custody and the human smugglers prosecuted for illegal slave trading.
"Livingston, I presume?" Edward Livingston's portrait (c.1827) and his signature on Kirkland and Cohen's claim (1822).
The District Court had its next session on January 21, 1822, and Judge John Dick's docket included the privateers La Pensée and Mosca. An anonymous writer gave a clearly biased account of the trials in the Louisiana State Gazette on June 6, 1822, but it does capture what a financial backer of privateers would have thought: "Henley also brought in Capt. Peter I. [sic] Bradford of the privateer Centinella – Lieut. Chitty, formerly an officer of the British navy, and son of the member of Parliament for Deal; Lieut. Duplessis, nephew of Admiral Bruix, who was minister of Marine in France, and was killed in command at the battle of the Nile; Capt. Kikhart, nephew of Admiral Kikhart of Curacoa; Dr. Burns, of the Irish legion, and chief of the medical staff attached to the etat Major of Admiral Brion, and about ninety petty officers and seamen. These persons were brought up for examination before the hon. Judge Dick, upon a Habeus Corpus, and their very characters, their personal deportment, their commissions signed by the illustrious Bolivar; the marked correctness of their conduct on their cruise, rendered the prosecution contemptible, and the idea of their piracy ridiculous. ... The Court, and every person who took the trouble to examine the case, were perfectly satisfied that Henley’s zeal had outstripped all discretion."
The verdict from Judge Dick came on March 7, 1822, and he wrote, "I consider the brig Centinella to be a lawfully commissioned cruizer of the Republic of Colombia." Dick also ruled that a privateer by definition could not commit piracy: "I am of opinion that the seizure of the brigantine La Pensée and her cargo, by this cruizer, was not a piratical aggression, but a capture involving the question of prize or no prize, and of which this court, as a neutral tribunal, cannot take cognizance." He awarded ownership of La Pensée and its 220 captives to Kirkland and Cohen, and by denying French ownership also threw out Henley's case for damages and Guillemin's call for prosecution. Dick also ruled that all financial damages had to be considered by French and Colombian courts.
Dick sidestepped the moral dilemma over the slave trade raised in the Jeune Eugenie case, by claiming it wasn't clearly obvious that Kirkland and Cohen wanted to sell the abducted Africans. He wrote, "had it appeared conclusively that the Centinella, at the time of her capture by the Hornet, was proceeding to dispose of the Africans of La Pensée, as slaves, in violation of the laws of Colombia, the question of the slave trade being repugnant to the universal law of nations, might then have arisen."
President James Monroe ordered a copy of the La Pensée decision for the House of Representatives, and then proceeded to ignore it. Back on January 22, Monroe was advised by Attorney General William Wirt that the executive branch had the power to turn La Pensée back over to the French. Monroe did just that, and La Pensée, El Centinela, and the enslaved Africans were handed over to French authorities. El Centinela was probably renamed and sold in France, and a French court in Bordeaux finally prosecuted La Pensée's human smugglers in July 1822. By that point, 40% of La Pensée's captives had died. Juan Cohen would continue to buy and sell people through the 1840s.
V. El General Padilla, a Schooner and Former Slave Ship
The next phase of Juan Cohen's life involved another schooner, El General Padilla, which was named after the Afro-Colombian admiral. According to chronicler George Locke Howe, the Padilla was formerly a slave ship belonging to George DeWolf (1778-1844), one of the most infamous and prolific American slave traders. The Colombian Navy bought a number of former slave ships from Baltimore and other U.S. ports. DeWolf, who came from Rhode Island, happened to have an uncle who married the aunt of Captain Peter J. Bradford, the Colombian privateer.
Howe said the first privateer to sail the General Padilla was Lieutenant Thomas Severs (died 1850), an American who was removed from his command in 1821. Juan Cohen and Peter Bradford then traded off sailing the Padilla, along with Gaston Davezac, probably a brother or relative of Auguste Davezac of the "New Orleans Association." A letter from Gaston Davezac to President Andrew Jackson from circa 1829-1833 survives, where he thanked Jackson for making him commander of the cutter Pulaski, saying "How grateful I feel for the mark of your favour."
My Cohen family blog gives plenty of details on Juan Cohen's privateering from 1822-1824, but the known ships targeted by the Padilla under the command of Cohen were:
- The Protector, a Spanish brig, attacked on September 13, 1822, off Cape San Antonio, Cuba.
- The Draper, a ship that left Havana under the command of Capt. Smith of Boston, on November 3, 1822.
- The schooner Culloden, attacked by Cohen's Padilla and the Centella, commanded by Captain Charles C. Hopner, on November 29, 1822 "between Florida and Cuba."
- The Mariquito, a Spanish ship, attacked in September 1824 while on route to Havana, Cuba.
In August 1824, the British paper Colonist and Weekly Courier gave a vivid, hyperbolic, and racist description of Colombian privateers: "the General Padilla, supposed to be owned and manned by a parcel of rascals and ragamuffins of all nations, 'black, white, and gray,' [who] have adopted the motto of Alaric – 'Havoc and Spoil and Ruin are their gain.' They seem determined to sink, burn, and destroy."
Compare that with:
- The raid of the Draper - "The conduct of the captain and crew of the Padilla was otherwise correct." (The Charleston Mercury). "Capt. Smith states that the strictest discipline was observed by the boarders – no trunks or desks were broken open – nor personal ill treatment suffered." (The Charleston Daily Courier).
- The Culloden "was boarded by the Colombian Schr. Padilla, Cohen, from Charleston, on a cruize, and treated very politely." (The Charleston Mercury).
By 1825, Juan Cohen was back to trading on land, serving as an agent in Cartagena for Commodore Walter Dawes Chitty (1794-1838), a former aide-de-camp of Simón Bolívar and the brother-in-law of Admiral William Brown, the founder of the Argentinian Navy. Perhaps this was the same Chitty put on trial in New Orleans in 1822? Later, Juan Cohen and Pablo Carles, a French-born former privateer, teamed up to found a commercial house, "Cohen & Carles," in 1838 in Barranquilla.
Peter Bradford probably died out at sea. Louis-Michel Aury was reportedly killed after being thrown from his horse, mirroring Juan Cohen's death nearly 50 years later. Charles C. Hopner continued as a privateer for Mexico and Venezuela, married the sister of Venezuelan President José Antonio Páez, and was murdered in 1837.
Richard Bruce Kirkland, who died young in 1829, spent his last years pushing for a transoceanic canal through Colombia. Rather than crossing Panama, Kirkland proposed groing through the Province of Chocó, where he and Juan Cohen and a third Jamaican, Manuel Morris, had set up a trading firm. Kirkland "personally surveyed the country from the mouth of the river Atrato to the Pacific Ocean" and tried convincing the Colombian Congress in late 1821 that the project "can be executed with ease," and he needed "certain exclusive privileges for one hundred years." The Colombian government rejected the proposal but said Kirkland could present "more moderate proposals" in peacetime. The Panama Canal was not completed until 1914.
Juan Cohen died in 1869 in an obscure part of Caribbean Colombia, and his greatest legacy is his hundreds of descendants stretching from Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the United States and Europe, and beyond. He was a man of his times, uncaring and unbothered by profiting from slavery. A close study of his maritime trade and his work as a Colombian revolutionary reveals seeds that grew into today's globalized world. Colombia solicited help from people around the world as it fought for independence, and a certain British Jew forever changed his life by answering that call.
Questions? Comments? Please email me at ruedafingerhut (at) gmail.com.
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