From: Kitt Alexander [kittalex@gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2012 4:27 PM
> To: Bolster, Jeff (author of Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail)
> Subject: 1st black American sea captain
> Hi, Jeff,
> Can you tell me who this would be?
> I've mislaid your book.
> Best,
> Kitt

Hi Kitt:
Time to buy another one!
Best known and best-documented would be Capt Paul Cuffe, from Westport Massachusetts, the son of an Ashanti man-slave and a Wampanoag mother. Cuffee owned, built, and commanded a number of commercial ocean-going vessels vessels. Next best-known, probably, was Capt Absalom Boston, of Nantucket, who commanded a whaleship during the 1830s. Of course there were many less-known or virtually unknown slaves who commanded small vessels in coastal waters in the Carolinas and the Caribbean, but not as free men, and not in ocean-going service.
> Hope this helps; and I hope you are well.
> Best, Jeff

Paul Cuffe (1759-1817)
Entrepreneur, sea captain, social activist, philanthropist, colonizationist and leader who fought for the empowerment of African Americans.

By Vanessa Julye

The 1842 seal of Captain Paul Cuffe, showing his brig Traveler in which he provided passage for freed slaves to Sierra Leone (photo courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum).Paul Cuffe was born in Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts in a family of ten children. His father Kofi was a manumitted enslaved African and a member of the Akan tribe of Ghana. Paul Cuffee’s mother, Ruth Moses, was a Native American of the Wampanoag tribe from Martha’s Vineyard. Ebenezer Slocum, a Friend, purchased Kofi (later Cuffe Slocum) in the 1720s. Twenty-two years later John Slocum purchased Cuffe Slocum from his uncle and freed him in 1745.

Robert Smalls was not the first black American sea captain. See the book Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail by W. Jeffrey Bolster. Harvard University Press, 1997. I've emailed Jeff asking for the name of the 1st. Kitt (robertsmalls.org)