New Bedford's Whaling Museum announces groundbreaking 'Sailing to Freedom' exhibition

The Herald News
·2 min read

NEW BEDFORD — The New Bedford Whaling Museum announces a groundbreaking new exhibition chronicling the experiences of enslaved persons who made their way to freedom using coastal water routes along the Atlantic seaboard, opening in the Centre Street Gallery at the Whaling Museum.

Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground explores stories of the Underground Railroad through the lens of American maritime labor and industries, and seeks to expand historical understanding of how freedom was achieved by sea for many African Americans. It is an extension of the 2021 publication of the same title, edited by Timothy Walker and released by UMass Press.

“Stories of the Underground Railroad are among the most powerful and significant narratives in American history,” said Michael Dyer, curator for Maritime History at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. “As our country undergoes a critical conversation about our history and the lens through which we frame it, this exhibition will serve as an important learning tool to broaden societal understanding of the many paths to freedom.”

Michael Dyer, co-curator of the Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad, walks past a backlit daguerreotype showing two teenage sisters, Mary, and Emily Edmonson, who were two of the seventy-seven people captured while seeking freedom aboard the schooner Pearl in 1848 bound for the Delaware Canal. After traumatic moves between the slave markets of Maryland and New Orleans, the sisters were emancipated through the efforts of Northern abolitionists.

Research undertaken for this exhibition demonstrates that a far larger number of enslaved persons escaped bondage by sea than previously thought, particularly those fleeing from coastal areas in the Deep South where slaves were commonly employed in diverse maritime industries.

“While scholarship on the Underground Railroad has focused almost exclusively on overland escape routes from the South, the ocean was the only viable path to liberation for thousands of enslaved people, particularly from the coastal deep South,” said Timothy Walker, Guest Curator and editor of Sailing to Freedom. “I am thrilled to see this exhibition come to the New Bedford Whaling Museum to share these incredible stories of resilience, ingenuity, and triumph.”

For more information on the exhibition and the surrounding events, please visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum website.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Whaling Museum announces 'Sailing to Freedom' exhibition