Bill Pinkney, first Amistad captain, remembered as 'consummate educator'
Sep. 6—MYSTIC — Bill Pinkney had already sailed solo around the world via Cape Horn ― the first Black man to do so ― when he joined the Mystic Seaport Museum's board of trustees in 1994.
He would serve the board for 14 years, a period in which he'd sail with a crew and a group of teachers through the Middle Passage, retracing the Atlantic slave trade route traversed by millions of enslaved Africans, and become the first captain of the museum-built schooner Amistad, a replica of the 1839 slave ship that came to symbolize the oppressed's quest for freedom.
Pinkney, 87, died Aug. 31 in Atlanta, having sustained a head injury in a fall earlier in the week, his former wife, Ina Pinkney, told The New York Times.
Mystic Seaport Museum had recognized Pinkney in October, awarding him the America and the Sea Award at a black-tie gala at the Metropolitan Club in New York City.
On Tuesday, Quentin Snediker, the museum's former shipyard director, remembered Pinkney as a man of impeccable character and integrity.
"Whatever he said you could count on as truth," Snediker said. "He had such a diverse career ― as a cosmetics executive, sailing around the world, as a teacher. He was the consummate teacher. Every move he made on a boat, he was teaching young people what to do. He had the ability, as a Black man, to fully express himself without regard to his race."
"It was an important lesson he wanted to impart: that you can do whatever you want to do," Snediker said.
Snediker said he first met Pinkney in 1972, when Pinkney sailed as a passenger on the Mystic Whaler, a schooner that used to be a fixture at the museum. At the time, Snediker was the captain.
In the late 1980s, Pinkney began talking about the Amistad project, Snediker said.
Pinkney served as the replica schooner's first captain from 2000 to 2003. A few years before it was launched, filmmaker Steven Spielberg memorialized the original slave ship's story, which includes an uprising among the African tribesmen on board, a U.S. revenue cutter's subsequent capture of the schooner, which was towed to New London, and the ensuing legal battle the U.S. Supreme Court eventually resolved in the captives' favor.
"That first summer of Amistad, we sailed quite a bit together," Snediker said. "We took Amistad to OpSail 2000 in New York City, and to Chicago ..."
Snediker said he and Pinkney would often go long periods without talking to one another but that they had had a long conversation about a week before Pinkney's death. He said Pinkney was working with a publisher interested in documenting his around-the-world voyage.
Susan Tamulevich, executive director of Custom House Maritime Museum in New London, said Pinkney spoke at the museum in 2008, the same year she arrived.
"He was dynamic, inspirational, such a wonderful example to give our audience," she said. "He was a great educator who had worked closely with the Seaport on the Middle Passage program. ... He sailed singlehandedly around the world."
Tamulevich said she had been reminded of Pinkney's talk by recent mention of research into the Underground Railroad, the secret, 19th-century network that helped enslaved Blacks reach freedom in the Unites States and Canada.
"A lot of the transportation took place on various waterways," she said. "People of color, right from the start, have been the watermen of this country. When you talk about sailing around the world, that is not yachting; it's sailing ... It has a very resonant and deep history with people of color."
By noting the Underground Railroad's connection to waterways, Pinkney enlightened his audience in an important way, Tamulevich said.
According to his biography on the Mystic Seaport Museum's website, Pinkney recruited teachers to sail with him on the Middle Passage voyage while helping develop curriculum for their students. Departing in 1999 on a 78-foot ketch, Pinkney, the teachers and crew traveled 12,000 miles in six months, sailing first from Puerto Rico to Brazil and then across the Atlantic to Accra in Ghana, and to Dakar in Senegal.
The teachers communicated with students in several hundred U.S. schools via computer and satellite TV.
"During Pinkney's around-the-world trip aboard a 47-foot sailboat from 1990 to 1992, schoolchildren in Chicago and Boston, where his trip began and ended, tracked his progress through video diaries, phone conversations, satellite technology and lesson plans," the museum biography says.
Born and raised in Chicago, Pinkney returned to Puerto Rico ― where he had served in the Navy and initially honed his sailing skills ― after retiring.
The Times reported that he variously had worked as an elevator mechanic, a limbo dancer, a conga player, a makeup artist, a cosmetics executive at Revlon and other companies and as a public information officer for the city of Chicago.
