Spielberg's "Amistad"
Montauk provided the genesis of "Jaws" for Steven Spielberg by way of the author Peter Benchley, a sometime customer of the white-shark hunter and charter boat captain Frank Mundus.
Now another chapter out of Montauk's colorful past - the much more serious story of the slave ship Amistad - is about to get the Spielberg treatment.
The tale of the schooner Amistad is a scriptwriter's dream: a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and a courtroom drama played out at the highest level, the U.S. Supreme Court.
The story should make one of the great movies, especially in Mr. Spielberg's hands.
Off Culloden Point
In August of 1839, the schooner, with 49 African mutineers and two Cuban prisoners on board, dropped anchor off Culloden Point, her sails in tatters, her hull encrusted with barnacles.
A day before, off the South Shore of Long Island, it had dawned on the Africans, natives of Sierra Leone, that they had not been sailing for weeks toward their homeland as the Cubans had led them to believe.
The Amistad's captain was long gone, dead at the hands of a young man called Cinque, the leader of the mutiny. He and his shipmates had been among hundreds of African people captured months before and chained between decks, cheek to jowl, to make the long trip to Cuba to be sold. They were then transferred to the Amistad for the journey to the Cuban port of Guanaja.
Mutiny And Death
The captives might have lived out their days in slavery had it not been for two things. One was a joke made by the ship's cook. The other was Cinque's spirit and lust for freedom.
En route to Guanaja, the Africans asked the cook what was to happen to them. The cook replied in jest that they were to be killed and eaten. They believed him. That very night they mutinied, killing the captain, the cook, and other crew members with large cane knives seized from the ship's cargo.
The Cubans, Don Jose Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez, who were accompanying their new slaves on the voyage, were spared, in order that they could pilot the ship back to Sierra Leone.
North By Night
Technically, the importation of slaves into Spanish colonies was illegal, by virtue of an 1820 treaty between Spain and Great Britain. To get around the law, papers had been drawn making Cinque and the others domestic servants.
In reality, Ruiz had bought Cinque and other African men for $450 each. Montez bought three girls, aged eight to 13.
After the mutiny, knowing that Cinque could not read the compass, Montez surreptitiously steered the Amistad north and west by night, in hope of rescue.
On Aug. 20, 1839, a New York City pilot boat came alongside the schooner. The Cubans were sent below. One of the Mendi, Banna, who spoke a little English, asked if they were off the coast of Africa.
On The Beach
Having comprehended the truth, they turned east. Cinque ordered the helmsman to steer for a light, which turned out to be the Montauk Lighthouse. The appearance of rocks caused Amistad to navigate around the Point. She finally dropped anchor off Culloden.
Members of the ship's party wandered toward Montauk village on the south shore of Fort Pond Bay, some wearing only handkerchiefs as breechclouts, others wrapped in blankets. They needed food, and held up Spanish gold coins in payment.
The next morning, a party of Sag Harbor men led by Captain Henry Green found the Africans on the beach, cooking. Banna asked the local men if they had rum.
No rum, but a bottle of gin, yes, which was sold to the newcomers.
The Africans next asked if there were slaves in this country. No, came the response. Were there any Spaniards, then? No again, at which point Cinque led his comrades in joyous shouts and whistles.
The celebration, however, was short-lived. A Government brig came upon the anchored Amistad, boarded her, and, finding Africans armed with cane knives, took the schooner at gunpoint and placed her crew in irons. The slave owners Ruiz and Montez were freed.
If the journey of the Amistad mutineers had been strange and arduous from Africa to Montauk, their journey through the courts of pre-Civil War public opinion and of law, would be tribulation of a different type - and not only for the Africans.
This latter saga began in Hartford, where the Amistad was taken to be claimed as salvage by the Sag Harbor party in Admiralty Court there. A highly publicized trial followed, and in the end the local court rejected Captain Green's claim. The next question was what to do with the mutineers.
The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Spanish Government demanded the return of the African "property," and President Martin Van Buren pulled out all the stops to accommodate the Spaniards.
A Bridgehampton man, Henry P. Hedges, who was studying at Yale Law School, attended the first trial. While obviously taking the side of his friend Captain Green, Mr. Hedges later wrote of Cinque:
Cinque In Court
"He had been squatted on his marrow bones on the floor, apparently a dull, ignorant heathen. As question after question poured in upon him, closer and hotter, he gradually rose. The sense of injustice, of wrong, wreaked upon him and his people; of his absolute right to break all bonds and battle for freedom, overpowered him."
"I see him now, hesitation overcome by the storm of feeling; indignation animating every feature; the loftiest scorn beaming from his massive brow . . . I never heard his eloquence surpassed, although uttered in words not understood."
The defense attorney, Roger Baldwin of Connecticut, demanded a writ of habeas corpus in an attempt to force the court either to try the Africans for murder or release them. Accused murderers, he reasoned, would have to be considered people, not property, with corresponding rights.
Van Buren Appeals
The question was too hot for Associate Justice Smith Thompson, who denied the writ, saying that while he opposed slavery, it was the law of the land. He passed the case along to a district court.
There, Justice Andrew Judson, caught between Van Buren's politics and a wave of public sympathy for the Africans, decided the Amistad mutineers had been kidnapped, were thus not slaves, and should go free.
Amazingly, the U.S. Government appealed the decision. In February of 1841, the Van Buren Administration, insisting the Africans be returned to Cuba as stolen property even though slavery was illegal there, took the case to the Supreme Court - where five Justices, including Chief Justice Roger Taney, were or had been slave-owners.
Free At Last
The Africans were kept in jail while the case proceeded, but with a cult following beyond the bars. Dramatizations of the court proceedings toured the country, as did wax figures of the Africans. Money for the defense was raised by growing ranks of abolitionists.
Cinque was a hero to some, a murdering slave to others.
In the end, none other than John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, then 73, made an eloquent argument against the Federal Government on behalf of Cinque and his compatriots. The Court ruled they should "be declared free, and be dismissed from the custody of the Court, and go without delay."
A Bible given by the Africans as thanks to Adams, then a Congressman, was stolen earlier this month from the Adams National Historic Site in Boston.
Historic Import
Some historians say the Amistad affair split Van Buren's Democratic Party, which lost the next election. If the Civil War was fought to decide the question of slavery, then there is little question that the case - America's first celebrated paroxysm over slavery, race, and human rights - played an important role.
The Amistad's story will be Mr. Spielberg's first directing role for DreamWorks, his new production company. One of his partners in DreamWorks is David Geffen, who, like Mr. Spielberg, has a house in East Hampton. (The third partner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, does not, or at least not yet.)
The script was developed by the writers David Franzoni and Steven Zaillian, the latter having written the script for Mr. Spielberg's "Schind ler's List."
Production is expected to begin in February, with locations in Los Angeles, New England, and the Caribbean.