Content warning:
New Jersey Museum of Maritime History Presents:
Till Earth and Heaven Ring: Artifacts and Accounts from the Henrietta
The Henrietta, passenger, cargo, and slave ship, was routinely used to transport goods from the Florida Keys up as far north as Rhode Island, and is also said to have made at least six voyages transporting enslaved African peoples from the Gold Coast of West Africa to Florida, Alabama, and the Carolinas. At the time of its sinking under mysterious circumstances in 1842, it is believed to have had eighteen passengers aboard—all enslaved men, women, and children embarking on a daring emancipation attempt.
This exhibit’s storytelling is enriched by artifacts recovered from the Henrietta as well as art and firsthand accounts from the self-emancipated individuals aboard and their descendants. In offering the display of these artifacts and statements together we wish to memorialize the bravery inherent in this defiant act of self-actualization. We also wish to invite patrons to come to their own conclusions as to what passed on the days between April 13, 1842, when the Henrietta was first believed to have gone missing, and April 17th, when its passengers were found on what is now known as Island Beach State Park.
“It’s Theo. Just Theo,” he corrected. And bless him, Otto Dowdy blushed as he took Theo’s outstretched hand. Theo watched, fascinated, as the man across from him pinkened above the collar and across his wide cheekbones. So close, with his cap off and hair sweat-dampened, it was clear, to Theo at least, that Otto was mulatto. Quadroon. Octaroon maybe. As he’d watched Otto work the past few days, directing cargo on and off ships, relaying notes to captains, hauling in lines, he couldn’t be entirely sure he had the right man, and a mistake would be costly. But in the shade of the warehouse, an arm’s length away, Theo studied the broad nose, full mouth, and honeyed hair that curled to tight ringlets against his scalp, and found enough confirmation and much to like.
“What can I do for you, Theo?” Otto asked.
Ah, yes. Theo had not been lingering after his own deliveries, risking untoward attention, the past three days for no reason. Master Glover was considered “benevolent.” But he’d rather not push his luck at all.
“You seem busy, I’ll cut right to it. Etta Jean gave me your name. Said you might be some help to me.” She said a whole lotta other things too, things that left Theo by turns confused and afraid. But one did not go to see Etta Jean and expect to leave the same.
Otto’s face sobered immediately. Paled even, perhaps. He glanced around, a terrible nervous tell. Theo had never been in the habit of questioning folks like Miss Etta Jean—a great deal wiser and an elder to boot—but he’d be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t starting to harbor doubts. Couldn’t be this man before him, flinching in broad daylight, is who she meant for him to see. Miss Etta Jean could work any kinda mojo—for luck, for babies, curses and petitions. She was known to even converse with the dead. She could do it all for a price, or whimsy if your problem was interesting enough. Etta Jean hadn’t sought to charge Theo a dime after he showed her what was up under his shirt. All that, and Otto Dowdy was the name she mentioned with her eyes rolled to the heavens, her arm muscles straining, clutching the table between them.
Otto gave Theo a long look and Theo gave one right back. “I see. We best meet later then.” He named a time. Named a place. Walked away before Theo could confirm.
Theo sank back to where he’d been watching from. Otto Dowdy did not look back.
Theo Glover, daguerreotype, c. 1850
Photographer unknown
Description:
Theo Glover sits wide-legged in a plain chair in front of a wood-sided house. One arm is draped over the back of the chair. He wears a flat cap and a light-colored shirt unbuttoned at the neck, trousers rolled up to mid-calf and no shoes. His expression is curious.
Journal, leatherbound, lined paper
Description:
Cover worn, pages loose, fifty-seven pages penciled in blocky, tight handwriting. Contents are a biography recounted by Theo Glover and recorded by Otto Dowdy. This journal spans from Theo’s birth circa 1820 to approximately age twenty.
Photocopy of an interior page:
“… the young Master Henry started paying too close attention to me. My mother started to worry. One time, I was fetching flour for the cook and he cornered me in the pantry. She walked in on him. Lord knows what might’ve happened if she didn’t. She knew then I couldn’t stay up at the house. Missus Glover favored Mama. So she ain’t fuss much when Mama asked if they could spare me at the house. Mama made up something about my being too clumsy to hold a needle and I was better suited to hauling lumber. Mama made me men’s slacks and loose shirts and sent me down to work alongside Daddy in the ’shop and that was that. It was more than a workshop though. The Glovers did all their distilling there. Daddy worked as a carpenter and a cooper, too. Work was harder but I liked it more. I liked planing the wood. Hollowing out the interior of them big ol’ barrels. The smell of white oak. Even better, I liked it when I was finally old enough and I got to ride in the wagon delivering whiskey-filled barrels down to the docks. And to think, without some lecherous man-child I might not have figured out who I really was. Or at least not as quickly. Hate to say it, but it was a blessing in disguise really.”
Theo followed the worn path through a sycamore grove until it gave way to a hard-packed drive, at the end of which Otto sat on a small stool on the porch of a rough cabin, waiting for him. He was illuminated in profile by the yellow light of a nearly full moon perched just above the treeline. Theo felt a warble beneath his twelfth rib on his left side. “Aight, aight. Settle down now,” he murmured to himself, to no one in particular, and he approached.
Otto settled all four legs of the stool down on the ground and stood when he noticed Theo. “Welcome,” he said. Those eyes of his, big-wide and downturned, looking sad as ever. Otto held open the door, allowing Theo to enter the one-room cabin. It was humble, yet well cared for. Two chairs, a small shelf with whittled trinkets, a rug, and a straw mattress in the corner near the fire.
Otto was the one to break the silence. “Miss Etta Jean sends you to me, I see what I can do. What troubles you?”
A lot. A lot troubles me, Theo could have said. Though he did not. Instead he started at the buttons of his cotton shirt. Otto did not say anything, only looked on, pupils widening further in the low light. Only when Theo shrugged out of his shirt completely, allowing it to puddle around his feet, did Otto move. His expression shifted slowly, completely; the way one looks when faced with an especially troublesome problem to solve.
Theo did not like that.
Otto circled Theo once, twice, then squatted down to get a level look. He did not mention Theo’s scant breasts, and Theo wouldn’t either. Otto reached out a hand, hovering just short of touching the spot. Theo knew what he was asking but waited until Otto looked up at him. “May I?”
Just a moment before Otto’s face was close enough to Theo’s bare skin that he could feel his breath tickling across his rib cage. Why not? Theo gave a curt nod. Otto nodded back before abruptly sticking both index and middle fingers into the hole in Theo that should not be.
The hole was not an absence, not exactly. There was nothingness, nothing that should be there, no muscle, no bone, no Theo, whose breathing had been growing more labored by the second. The hole was about the width of his two fingers exactly. He gave them a slight wiggle, stretching index finger upwards then down again. Otto glanced at Theo’s face, but nothing of his bearing indicated that he’d noticed at all. Otto, however, was shocked to find that his fingers swam through impossibility and felt cold to the point of numbness.
Hovering at eye level, Otto could not see through the hole, but he could see into it. And inside were multitudes. Far more there than could or should be contained in any single person. There was a vastness, yet as far as Otto could tell, it was full. Prodding it was like prodding a bowl full of probability … no that’s not quite right … a bowl full of possibility. It was fascinating. And Otto doubted Theo could withstand much more of this observation. He straightened and told Theo to put his shirt back on.
Theo’s relief was palpable. With each button that he redid, Otto saw the same Theo that had spent days leaning against a warehouse wall, watching him move from ship to ship, return. His tension replaced with easy confidence. When he was dressed again he turned to face Otto. He was chewing his bottom lip, in thought. It was slightly fuller than the top lip, Otto had noticed earlier. And he had a thin scar across his chin. Not disfiguring but noticeable. Another man might grow a beard to disguise it. Otto got the impression that even if Theo could do so, he would not. Theo did not impress him as a person who was in the habit of hiding. It was the hole, Otto decided then, that shamed him. Or rather, the mystery of it.
“Well?” he asked, turning to the trunk he kept near his mattress.
“Well, what?”
Theo’s voice was incredulous behind him. “Well, can you fix it?”
Otto returned with a dark bottle and two tin cups and gestured for Theo to sit across from him before filling both cups generously. His cousin Waverly brewed the best hooch in all Charleston. This seemed an appropriate time to break out the bottle.
“There’s nothing to fix,” Otto said, taking a deep swig. It burned the whole way down. Otto could see Theo coiling up for an argument. Perhaps another time, another life, another situation, he could see himself picking a fight just for the satisfaction of making up later, but this matter was important to Theo. He wouldn’t tease him. He held up a quelling hand and continued, “There’s nothing to fix because there’s nothing wrong.”
“I damn well disagree!” Theo shouted, coming to his feet. Whatever easiness Otto had noted about him moments before must have been coming at a cost. Because in front of his eyes, Theo Glover was becoming undone. He cussed a blue streak and when he ran out of coherent words he wept and raged his fear and confusion and when all had gone from him he sagged back into the chair across from Otto and said, voice hoarse and weary, “Sometimes I hear things. It’s whispering to me. I don’t know how to explain it. But it’s so. I hear voices in my head sometimes and I know they coming from right here.” He tapped his side. Otto leaned forward.
“What sort of whispering?” he asked. There was a tension, the moment pulled taut to the point of brittleness. Otto felt that one wrong word, one syllable spoken too loudly and he’d spook Theo, and never see the man again. “They telling you—They telling you to do something bad?”
Theo chuckled, a ragged sound. Instead of answering he brought the cup to his lips and drank deeply. Otto watched the lines of his throat constrict as he swallowed. The air in the room felt temperamental, like a storm that couldn’t decide if it would break or not. Theo did not put the cup down until it was empty. Then he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He stared at Otto, eyes dark and reckless.
“Depends on what you call bad. Tell me, Otto, were you born free?”
Vertigo, c. 1860
Oil on canvas, 10 x 18
Theo Glover, American
Description:
Vertigo features repeated self-portraits in which the artist’s head, slightly lolled, and his naked torso emerge from the open water, reminiscent of uncanny buoys. The stillness of the seven self-portraits is remarkable given the motion that Glover renders in the tempest that rages around each figure. The eyes of each portrait are shut, peacefully, with the exception of one portrait, in the far right foreground, in which the eyes and face are clenched tightly as if in pain, or the anticipation of it.
Theo hadn’t meant to tell him everything, but lying there in the dark, knees and ankles and shins pressed together, Theo found himself able to say aloud what the whispers had been urging him to do. Otto remained quiet for so long Theo began to worry his confession fell on dreaming ears. When Otto responded, it was a sigh. And then, “That sounds about right.”
Theo propped himself up on one elbow, careful to keep from pressing the spot into the blankets that covered Otto’s thin mattress. “What do you mean it sounds about right?”
“I could feel it.” He let his fingers drift towards that spot so that Theo had no doubts about what it Otto meant. “Like I said, it feels like potential. Like beginnings without endings. Not that surprising it’s whispering to you about freedom.”
He should have found the ease with which Otto accepted his predicament relieving, but instead, it made him sharp. “It’d be easier if you just shut it.”
“I can’t. It’s not mine to fix.”
“First there’s nothing to fix. Now it’s nothing you can fix. Which is it, Otto?” For a brief, dreadful moment, Theo was afraid he’d gotten Otto all wrong. It wasn’t like him to make mistakes, not like this. Not about character, the shape of a person and their intentions towards him.
As if sensing his turmoil and its nature, Otto reached out and cradled Theo’s face. “I know what it sounds like. But both things can be, and are, true.”
“Why did Miss Etta Jean send me to you?”
Otto, noncommittal as ever, replied, “Because she thought I could help.”
Theo snorted.
“On account of my mother.”
“And who’s your mother, Otto?”
“Who she is is not nearly as important as where she is. Or even better, where she’s from.”
Spring, c. 1860
Oil on canvas, 10 x 10
Theo Glover, American
Description:
A robin’s egg, nestled at the base of the throat, where the rich browns that comprise the rest of Glover’s self-portrait thin to near translucence. The observer has the impression that they themselves have been granted the gift (or curse) of X-ray vision. Following the lines of the throat upward, the jawline transforms into the side profile of the robin itself. The transition is sudden, striking, yet seamless, as if it were the most natural thing in all the world, to have a songbird, a harbinger of spring and better times, chortling out of one’s mouth. In a stark contrast to many of Glover’s earlier works, his eyes are open. Wide open, in fact, yet refusing to meet the gaze of the observer.
Letter, unaddressed, unlined paper
Description:
Five pages penciled in blocky, tight handwriting. Signed by Otto Dowdy.
Photocopy of an interior page:
“Like a match to gasoline. That’s how we were. Taken with each other from the start. Theo took to forging passes. Risked life and limb to be with me. Said something about me calmed the sore spot in him. That’s what he called it. His sore spot. Hurt me bad afterwards. Real bad, when he didn’t want nothing to do with me for a while. He thought it was my fault how everything happened. And I get it. I always said so. It took a while for him to understand. Things that’s gonna be, is gonna be. Wasn’t nothing I could do about that sore spot. Wasn’t nothing I could do on that boat. All I could do is all I’ve been doing—hang on tight and wait for Theo. He came around eventually. Apologized for something that didn’t need apologizing for. Only regret I have in this life is the time we spent apart.”
“I know how we’re going to do it,” Theo whispered. The sore spot in his side seemed to throb as he spoke, as if it harbored some sort of awareness. It had grown so that Theo had begun to despair that it would consume him before he could quell its demands. The only time he was at peace with it was when he was by Otto’s side. Otto joked that he was nothing more than a distraction, but Theo swore differently. The room smelled like sex and a lightning strike—the latter, wafting up from the hole in Theo’s side. It had grown. It was nearly four fingers wide now. Otto skirted around it tenderly and paused when Theo spoke, a silent invitation to continue.
Otto listened—first rapt and then with growing horror. He trembled as he whispered against Theo’ lips, “We can’t do this.”
Theo flinched. “You mean you won’t. Won’t help?” Otto hated the feel of that flinch, of Theo pulling away. He knew better than to try to hold tighter. If Theo noticed the wounded look on Otto’s face he did not let on.
“No, I mean can’t. Pick another way, another ship. That one, the Henrietta, that’s a bad ship. There are stories about that ship.”
And Theo thought he understood what Otto meant. So he caressed the side of Otto’s face and said, “It’s all right to be afraid. Fear won’t kill you. Staying put, though—there’s death in the waiting.”
Otto shifted; Theo could tell he was nearing ready to fall asleep and Theo was envious. His sleep lately was restless. His dreams had taken on an overly vivid quality. Things happened in those dreams that defied logic, yet he could not distinguish them from waking life. Could he blame his sore spot for this, too? Or was it the terrible anticipation of what was to come? Theo prodded at Otto’s side. “Explain it to me again. About your mother. Differently this time.” Theo had been trying to wrap his head around it the best he could. He had a hole going through his goddamn middle, whispering strange ideas—insane ideas, but he couldn’t fully grasp what Otto had been trying to explain about his mother.
Otto’s voice was thick with coming sleep as he said, “I don’t think I have any other ways, Theo.” By the last attempt, the closest thing Theo could compare the woman to was an angel. Otto insisted that wasn’t right either, though. “Angels have divine intent,” he’d said. “They care about mankind. What she is—they are—are nothing like that. We’re a special interest to them, nothing more.”
Otto was neither resentful nor resigned as he said it—yet another thing Theo couldn’t understand—the dispassionate way he spoke of his mother and his insistence that his mother was equally dispassionate towards him.
“Well, start back at the beginning then.” It felt terribly important that he grasp this. Though he couldn’t say why, he insisted on it.
Ascension, c. 1870
Sculpture, cherry wood
Theo Glover, American
Description:
While many in the art world primarily know Theo Glover as a visual artist, both prolific and visionary, Doretha Freeman is quick to amend that her great-great-grandfather was also a sculptor. Presented is one of the few remaining wood carvings attributed to Glover from Freeman’s personal collection. The rest, Freeman shares, were sadly lost in a house fire thirty years ago. In Ascension, the figure’s face is hidden by a cascade of long ringlets as their body is bowed, hunched in on itself. Chains, broken, drape around the figure’s feet. With such a title as Ascension, one might expect great wings to sprout from the figure’s back; instead, there are hands, whittled in painstaking detail. Six of them in total sprout from the back, shoulders, head, and thighs. Though each hand is positioned slightly differently than the next—some palms curled, others opened, fingers relaxed or clenching—they all appear to be reaching towards something.
Theo was no stranger to the docks, having spent a decade moving whiskey barrels to and fro, but he was no sailor. Not that he’d admit it, but when he put great thought to the matter, ships unnerved him. Their great size; menacing figures that seemed like they had no right to float the way they did. Unnatural, their defiance of the water. He was not familiar; not the way Otto was, who grew up in ports and on cargo ships. Not just a cabin boy but the captain’s boy. A man’s denial didn’t carry too much weight when your get is your spitting image. Right down to the way Otto’s shoulder sloped slightly downward from left to right and the length of his gait. Yes, Otto could play his part just fine. Theo just needed to quell the fitful starts in his guts long enough to do his. The first time Theo saw the Henrietta up close—dead of night, moon hanging low like ripe fruit behind the foremast, shrouded in fog—well, he felt something. Something fear-shaped but with a finer point. It needled him and he did his best to ignore it. The hole in him, though, there was no ignoring that. It was now larger than two fists held together and it thrummed with its own pulse the closer this plan came to actualization. He felt he could stuff it full of cotton rags and he still wouldn’t be able to escape its persistence. The whispers were nearer to moans than not. With effort, he turned his focus to the plan to get the families and provisions on board, and the ship out to open water.
Photographs of timber that remain on Island Beach State Park, designated by the state of New Jersey as a historical heritage site
Description:
Six beams, varying in length from seven feet to ten and a half feet long, waterlogged and soft with age, partially buried in sand. They once formed part of the bilge of the Henrietta. At the shore facing end of the planks are a series of semicircular markings that don’t resemble any modern alphanumeric system. And perhaps more interesting, their method of becoming marked on the wood has yet to be determined. Their symmetry and precision seem to preclude natural aberrations in the wood, and yet, woodworker and dendrologist Antoine Hall describes the markings as “if the symbols were almost coaxed from the fiber of the wood itself.”
Iron bars
Description:
Used as ballast. At the time of its being commandeered by Theo Glover and Otto Dowdy, the Henrietta had been refitted as a slaving ship. The marriage of hydrodynamics and capitalism resulted in this cruel observation: despite being crammed into tiny living conditions, humans, while taking up space, do not weigh very much. Iron ballast bars made up the difference in hydrodynamic stability.
Whathavewedone. Whathavewedone. Whathavewedone.
Shackles
Description:
Rust flaked and barnacle covered.
When some of the families saw what was belowdecks, they refused to go any further. They stifled cries and moaned prayers. But commitment is commitment. They were in too far; either everybody needed to board or likely none would live to tell about it.
Not a single person there had been on a ship like this before, but all knew the cruel tools of the trade. Intimately. It was Big John who moved first. Theo liked him, a friend of his daddy’s. Looked out for him after his daddy had gone on. Big John grabbed hold of the first shackle and pulled and pulled until the wood splintered and he ripped the iron manacles right out the bulkhead. Stalked up the stairs and threw it overboard where it landed in the dark water with a splash. Theo thought about hollering then, felt something manic-like bubbling up not from his chest exactly, but near enough to it. But he couldn’t … wouldn’t let it out. They weren’t safe yet. Far from it.
Till Earth and Heaven Ring, 1992
Oil on Canvas, 24 x 36
Doretha Freeman, b. 1956, American
Description:
Freeman began Till Earth and Heaven Ring to commemorate one hundred fifty years of emancipation on her mother’s side. Says Freeman, “I always believed in Theo’s version of events. It’s something of a tradition at this point; when we get together, we talk about the story. Debate what might’ve happened. Was it the weather? Was it a jar of bad peaches? I think Theo didn’t have words for what he was seeing. What he experienced. But that doesn’t make it any less real even if it sounds fantastic to our ears.” Freeman’s use of light and space adds tension to the hyper-realist rendering of the Henrietta at the mercy of the roiling sea and unforgiving sky. “I chose to depict this moment because it is the great crisis of faith. It must’ve taken a tremendous amount of faith to run away, especially in the daring way they did. Faith that whatever perils might lie ahead were better than what they were leaving behind. But what could have prepared them for this?”
Only once they’d passed through the naval checkpoint did Otto begin to relax. And even then, only marginally. He stood above deck, in a captain’s jacket, with the cap firm on his head and his curls tucked underneath. He knew the naval flags as well as he knew his own name, but that didn’t stop the muscles along his shoulders and the back of his neck from seizing in an anxious rictus. With each jerky movement he made, he felt certain he was one muscle spasm from giving everything away. Surely, I look unnatural. Surely, they’ll know. But the eyes see what they expect, and nobody manning those checkpoints expected to see a mulatto boy on deck commanding a slaving ship out of Fort Sumter with his lover and three other families below decks. And so, on they went.
Below, there was a hushed giddiness, a vibration almost, as time drew on. It wasn’t that they weren’t afraid. No, it was that every single soul felt that they were so much more than that sense of fear. Time drew on, and on, and eventually Otto called everyone above decks.
And then there was the open water, and the watchful eye of a crescent moon, and their lives were in God’s hands after that.
There was enough novel and strange about the situation to keep the small ones occupied. They scampered back and forth playing games across the deck, being mindful of the edge and the men doing work. Theo wasn’t a sailor but he was a quick study. They had the minimum number of men needed to sail the damn thing, keep it intact, and in the right direction. So busy were they that there was little time to think of what came next. All they could do was enjoy the freedom they had while they had it and hope there was more to come. There was brief talk of changing course entirely—destination, the motherland. But that was just the effervescence of an unlikely success and the ocean air talking, was all. Even the most enthusiastic were dissuaded once the talk of rations came up. And besides, there was something strange about the purple clouds beginning to streak like long fingers, greedy and grasping, across the horizon.
“What manner of witchcraft is this?” hollered Big John. Like a glass over a moth, so too did it seem like the storm had descended upon the Henrietta. In their immediate vicinity the sea percolated with an unrestrained violence that the wind around them strove to meet. Yet just at the edge of sight, all remained calm on the dark waters. The storm had come for them, and them alone.
Many of the women fell to their knees in prayer, clutching their children to them. Otto held Theo, who had collapsed in pain.
“Be not afraid,” a voice spoke, through the clouds, through the unnatural storm. They heard it around them. Within them. And if it was God it was no God they’d known before.
Five copper nails
Description:
Five inches long and square sided, with large flat heads. Nails like these were common in the construction of ships between the early 1800s and the 1870s. They held planks together under the stress of roiling salt waves, across transatlantic voyages, and throughout thundering oceanic tempests. Imagine these nails in particular holding the Henrietta together under natural or unnatural forces attempting to tear it apart. Imagine the contrast of internal and external pressure building. Imagine the planks of the hull straining against a fulgent, white-blue light, until …
They called themselves Voyagers. No, not that word exactly, but that’s the approximation that human language and human tongues would allow. They spoke with the fractal branching of a lightning strike, within the impossibly white spots of fawns, the iridescent patterns found in the scales of fish, with the minute space between tree rings and in the give of fleshy seedpods …
Slowly, terribly, Theo began to understand what Otto had tried to explain.
Further, freedom demands a price. This was always understood. In exchange for safe yet uncanny passage and a burdening of knowledge, the Voyagers collected. It was not out of cruelty. No, but rather, curiosity. A price is still a price.
Untitled, 1868
Oil on canvas, 10 x 18
Theo Glover, American
Description:
A remarkably different color palette than his typical work, Untitled is a series of warm colors, the artist’s own portrait in orange and burnished gold flecks. His hands, turned upwards in supplication, or as if prepared to receive a gift, and indeed there is a streak of light, complete with dust motes or perhaps stars, swirling towards or away from his palms, depending on perspective. Across his upper face, there are a series of layered moth wings. Is the streak of light a representation of the “great light” that spoke to the unlikely crew? The ones they credit with saving them, as much as a shipwreck can be described as saving? Doretha Freeman believes so.
Anne-Marie Mitchell, Self-Emancipation of the Henrietta
Digitized recording, excerpt, 12:40, 1873
We came back.
Salt-crusted and confused, we came back.
We couldn’t say where we had been other than to the light. Or some: to the Lord.
Washed up on a grey morning, they found us, sand-speckled and shivering. We’d been gone so long; grown old and died and been reborn until memories of our former lives degraded into nothing but shimmering fragments. In that other place, we would look at each other and smile and assume we’d all been having the same dream. And then here, on this beach, a few of us looked at each other and recalled the other place as a dream. We counted off and it was a miracle. Right down to the babe in his mother’s arms, not one of us lost in the storm. Yet all of us had lost something. Look at my right hand, here. Good thing I turned out left-handed. [chuckles] And my sister, Itsy. A gift and a curse she got. We had gone and lived, and now we were back, as if no time at all had passed, and we never were the same.
We washed up on that New Jersey shore free. Cowrie shells in the lining of our pockets and salt crusted into our eyelids and heads full of impossibilities. But I knew. We had gone and we came back.
Till Earth and Heaven Ring: Artifacts and Accounts from the Henrietta
The eighteen passengers of the Henrietta were found on the shore of Island Beach State Park the morning of April 17th, 1842. Their accounts of how they came to be there all varied slightly except for a few key facts: their point of origin, means of self-emancipation, and a description of a glowing light during a storm. Examination of other primary sources indicate no evidence of meteorological anomalies on any evening between April 13th and April 17th. The survivors of this self-emancipation endeavor each became famous in their own right. For example, [Big] John Jones, while supposedly unable to remember any event of his life prior to April 13, is said to have possessed an eidetic memory until his death in 1860. Itsy Mitchell, a child during the event, claimed to see two worlds, one out of each eye yet both true. These co-existing worlds were the subjects of her numerous sketches. Otto Dowdy entered into a business partnership with John Jones and established what would become the largest fleet of clipper ships owned by Black Americans. According to family lore, much to Otto’s amusement, Theo Glover never stepped foot on another water vessel again. Purportedly, Glover also never slept again and claimed to not need to. During the night hours is when he is said to have completed his many artworks. There is no further mention of Glover’s anatomical anomaly in any of his records.