Coenties Slip

That made it extraordinarily diverse. Strolling along New York’s waterfront, one might hear any of at least two dozen languages: workers from southern, eastern, and northern Europe;  diplomats and traders from the local eastern Algonquian nations; enslaved men from the Akan-speaking regions of today’s Ghana; even the occasional “Turk” or more distant visitor. New York was the major colonial export-import depot in Britain’s ever-growing mercantile economy, shipping dozens of raw materials, like grain and timber, to near and distant points in the Empire, while purchasing thousands of manufactures, like clothes and tableware, from English cities. Already by the mid-1700s, Europeans were astounded by what they found in wealthy neighborhoods like the Dock Ward, comparing the mansions and residents of Broad Way to London’s Bond Street, where “gentlemen” and “ladies” similarly paraded all the newest fashions and most exotic wares.

Many were also struck by the presence of African slaves everywhere — sold just a few blocks up the road from Coenties, at the ends of Wall St. and Maiden Lane, in auction stands on today’s Water St., the colonial shoreline. During the 1700s, Britain far surpassed the other European powers and the Islamic world in demand for enslaved labor. And colonial elites used the increase of “supply” from wars in African to counter the decline of indentured servants from Great Britain, who made up the vast bulk of the early settler work-force.

New York quickly became the largest slave-owning city in the North. The enslaved were found on every street and in every trade, working for merchants, artisans, imperial officials, and churchmen — in two of every five homes in the metropolitan region.

New York was thus both highly cosmopolitan, extremely diverse, and radically unequal. And it was here on the colonial waterfront that the Revolution began. While small in population, trading-posts like New York were the earliest places to see organized rebellion, because of their economic dependence on British trade and because of the political radicalism of the maritime workforce.

The key actors in this drama were the sailors, who formed the backbone of this very profitable industry. These seamen were “so ill-paid, ill-fed, and ill-handled that it was impossible to obtain crews by free enlistment.” Press gangs frequently visited New York’s waterfront, dragging men from their homes or from the street to work on naval or merchant vessels for years or even decades, often alongside slaves.

But sailors enjoyed an unusual degree of personal freedom because of the intense demand for their skills and labor. And they routinely challenged hierarchies of the day, leveling differences of faith, ethnicity, and race in what historians consider a proto-democratic culture. As Parliament began to restrict currency, tax imports, and prosecute illegal smuggling and settlement of Native land to finance the massive debt it had accrued building its global empire, British officials in New York and elsewhere faced the strongest and most violent resistance from these so-called Sons of Neptune.

With the legislation of 1764-65, creditors demanded payment from merchants, who requisitioned debt from artisans, who stopped hiring. Soon the entire city was affected, New York’s debtor prison filling rapidly alongside beggars in the street. In this atmosphere, seamen and “mechanics” (artisans) formed a radical, new, independent power base, mobilized by rebel merchants and printers through mob action or vigilantism in groups like the Sons of Liberty. With its unrivaled number of taverns and freemen, New York’s waterfront became a hotbed of insurrectionary and civil war style violence.