The port of Liverpool were a crossroads of empire, trade, and war — and Black sailors were part of that story. During the American Civil War, African American seamen, many of whom were formerly enslaved or free men of color, worked on ships that crossed the Atlantic. Some crewed Confederate raiders like the CSS Alabama or blockade runners. Others found passage or refuge in Liverpool, a town deeply entangled in the cotton and shipping trades.
Yet their names rarely appear in the official logs or newspapers. Their stories, like the tides they sailed on, slipped from view.
Liverpool’s Black population — dockworkers, sailors, and labourers — grew throughout the 19th century. African American sailors brought news, songs, and stories from New York, Charleston, and New Orleans. They shared boarding houses in the city’s slums, worked the dangerous jobs others refused, and sometimes deserted ships that flew the Confederate flag.
Some Black sailors were trapped between loyalties: working on Confederate-linked vessels out of necessity, or switching ships when the opportunity came. Others quietly aided the Union cause, passing intelligence or helping escapees find safe passage.
In JP Maxwell’s Shenandoah, these hidden communities breathe through the character of Elijah Braithwaite — a man navigating identity, violence, and loyalty in a city at war with itself.
Confederate ships built in Britain — like the Alabama and the Shenandoah — sometimes hired mixed-race or Black sailors, despite fighting for a government that upheld slavery. It’s a brutal irony that many mariners found themselves serving on vessels that represented the very cause they had fled.
Liverpool’s docks were places where these contradictions played out daily. A Black sailor might unload cotton picked by enslaved hands while hoping for the Union’s victory.
a writer of historical fiction, I want to recover these voices — to imagine the choices they faced, the dangers they braved, and the ways they resisted. Characters like Elijah are inspired by this forgotten history: a Black sailor, a rebel in his own right, fighting a quiet war across oceans.
#BlackHistory #LiverpoolHistory #CivilWarHistory #HistoricalFiction#MaritimeHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #WaterStreetBook#TheAmericansOfAbercrombySquare #UndergroundHistory
