Underwater Railroad [essay]

Summary: Black freedom didn’t only run through back roads and safe houses, it sailed quietly through ports, ships, and open water. This untold history of Black mariners and maritime escape reveals how the sea became both a risk and a radical pathway to liberation.

Freedom Didn’t Only Run on Land. It Sailed.

When we talk about the Underground Railroad, we picture forests, back roads, and hidden basements. But Black freedom also moved through salt water.

Long before GPS or legal protection, Black sailors, dockworkers, and mariners used the sea as a quiet route to liberation. In port cities like Charleston and Savannah, enslaved people worked near ships every day. They listened. They watched. They learned which captains could be trusted and which routes led north, or out of the country entirely.

Free Black sailors were the backbone of this hidden network. They passed messages, shared forged papers, and smuggled freedom seekers aboard ships headed to New York, Boston, Canada, and the Caribbean. Some people hid in cargo crates or blended in as crew. Others never made it. The risks were real. The courage was greater.

One of the boldest examples is Robert Smalls, who literally stole his own freedom by commandeering a Confederate ship and sailing himself and others to Union waters. His story wasn’t an exception, it was a glimpse into a larger, largely untold truth.

For many, freedom wasn’t just north. It was across the water. The Bahamas. Haiti. Nova Scotia. Places where Black people could legally live free long before the U.S. caught up.

The sea, which once carried us in chains, also carried us toward freedom.

That history matters, especially now. Because it reminds us that Black ingenuity, strategy, and resistance have always been expansive. We didn’t just survive the systems built to trap us. We learned how to move through them.

Even by water.