Black Star Line - History

History

The Black Star Line started in Delaware on June 23, 1919. Having a maximum capitalization of $500,000, BSL stocks were sold at UNIA conventions at five dollars each. The company's losses were estimated to be between $630,000 and $1.25 million.

The Black Star Line surprised all its critics when, only three months after being incorporated, the first of four ships, the SS Yarmouth was purchased with the intention of it being rechristened the SS Frederick Douglass. The Yarmouth was a coal boat during the First World War, and was in poor condition when purchased by the Black Star Line. Once reconditioned, the Yarmouth proceeded to sail for three years between the U.S. and the West Indies as the first Black Star Line ship with an all-black crew and a black captain. Later Joshua Cockburn, the captain of the Yarmouth, was accused of receiving a "kick back from the purchase price".

The SS Yarmouth was not the only ship to be purchased in poor condition and to be completely oversold. Garvey spent another $200,000 for more ships. One, the SS Shadyside, sailed the "cruise to nowhere" on the Hudson River one summer and sank the next fall because of a leak. Another was a steam yacht once owned by Henry Huttleston Rogers. Booker T. Washington had been an honored guest aboard the ship when it was owned by his friend and confidant, Rogers, and was known as the Kanawha. However, Rogers had died in 1909, and the once well-maintained yacht had also served in the first World War. Renamed by the Black Star Line the SS Antonio Maceo, it blew a boiler and killed a man.

Besides oversold, poorly conditioned ships, Black Star Line was beset by corruption of management and infiltration by agents of J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner to the Federal Bureau of Investigation), who – according to historian Winston James – sabotaged it by throwing foreign matter into the fuel, damaging the engines. On its first commission, the Yarmouth brought a shipment of whiskey from the U.S. to Cuba (before prohibition) in record time, but because it did not have docking arrangements in Havana, it lost money sitting in the docks while longshoremen had a strike. A cargo-load of coconuts rotted in the hull of a ship on another voyage because Garvey insisted on having the ships make ceremonial stops at politically important ports.

The Black Star Line ceased sailing in February 1922. It is regarded as a considerable accomplishment for African Americans of the time, despite the thievery by employees, engineers who overcharged, and the Bureau of Investigation's acts of infiltration and sabotage.