A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man by Briton Hammon

First published: 1760

Type of work: Slave narrative

Time of work: 1747-1760

Locale: Coastal Florida; Cuba; the Atlantic Ocean; London

Principal Personage:

• Briton Hammon, an African American slave who is seized by Indians and subsequently rescued by a Spanish captain

Form and Content

Briton Hammon’s narrative is the first known slave autobiography in American literature. Hammon dictated his factual story to a writer who probably recorded the account in almost the exact way Hammon delivered it. The narrative style is plain and straightforward and marked by many awkward and ungrammatical sentences.

The slave’s story is only fourteen pages long and, as Hammon himself states, deals mostly with matters of fact. His story is interesting, however, because he describes exciting adventures resulting from his captivities at the hands of Indians and Spaniards. Furthermore, his work is related to spiritual autobiography and contains many biblical references and quotations. Hammon constantly thanks the Lord for delivering him from the dangers of captivity.

Published in Boston, Hammon’s brief account covers his experiences from 1747 to 1760. With his master’s consent, the loyal Hammon signs aboard a vessel bound for Jamaica. After loading up with wood in Jamaica, the ship heads back, but it soon meets with disaster when it is wrecked on a Florida reef. A boat with nine men aboard, including Hammon, is sent out to reach the shore, but a large band of Indians in twenty canoes surprises the sailors. The Indians capture them and then proceed to attack the ship and kill the captain and remaining crew members. Hammon, the sole survivor, is taken prisoner. The Indians treat him cruelly and threaten to roast him alive; but after five weeks of captivity, he is rescued by a Spanish captain who takes him to Havana, Cuba. There, Hammon becomes a slave in the governor’s castle.

Hammon’s service with the governor lasts for about a year. One day while walking on a street, Hammon is kidnapped by a press gang that wants to put him aboard a ship bound for Spain. When he refuses to serve, he is taken to a dungeon and confined there for four years and seven months. Hammon is released when his plight finally reaches the governor’s attention through the efforts of an Englishwoman. His captivity continues, however, as he is placed again in the service of the governor, who later sends him to assist the bishop of the island. In the ensuing years, the despondent slave yearns for his freedom and makes three attempts to escape. The last one succeeds when Hammon is befriended by an English captain, who takes him on board a ship to Jamaica.

Thereafter, Hammon works mostly as a cook on various military vessels that engage in severe naval battles, in one of which Hammon is wounded. Finally, while in London recovering from a fever, Hammon finds himself impoverished and decides to sign up for service on a ship going to Africa. His sudden desire to return home causes him to change his mind, however, and he switches to a vessel leaving for Boston. By coincidence, his old master is sailing on the same ship, and Hammon describes how a happy reunion between master and slave takes place after a separation of thirteen years.

Critical Context

Hammon’s captivity narrative was not the only work of its kind. An Indian captivity tale by Thomas Brown also was published by another Boston printer in 1760. It was a popular work and went through two editions that same year. Hammon and Brown must have been aware of each other’s works, because both their texts bear resemblances to each other that cannot be considered coincidental. As to which author borrowed from whom, it is impossible to tell. Hammon may have inspired Brown, or Brown may have influenced Hammon, but the relationships between the two narratives are certainly clear from the works. Hammon’s and Brown’s titles, prefatory remarks, and closing religious exhortations are practically the same word for word. Brown’s tale also contains elements similar to those that appear in Hammon’s work, such as accounts of Indian duplicities, captivity, danger of exposure to the alien faith of Roman Catholicism (in Brown, the French Canadians pose the threat), and kind acts by a governor and a woman. In addition, Brown and Hammon end their narratives with a religious plea taken from the same source in the Bible (Psalm 107).

Although it seems that Hammon’s narrative is authentic mainly because of its ingenuous style and unique voice, the difference of tone in the short beginning and ending sections seems to indicate the work of another person. Most of the narrative, however, is presented as a plain and circumstantial account told directly by an unschooled religious person, and the consistency of language, feeling, and viewpoint supports the narrative’s claim to veracity.

Hammon’s description of his adventures is important for historical reasons, because it is the first autobiographical slave narrative produced in America. Although few scholars regard it as a great literary piece, Hammon’s work unquestionably contributed to the development of the slave-narrative genre. The spiritual autobiographical elements, the biblical parallels, the heroic portrayal of the narrator, and the hidden subversive elements of the account are all techniques that appear in the more extended and developed slave narratives of the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.

Little critical analysis of Hammon’s narrative exists, but critics who have commented on the work have remarked on its lack of sophistication, its reliance on circumstantial detail, its contrived and coincidental nature, and its weighty religious ending. Many scholars agree, however, that a consideration of Hammon’s autobiographical account is important for a full understanding of the slave narrative’s development in American literature. Furthermore, Hammon’s unusual experiences provide readers with an exciting adventure story.

Bibliography

Andrews, William L. “Voices of the First Fifty Years, 1760-1810.” In To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Discusses why Hammon found it necessary to defer to his white readers, and explains how this trait of deference characterizes early African American autobiography.

Costanzo, Angelo. “Black Autobiographers as Biblical Types.” In Surprizing Narrative: Olaudah Equiano and the Beginnings of Black Autobiography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987. Examines how Hammon portrays himself as a type of biblical hero. Also deals with the possibility of hidden meanings existing within Hammon’s narrative account.

Foster, Frances Smith. Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. Discusses Hammon’s account as a precursor of the slave narrative. Stresses that Hammon concentrates on presenting himself as a black person with commendable religious and character attributes.

Starling, Marion Wilson. The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1988. Contains scattered comments on Hammon’s work dealing with its appearance at a time when similar sensational accounts were being published and avidly read. Starling’s investigative research into slave narrative literature, which she completed in 1946, was the first of its kind. She gives the reader a sense of where Hammon fits in the line of the slave narrative’s development. Her liberal definition of what can be called a slave narrative, however, allows her to consider other kinds of slave texts, and thus Starling does not claim that Hammon’s work is the first of its kind.

Williams, Kenny J. “A New Home in a New Land.” In They Also Spoke: An Essay on Negro Literature in America, 1787-1930. Nashville, Tenn.: Townsend Press, 1970. Notes the loose construction, simple expression, and pervasive spiritual interpretation of Hammon’s adventure story. Other chapters in the book deal extensively with the slave-narrative structure and prose style.