Marking the Passage

We were out at Higgs Beach for lunch the other day, and the West Martello Tower -- a fortification for Ft. Zachary Taylor dating from the 1860s -- was just steps away. Since it's one of the venues for Sculpture Key West again this year, as well as headquarters for the Garden Club, we made our way there to look around.

Parts of the structure are amazing ruins. Some say guns from Ft. Zach or offshore ships used it for target practice after the war. But a historical marker across the street gives another part of its story:

Near this site lie the remains of 294 African men, women and children who died in Key West in 1860. In the summer of that year the U.S. Navy rescued 1,432 Africans from three American-owned ships engaged in the illegal slave trade. Ships bound for Cuba were intercepted by the U.S. Navy, who brought the freed Africans to Key West where they were provided with clothing, shelter and medical treatment. They had spent weeks in unsanitary and inhumane conditions aboard the slave ships. The U.S. steamships Mohawk, Wyandott and Crusader rescued these individuals from the Wildfire, where 507 were rescued; the William, where 513 were rescued; and the Bogota, where 417 survived. In all, 294 Africans succumbed at Key West to various diseases caused by conditions of their confinement. They were buried in unmarked graves on the present day Higgs Beach where West Martello Tower now stands. By August, more than 1,000 survivors left for Liberia, West Africa, a country founded for former American slaves, where the U.S. government supported them for a time. Hundreds died on the ships before reaching Liberia. Thus, the survivors were returned to their native land, Africa, but not to their original homes on that continent.

As part of this year's sculpture show, Lauren McAloon conceived "Passages" on the highest rise of the Martello.

Belaying pins on stakes symbolize their voyage.

Tribal motifs symbolize their lost land and lost lives, and the consecration of the ground in 2002 by Adegbolu Adefunmi, a visiting Yoruba prince, and William McKinzie, a member of the local memorial committee.

(Ground-penetrating radar had mapped part of the cemetery earlier that year -- not the first time the community took interest. When the Africans arrived in 1860, the town built them barracks and a hospital, contributed clothes and food, paid for the burials as more sickened travelers died, and finally subscribed to send the survivors home.)

Hundreds of blue bottles, traditional symbols of mourning in slave com- munities, stand in ranks on the fence spikes ringing the high ground. And tall, thick bamboo cylinders, notched into huge flutes, turn the constant wind into a low, steady moan.