Uncontrollable Noise: The Loss of HMS Nimble, 1834

Abstract

HMS Nimble, a Royal Navy schooner having recently captured a Spanish slaver and taken aboard 272 slaves, ran ashore at nighttime in bad weather on the Cuban coast in November 1834. While all crew were saved, several dozen of the African recaptives aboard lost their lives in the accident, which according to the Nimble’s master had occurred because the “uncontrollable noise of these savages” had made it impossible to hear the breaking of the waves on the reef. What emerges from a detailed reconstruction of the perceptions of the accident as evident in the court martial documents is a specific imaginary of the comical, based on a profound lack of mastery over the moving parts of the situation—natural, technical, and social. This imaginary is intimately related to the moral language of humanitarianism but also adds to the patterns of victimization and the cruel ironies of abolition.