WHEN FISH FLY: The Revolt on the Slave Ship Creole

On October 25, 1841, twelve-year-old Pleasant Brown boards the Creole, a merchant slave ship sailing from Richmond to New Orleans with a “cargo” of 140 enslaved men, women, and children. Pleasant’s grandmother, who had been born in Africa, was the daughter of a chief, and Pleasant remembers the songs she would sing to comfort herself in hard times. While imprisoned in the slave pens in Richmond, Pleasant tries to live up to his “chief’s heart” and not despair. But when he sees his mother being taken away, he feels like a jagged piece of his heart has broken off and wedged itself in the back of his throat.

Aboard the Creole is Madison Washington, who had once escaped to Canada, where he learned to read and write, but was recaptured when he returned to Virginia to find his wife. Madison, who is the cook on the Creole, inspires the other slaves with the idea of mutiny and revolt by telling the story of a successful rebellion on another slave ship, the Amistad.

Pleasant makes friends with a younger slave boy, Isaac, who is worried about never again seeing his parents. To comfort Isaac, Pleasant makes up the story that Isaac’s parents may be going to New Orleans by a different route, and that he will probably find them there. Longing for his family, Isaac spends his time with a young mother, Sally, and her baby.

On the night of November 7, as the Creole nears one of the islands in the British Bahamas, Madison Washington overpowers the overseer, Merritt, and shouts to the other slaves in the hold, “We have begun and must go