The Possible Lives of W H, Sailor by Bushra Junaid

Coastal erosion has exposed a two-hundred-year old wooden coffin on the Strait of Belle Isle. The person in the coffin was buried with their head oriented east toward Africa. The man, with good teeth and kinky hair, was young and short in stature. He was also missing his forearm. The coffin also contained a knife and pouch and a shoe. These items had the initials WH engraved on them. Who was this man and what was his story? How did he come to be buried here?

Discussion

In June 1987, a burial site near the small fishing village of L'Anse au Loup on a part of the Labrador coast was exposed. Bones, fabric and wood were exposed. Archeological investigation revealed a coffin containing a skeleton wearing a military uniform, wrapped in a shroud of a wool blanket. There was also a pouch and in the pocket of the jacket was a pocket knife with the initials WH carved into it. The lone shoe had a W carved into the sole.

Working together, an osteologist and conservator were able to determine that the remains were that of a Black man. The presence of a twenty centimeter long wooden marlinspike, a tool used to separate or join together rope, in the coffin suggests that this was a sailor. Investigators believe that WH was possibly a midshipman or the servant of a ship's officer in the early 1800s.

The Atlantic was sometimes called the Black Atlantic for the number of Black people who sailed across the ocean. Over twelve million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic in slave ships. Approximately one-fifth of all sailors in both the merchant marine and the military were people of colour, some enslaved, others free.

In The Possible Lives of WH, Bushra Junaid, wonders about the life of the Black sailor known only as WH. Her poetry narrative is filled with questions about his name, his origin, how he came to be a sailor, lose his arm, and what he saw and felt. In asking these and many other questions, Montreal-born Junaid, an author, artist and curator, takes young readers on a short trip through the earliest Black history of Canada.

Millions of West Africans were captured and forcibly transported across the Atlantic from 1526 to 1867 in what was known as the Transatlantic slave trade. This journey in the Middle Passage, was done in the festering hold of a slave ship, under such terrible conditions, that many did not survive. 

Other Blacks were born on plantations in the Caribbean or in America where they cut sugarcane, picked cotton and planted rice. On these plantations, life was no easier. Junaid, in her Background To Timeline note at the back, writes that "Caribbean slave owners bought enormous quantities of the poorest grade of Newfoundland and Labrador codfish or 'salt fish' (also called 'refuse fish' or 'Jamaica fish') to feed their enslaved workforce." The enslaved were fed poorly, among other things. When Britain was considering abolishing the slave trade in 1791, there was concern that such a move would result in the collapse of the Newfoundland fishery. Little concern existed for the enslaved and their health.

Some enslaved Africans and people of colour, escaped by enlisting in the British or American navy. Some who fought for England during the American revolution, were given land in Nova Scotia. The land was of poor quality, but they stayed, had families and became an integral part of the history of Eastern Canada. All of these are possible origins for the sailor we know today only as WH.

In asking her questions and offering possible answers, Junaid paints "...a picture of what the life of a Black sailor in the later eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries may have been like."  something we know a bit about, from the writings of Black sailors from this era. 

The author has illustrated her story with beautiful artwork done both in traditional media and digital methods.Also included are the following resources: Background:Finding WH, a Timeline, Background To Timeline, References and Resources, photographs of Artifacts Found At WH's Burial Site, and a Teachers Guide.

The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor gives voice to the past, to those people of colour, who either by choice or not, are a part of Canada's history and the making of this country.

Book Details:

The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor by Bushra Junaid
Tors Cove, NL: Running the Goat Books & Broadsides,   2022