Heading: (Cuba - Chinese)
Author:
Title: Manuscript document (Expediante) reporting the investigation into the deaths of 25 laborers bound from Macau to Port Mariel, Cuba, and listing the locations at sea of their deaths
Place Published: Mariel, Cuba
Publisher:
Date Published: 1868
Description: 16 leaves, most written on both sides in ink, with final leaf blank. 32.5x22 cm (12¾x8¾", unbound, stitched together with thread.The voyage for indentured laborers - virtually slaves - from China to Cuba was quite perilous for the "passengers," regularly resulting in a five to ten percent death toll. Investigations into these death were usually made, resulting in such documents as the present one. However, this document is highly unusual, in that it gives the location at sea, with latitude and longitude, for each of the deaths, along with date of the death and the name of the individual. One may thus chart the track of the ship as it made its way from Macau across the Pacific Ocean and around South America to the sugar fields of Cuba.The document is titled on the firset page, "Sumaria formada por el fallecimicto de veinte y cinco colonoa, abord de la Barca francua 'Antifer' en su viage de Macao al Puerto del Mariel" (roughly "Summary formed by the death of twenty-five colonists, aboard the French ship 'Antifer' on its journey from Macau to the Port of Mariel").

Darkening to paper with some bleed-through of the ink, the page charting the death locations with vertical split from the ink used to draw one of the column lines; overall very good, with wear commensurate to its age and use, with a horizontal fold to the document.