The Pedro Gorino

The Pedro Gorino was a top-sail schooner purchased in Norway by Captain Harry Dean for use as a merchant ship at the end of the nineteenth century. Proud of his free black heritage, he was appalled by the imperialism he encountered while sailing and trading across southern Africa. Dean envisioned that black Americans would embrace the opportunity to emigrate to Africa and a country of their own. Tantalizingly close to achieving his goal, Dean received little support and was ultimately subverted by those he thought were his friends. As Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr. demonstrates in his new introduction, Pedro Gorino: The Adventures of a Negro Sea-Captain in Africa and on the Seven Seas in His Attempts to Found an Ethiopian Empire, first published in 1929, is both an exciting adventure story and an important record of black internationalism.