ABSTRACT

The introductory chapter of the novel Sea of Poppies (2009), written by the Bengali-Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh, introduces us to the character of Zachary Reid. Reid is a 20-year old African-American caulker from Baltimore who arrives in Calcutta in March of 1838 on the ship Ibis, a sloop purchased by a firm called Burnham Bros. with explicit trading interests in India and China. The owners of the Ibis hired Zachary with a very specific task in mind. He was to “outfit” and “refit” the vessel, which Zachary discovers in due time, is a “blackbirder” – a former slave-ship. The irony that an African-American caulker, whose mother is a freedwoman, is employed to repair a slave-ship for further business will not escape attentive readers of the novel. More ominous is the fact that, even after he learns about the Ibis’ intimate association with slavery, Zachary does not, dramatically or self-righteously, turn in his resignation. Instead, he finds himself deeply attached to the ship, to the point that “since his departure from America it was the Ibis herself that had figured most often in Zachary’s daily tally of praiseworthy things” (10).