Amistad and its captain have noteworthy history

The captain, the heritage, the sea

The old sea captain is a man in love.

Bill Pinkney strides down the dock, grabbing the newly arrived crew one by one in a massive bear hug. His eyes come back to the Freedom Schooner Amistad, its Douglas fir masts, its graceful, dark lines of iroko and angelique from Africa, live oak from South Carolina. This is his.

"I was with this boat when it was logs from places like Sierra Leone, up in Washington state, Lagos. The wood that came from Surinam. The keel from came Guyana," he says with rapture. "I have splinters still in me somewhere from it."

The Amistad is a replica of the famous 19th century sailing ship commandeered in 1839 by captive Africans en route to being sold as slaves in Cuba. They would win their freedom in the United States and eventually return home to Sierra Leone.

It's in Charleston for Harbor Fest 2008 this weekend, and will stay to take part in Spoleto 2008 at the end of the month, where an opera about the original Amistad odyssey will be performed. Pinkney is here with it.

He is "a 73 year old ex-limbo dancer," he says playfully. He was the first captain of the replica when it was launched in 2000; today he is its master, its storyteller. He is descended from captured west Africans like the rice farmers who pulled loose a spike on that trade boat 180 years ago and pried off their shackles.

He is one of those singled-out firsters — the first black man to sail solo around the world.

Read more in Wednesday's edition of The Post and Courier.