<Introduction> Cinque understood well that he was not a free man now- he and the forty-nine other young Africans, kidnapped from their homes in Sierra Leone.
The Amistad was a real Spanish slave ship. It sailed from Havana, the capital of Cuba on 28 June 1839. It was taking some young Africans to work as slaves, but they fought and killed the sailors on the ship. The Africans tried to sail the ship home to Africa but a US ship found them and took to New Haven in Connecticut on the north-east coast of America. There they faced prison and the courts.