At the beginning of the American Revolution, Scipio Handley was a free black fisherman who plied his trade in Charleston Harbor. We know very little else about him. We do know he was involved in a number of events during the revolutionary era, and after the war applied for compensation to the Loyalist Claims Commission in London. The memorial he submitted to the Claims Commission provides the little we know about Handley. It is part of thousands of pages of documentation, memorials and testimony, that now survives in the UK National Archives at Kew.
After the last royal
governor, Lord William Campbell, fled Charleston in September 1775, Handley
used his boat to carry supplies to the Tamar and its crew. When Lady
William (Sarah Izard) decided to flee to her husband’s side, Handley took her.
He was taking a great risk. The Committee of Safety prohibited any boats from
town going to the British ships without a pass. Handley avoided Patriot patrols
by going at night when the moon was down or when it was cloudy. But one night a
patrol intercepted him ferrying supplies. They arrested him. According to Henry
Laurens, Arthur Middleton wanted to hang Handley, and most of the council
agreed. Laurens agreed that he should be hanged if guilty, but only after a
“proper” trial. Exactly what would have constituted a proper trial in the wake
of the Thomas Jeremiah incident is worth pondering. We will never know. Handley
escaped from captivity one night shortly before Christmas and disappeared. That
same night, a Patriot force numbering around 200 and disguised as “Indian
warriors” attacked a camp of runaways and Loyalists on Sullivan’s Island. The
“Indians” killed about two dozen runaways and captured others, including a few
Loyalists. The rest managed to escape to the British ships anchored nearby or
to Morris Island on the other side of the harbor mouth. The victors destroyed
the pest house on Sullivan’s Island, which the runaways had used as a shelter.
It is likely that many of them had resided there once before, on their arrival
from West Africa, to perform quarantine.
In the aftermath of the Patriot attack, Lord William sailed off to St.
Augustine. He took some of the runaways and Loyalists with him.
Was Scipio Handley one of
them? Had he fled to the island the night he escaped, just before the Patriot
attack? We don’t know, but we do know that somehow, Handley made his way to
Florida, along with other Blacks and Loyalists. Or so he said in his memorial.
He claimed that in escaping he had to jump from a second story window, that he
landed badly, and suffered a rupture. In severe pain, he made his way to the
British in St. Augustine. From there, he went on to Barbados. He took up
fishing again and remained there for the next three years. Whether the British offered
him a position as an auxiliary during that time he did not say. When the British captured Savannah in the
last days of 1778, they recruited him to work for their army as a Black
Pioneer. He learned to make munitions, a dangerous and noisome job. He was at
Savannah in the autumn of 1779 when a combined Patriot and French force
attacked the city with disastrous results. He claimed that the “Negroes” did
everything they could to repel the attack. They knew that “the rebels” would
show no mercy to them if the British had to surrender. Handley was wounded
during the battle. He was carrying grapeshot to the artillery when a musket
ball hit him in the leg. It took months for the wound to heal so that he could
walk. He would have taken part in the British siege of Charleston the following
spring, he declared, if he had not been wounded. At the time he submitted his
memorial, he stated that he remained unable to walk properly and that the pain
was so bad that at times he could not work. He requested compensation from the
Claims Commission in the amount of £97 for the loss of his possessions,
livelihood, fishing boat, seven hogs, and furniture. The total claim would be
about $25,000 in today’s money. That may seem substantial but many white
planters and merchants claimed thousands of pounds, literally millions today.
When the commission interviewed him he
brought along a white widow from Charleston as a testimonial witness. Mrs.
Eleanor Lister. She had made and sold pies for her living, which she sometimes
traded for fish from Mr. Handley. Lister testified that she believed Scipio was
free and that he had possessed at least some of what he claimed. When one of
the commissioners asked what kind of
furniture Handley possessed she answered tellingly: “Good enough for
Negroes.” She asked the commission to give him “something” because he had
“risked his life to serve His Majesty.” The commission dismissed her and asked
Handley why he did not return to South Carolina to recover his property.
“They’d hang me if I went back,” he replied. “During the war, Governor Rutledge
ordered that all slaves who helped the British be executed.” The records of the
Loyalist Claims Commission record the amounts awarded to the claimants, at
least some of them. It does not contain any information about what Scipio
Handley received, if any. Other Black Loyalists did receive varying amounts of
compensation, although not a great deal.
The commission took about six years to make its final report on the
awards. It may be that by then, Scipio Handley had died. Perhaps we will never
know that either.
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