Civil War documentary sheds light on NYer

The daring exploits of a black crew member who fought to preserve his freedom aboard a captured Port Jefferson schooner during the Civil War are recounted in a new documentary film.

A pair of upstate New York-based documentary producers have included William Tillman's story in their new film on the ship Jefferson Davis, "Search for the Jefferson Davis: Trader, Slaver, Raider," which was released in March.

"This is a guy who falls between the cracks," said Joe Zarzynski, a retired history teacher from Wilton, N.Y., and co-producer of the documentary.

Tillman, 27, was the steward and cook on the S.J. Waring, a 300-ton schooner built in Port Jefferson in 1853 and then based there. After the war erupted and Confederates seized the brig, it was commissioned by the Confederate government as a privateer authorized to seize Union vessels. It captured nine Union ships early in the war before running aground off St. Augustine, Fla.

The Waring was the Jefferson Davis' third prize, taken about 150 miles off Sandy Hook, N.J. Five members of the rebel ship's crew were put aboard the Waring to sail the captured vessel to a Southern port.

After the Confederate sailors told Tillman they planned to sell him into slavery, he staged a one-man revolt on July 16, 1861, using a hatchet to kill three of the privateers and then tossing their bodies overboard.

He threatened to deal with the two remaining privateers the same way if they didn't help sail the ship to a Northern port. The surviving Confederates complied, and with the help of the Waring's crew, Tillman guided the ship back north, arriving in New York Harbor five days later.

Their arrival coincided with the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run, and one New York newspaper wrote how news of Tillman's exploits offset the gloomy battlefield dispatches reaching the city the same day.

Afterward, he was hired by P.T. Barnum's New York museum to regale audiences with the story of how he killed three of the "pirates" in less than eight minutes. His public speaking appearances were a big hit, with people from as far away as Philadelphia and Boston showing up to hear his talks and see the hatchet used in the bloody work, said Gerald Henig, professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay.

Tillman later received a court-awarded $6,000 reward for saving the Waring's insurers from a loss nearly 10 times as much.

Born to free parents in Delaware, he had moved with his mother to Rhode Island while a teenager and later settled in New York City. He returned to Rhode Island to get married in 1863, and is listed in the 1870 Census as living and working as a seaman in Warwick.

After that, the trail of public records goes cold, said Henig, a Brooklyn native.

With Bill Bleyer