A long reply (sorry) that might cover some of the post. England outlawed slavery before they did here in the US. Up till the Civil War in some major Northern ports the census of sailors boarding houses reported as much as (Providence, Rhode Island in perticular) 30% or more of the cities sailors were of color. From the pre Revolution to the Civil War days the eastern seaboard's inshore trades were pretty much manned by Afro Crib/American sailors. The water offered the only trades where there was freedom of movement for freemen as well as slaves & a chance for equality & wage. Many of their communities survived & subsisted upon mostly the earnings of it's waterman. The offshore trades were manned more by black deep water sailors than history would have one to believe. The network for these sailors/watermen was the North Alantic rim and many found England as well as Haiti to be far more excepting of them & so made some of these places their homes, slaves more than freeman. All this died for the sailors of color by the time the Civil War came about & so along with their trade went their international source of information (word & news of love ones as well as news about other places the grass may be a bit greener), the freedom & equality that a sailor was allowed, chances of good wages, the education & storytelling begot from their world wide of sailoring. The only area where they stayed at sea longer was as stewards & cooks (to which many belonged to the Steward & Cooks Marine Society's, also for sailors but no officers) & onshore for awhile as stevedores. Their sea culture also died with their trade as well as their influence on the art of the sailoring. Towards the end of these days they were the old salts, white sailors found better paying & less dangerous work & the average age of the white sailor (around these times) grew younger & younger & they endoured less & less voyages, their knowledge of seamanship became less & less till the old men of color were left to teach the young whipersnapper white greenhands the little of the trade that their short time allowed. One of the few areas were they left their mark was their music & their influence on the sea music as a whole. These times I believed caused more & more blacks to find lands that offered better homes.
See 'Black Jacks' by Jeffery Bolster, these autobiographies of Fredick Douglass & his many other writtings, the "Life of Olaudah Equiano", "The Negro in the Navy & Merchant Service, 1798-1860 by Harold Langley, of the Nantucket American-Afro/Indian sea Captain "Narrrative of the Life & Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian", "the Big Sea by Langston Hughes. Also the log of the Schooner Industry - Nantucket Maritime Museum & "Absalom F Boston" by Cary & Cary, Remarks of the Schooner Industry & the Brig Traveler from the Report of the Commissioner of Fish & Fisheries.
What was the guestion again?
Best in my opinion for music is anything recorded by & from the Georgia Sea Island Singers, any thing recorded & collected by Roger Abrahams (also see his Book "Deep the Water Shallow the Shore, on Rounder "Deep River of Song-Bahamas 1935" from Lomax's collection, CD on Global Village "Virginia Traditions- Viginia Work Songs", on Rounder "Peter Was a Fisherman" field recordings from Trinidad 1939, some of the later cd's from Mystic Seaport's Forebitter & cd by the Johnson Girls "the Johnson Girls.
Sorry for the long winded post.
Good luck, Barry