THE schooner Amistad left Mystic Seaport, Connecticut yesterday for its month-long goodwill mission to Bermuda.

The five-year-old schooner, a replica of the 19th century slave trader, was scheduled to arrive in Bermuda next week, depending on weather and conditions.

The visit coincides with Bermuda's Heritage Month celebration and is jointly sponsored by the Bermuda Departments of Cultural Affairs & Sport, Education and Tourism.

It will be open to the public in three different ports between May 9 and 29. Christopher Cloud, president and chief executive officer of Amistad America, the charity that built and operates the vessel, said the Bermuda Government has wanted the Amistad to visit since the ship was first launched. But it has taken this long to visit other American ports that requested calls and to fully prepare the ship for its first blue-water voyage.

"Bermuda was one of the first islands to free slaves, and so they have a great connection and familiarity with this story," Mr. Cloud said. He noted that two Bermuda teens are going to be sailing on this trip and that Bermuda is now building a sail training tall ship that will make reciprocal visits here.

"This is going to be the first of many visits to Bermuda," he said.

In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a centre for the slave trade.

This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered the planters to sail to Africa. On August 24, 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, New York by the US brig Washington.

The planters were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, Connecticut on charges of murder. Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in confinement as the focus of the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. President Van Buren was in favour of extraditing the Africans to Cuba.

However, abolitionists in the north of the US opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans. Claims to the Africans by the planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the brig led the case to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut.

The court ruled that the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves.

The case went to the US Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the defendants' case.

Adams defended the right of the accused to fight to regain their freedom. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, and 35 of them were returned to their homeland. The others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial.

The story of Amistad was immortalised in director Steven Spielberg's 1997 Academy Award-nominated film. The fact-based story of the 1839 revolt by Africans on the slave ship Amistad and their subsequent trial when they arrived on American soil starred Morgan Freeman, Djimon Housnou, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew McConaughey.