Briton Hammon was an enslaved person of African descent who lived in British North America during the middle of the 18th century. On December 25, 1747, by leave of his master, Hammon left his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts to board a ship in neighboring Plymouth to work on a sailing ship headed for Jamaica. On June 15, 1748, the ship wrecked and he and the crew were cast away off the coast of Florida, beginning a series of hardships and adventures he chronicled in an autobiographical account, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing [sic] Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man, first published in 1760. His experiences after the shipwreck included being held captive by Florida Indians, spending four years in a Spanish prison in Cuba, rescue by a British lieutenant who sm