Aaron Pease was one of three enslaved or formerly enslaved seamen who served on the around-the-world sealing expedition of the ship Neptune, a wildly profitable mission that netted close to $250,000. Setting sail from New Haven in 1796, the Neptune brought back a fortune’s worth of treasures from China in 1799 after circumnavigating the globe. However, Aaron Pease and shipmates Dick Bristol and Jack Woolsey would not receive a share of the spoils. Nor were they on board the Neptune when it returned to its Connecticut port.

Bristol, a cook who had been enslaved by the Neptune’s captain, Daniel Greene, is said to have jumped ship and joined another captain and crew during the voyage. Jack Woolsey, who also served as a cook and had been enslaved in the household of James Hillhouse, a U.S. Senator and treasurer of Yale College, died of dysentery while at sea. Pease, believed to have been enslaved by Ebenezer Townsend, Jr., the son of the Neptune’s owner, self-emancipated during the ship’s return voyage. According to journal entries by one of the crew members, the Neptune was in Malaysia and trading with the Massachusetts-based ship Hazard in March 1799 when Pease decided to leave the Neptune and join the Hazard’s crew. By returning to port in a state that had already officially abolished slavery, he may have been seeking to secure his future as a free man, since Connecticut would not formally end slavery until 1848.

Evidence of the experiences of Pease, Woolsey, and Bristol can be seen in journal entries by the Neptune’s captain and crew. In Elijah Davis’s journal, Aaron Pease is listed alongside Dick Bristol and Jack Woolsey with their designated duties at the outset of the journey. Bristol and Woolsey are listed as cooks, while Pease is described as a cabin boy. Three years later, in a March 4, 1799 journal entry, Pease’s departure would be noted by Davis. “Aaron our cook being uneasy here … has left us. Brig sails,” Davis wrote. In addition to showing that he was “uneasy” on the Neptune, Davis’s journal entry also indicates that during the years he was aboard the Neptune he may have moved from cabin boy to cook, perhaps stepping into Bristol’s and Woolsey’s former role.

No further documents have been found to show how Pease spent his later years. However, in a notation on a 1797 list of crew members who were left to seal on Mas Afuera early on, there is a notation saying “Aaron Pease, Hartford 1836.” Presumably these words were added decades later when Davis was reviewing his journal, but it is unclear what they indicate. Did Pease end up in Hartford? Was he there in 1836? The record doesn’t say.