1865 Voyage Archive of the Spanish Coolie-Ship “Encarnación”, Including Arrival Notice, Telegram, Quarantine Actas, Mariel Certification, the Signed Manifest and More

On offer is a rare and tightly focused five-day administrative archive created between March 20–24, 1865, documenting the Cuban colonial state’s full processing of the Spanish barque Encarnación and the 283 Chinese indentured labourers she carried from Macao.

The archive contains thirteen manuscript documents, all docketed to File No. 539, tracing every step of the arrival-to-assignment cycle: arrival notice, medical inspection, mortality reporting, judicial review of contractual status, police authorization, sanitary clearance, internal administrative circulation, and the early phase of labour distribution.

The Encarnación is well documented in scholarship. As John Asome notes in Coolie Ships and the Chinese Diaspora, 1846–1874, the vessel made eight coolie voyages between 1853 and 1871, transporting 2,547 migrants with an average mortality rate of 4.91%. Her 1864–65 voyage departed Macao on November 23, 1864 and reached Havana on March 16, 1865, landing 274 survivors from the 283 who embarked. The Mariel medical reports describe a voyage marked by ophthalmia, dysentery, ulcers, anasarca, pulmonary fevers, and a single death from tuberculosis. This archive records, with unusual precision, how Cuban authorities evaluated, certified, and redistributed this human cargo upon arrival.

Despite being unified under one file number, the documents originate from at least six separate offices:

• Junta Local de Sanidad de Mariel
• Junta de Sanidad de La Habana
• Gobierno Político
• Gobierno Superior Civil
  
• Dirección de Administración
• Merino Gilledo y Cía. and Gelledos y Cía. (consignees and brokers)

What survives is not a stray fragment but a working colonial dossier, showing in real time how the Encarnación moved from newly arrived vessel to a documented source of indentured labour within Cuba’s plantation economy.

The Chinese coolie trade (1847–1874) brought over 125,000 Chinese labourers to Cuba under contracts that, although legally framed as “free,” often masked coercion, restricted movement, and conditions approaching slavery. By the mid-1860s, under intense diplomatic criticism, Spain developed an elaborate regulatory apparatus intended to prove that these workers were “free contractual migrants.” That apparatus — medical inspection, judicial evaluation, mortality accounting, manifest verification, and authorization for disembarkation — is captured here with exceptional completeness.

Within this archive, the two Mariel medical actas, the mortality note, the judicial referral, the police authorization, and the four-folio passenger manifest together reveal the lived administrative reality of the trade: illnesses documented in precise categories; the single death noted; consignees defending their conduct; and Chinese names transliterated, paired with imposed Christian names, and absorbed into Cuba’s indentured labour regime.

For institutions or collectors building holdings in Chinese diaspora history, Cuban colonial history, transpacific migration, Caribbean labour systems, or the slavery-to-post-slavery transition, this archive offers an unusually rich and granular look at how the coolie system was operationalized. For collectors, it is a rare survival: a concentrated administrative file, created over just five days, showing the entire process from arrival to assignment.

March 20, 1865 is the most active date in the archive, when both Mariel and Havana offices processed the Encarnación simultaneously. On that single day were produced: the Havana arrival notice; the Guanajay telegram; the internal forwarding memorandum; the formal Merino Gilledo petition; the four-page certified Mariel medical report; the separate one-page Mariel acta; the mortality declaration; and the fully signed four-folio passenger manifest. The subsequent days continue the administrative cycle: judicial review on the 21st, police authorization and final Mariel clearance on the 22nd, departmental forwarding on the 23rd, and labour assignment orders on the 24th.

Together, these documents form a sharply coherent, internally consistent file, tracing the Encarnación from first notices of arrival through medical and legal examination and onward to the issuance of cédulas for the first group of 36 labourers.

Document Overview by Date

March 20, 1865

• Arrival notice from the Havana Junta de Sanidad reporting the Encarnación from Macao.

• Telegram from Guanajay declaring the ship “del todo perdida” (condemned/unseaworthy).

• Internal administrative note circulating the telegram within Havana.

• Formal petition of Merino Gilledo y Cía., reporting 283 embarked / 274 arrived, nine lightly ill, requesting exemption from Article 15 deposit.

• Four-page certified Mariel medical report, summarizing voyage conditions, provisioning, ventilation, one death, and 39 medical cases (ophthalmia, ulcers, dysentery, anasarca, pulmonary fever). Signed by Dr. Luis José Márquez.

• Separate one-page Mariel acta (Acta No. 110) confirming observation-period findings and listing 38 sick colonos.

• Mortality note from Merino Gilledo y Cía. summarizing deaths and illness patterns.

• Four-folio, fully signed passenger manifest, listing all 283 colonos by Chinese and assigned Christian names, with ages.

21 March 1865

• Judicial referral ordering determination of whether the colonos qualify as libre contratación.

22 March 1865

• Authorization from the Political Governor instructing police not to obstruct disembarkation or residence.

• Final Mariel sanitary clearance affirming no contagious disease and permitting the ship to proceed.

23 March 1865

• Forwarding note transmitting the Mariel papers to the Section of Agriculture, Industry & Commerce.

24 March 1865

• Labour-distribution order from the Superior Civil Government assigning 36 colonos through Gelledos y Cía. and ordering the issuance of cédulas.

Condition: Very good for active nineteenth-century administrative material. Expected folds, docketing, and edge wear; ink consistently strong and legible. The four-folio manifest is complete and structurally sound; both Mariel actas clear and fully legible; no text loss.