Black History Now Lecture: Urban Slavery and the Construction of Dry Dock No. 1 at the Gosport Shipyard, Revisited

Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center

Speaker: Dr. Linda Upham-Bornstein, Plymouth State University

Dr. Upham-Bornstein’s lecture examines the use of urban enslaved labor in the construction of Dry Dock No. 1 at the Gosport Shipyard in the 1830s. Dry Dock No. 1 was constructed in the early 1830s and became the first operational dry dock in the Western Hemisphere. Without the use of enslaved labor, the dry dock in Boston would likely have been completed first. Dr. Upham-Bornstein will explore the nuanced and often tension-filled relationship that developed between both free and enslaved Black laborers and their white counterparts in the shipyard.