The top mistakes in Amistad http://www.moviemistakes.com/film58 en Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:55:01 +0000 353 The Portuguese slave ship Tecora was one of the most notorious of the illegal slave ships, but no slaves were thrown overboard in mid-ocean as shown in the film - at least on the trip in question. The Portuguese were pros at the slave trade and had plenty of food on board to feed their "cargo" between Sierra Leone and Cuba.  The only time a slave would be thrown overboard in mid-ocean was if his/her health posed a serious risk to the crew and "cargo".  (Slaves were too valuable to just throw away for the price of their food.)  Historically, though, there were instances where whole cargoes of slaves were tossed overboard.  The British Royal Navy zealously patrolled the waters off West Africa to try to shut down the slave trade.  If a British ship was sighted, the slavers sometimes tossed slaves overboard to destroy the evidence and prevent the seizure of the ship. 348 In the scene where the President of U.S. is talking to his Secretary of State in order to replace the judge, the boom mic is visible at the top of the screen for the whole scene. 354 Cinque is shown in the first scene of the film ripping a nail (to pick his shackles) from the lower deck of Amistad with his bare and bloody fingers during a storm.  In fact, Cinque was topside one day, and simply stooped down to pick up a piece of metal he saw to use as a pick. (Not quite as dramatic, but true.) 355 Roger Baldwin was not a young, inexperienced "ambulance-chaser-type" lawyer.   He was about 50 years old and very highly respected. A few years after the Amistad case, Baldwin was elected governor of the State of Connecticut. 358 The film shows the slave depot at Lomboko destroyed by the Royal Navy after the Amistad trial. In fact, it was destroyed in 1839, shortly after Cinque was exported from there and long before the Amistad trial began in 1840.