Enslaved people aboard the American brig Creole rebelled in November 1841 while being transported from Virginia to New Orleans. They forced the ship to Nassau in the British Bahamas, where most of the captives gained freedom. The incident produced a serious diplomatic dispute between Britain and the United States.

The Creole revolt strengthened the abolitionist climate in which Longfellow wrote Poems on Slavery and Whittier composed antislavery verse. Later Black poets treated such shipboard rebellions as vital counter-narratives to archives that portrayed enslaved people merely as cargo.