“NB.—On the whole I never had so much Trouble in all my voiges. I shall rite to barbadoes in a few days.” A pleasant letter to come down to us out of the years and written by a slaver too! His officers were sick and so were three of the men in the forecastle, and he feared lest the slaves in the hold, learning how short-handed he was, might rise up and make a bid for their freedom, but worse than all was the leaky condition of the ship. Well for her that she sailed in sunny seas, in the season when hurricanes were hardly to be feared, but I felt a thrill of triumph when on the 17th June of the same year he was able to write from Barbadoes:
“Gentle'n:—These are to acqt of my arrival heare ye Day before yesterday in 10 weeks from Anamaboe. I met on my passage 22 days of very squally winds & continued Bains, so that it beat my sails alto pieces, soe that I was oblige Several Days to have Sails on bent to mend them. The vesiel likewise is all open Bound her bows under deck.... My slaves is not landed yet; they are 58 in number for owners, all in helth & fatt. I lost one small gall.” The health of the slaves does him credit in so small a ship. With my faith in fresh air I cannot help wondering if some of it was not due to that opening round the ship's bows under deck.
After a few more remarks he says, “I left Captain Hamblet at Cape Coast sick. His slaves had rose, and they lost the best of what they had.” What happened to the slaves? The slave trade is full of such unfinished stories.
There is another letter from Annamabu from one George Scott. “We have now aboard one hundred and no gold. I think to purchase about twenty & go off ye coast: ye time of ye year [it was April], don't doe to tarry much longer. Everything of provisions is very dear and scarce: it costs for water Ten shillings for one day. I think to stay in this place but fourteen days more. We shall go to Shama and water our vessel.”
Shama or Chama is another slave castle about half a day's journey from Sekondi. Grim high walls surround it, and the only entrance is approached by the wide steps in a half circle, steps that we so often see approaching the entrance to an old house in Jamaica. At the Hyde there were the same sort of circular steps that I met at Chama, but at Chama they came up to a narrow entrance that two men, in those days, might hold for a week against great odds.
This slaver goes on to say he thinks he will sail off the coast from Chama with about 120 slaves cargo. “We have left about two hundred pound sterg in goods which wont sell here to any profitt. Every man slave that we pay all Goods for here, costs twelve pounds sterg prime. I hope I shall be in Barbadoes ye latter end of June but have not concluded whither we shall go to Jamaica or Virginia; our slaves is mostly large. 60 men and boys, 20 women, the rest boys and girls, but three under four foot high. Pray excuse all blunders and bad writing for I have no time to coppy, the sloop being under sail.”
I like the last touch, the slaver captain who copied out his letters so that they should be neat when he had time and was not ashamed to own it. I hope he was as careful of his human cargo.
The getting of that cargo was not always accomplished, as Phillips did it, by the simple process of going to the “trunk” and buying those he wanted. Clarkson, when he was seeking evidence to justify the suppression of the slave trade, told a tale of wicked treachery by white men, Englishmen, I am sorry to say, who found trade bad at Old Calabar.
There lay in the River the ships Indian Queen, Duke of York, Nancy and Concord of Bristol, the Edgar of Liverpool, and the Canterbury of London, slavers all, and the slaves were not coming in in this year 1767. Therefore they planned among themselves as coolly as if the black men had been deer or elephants, or pheasants, how they might best fill their between decks. The Calabar River is hot and it is unhealthy, for the percentage of moisture in the air is so great that very gladly I have sat over a fire when the thermometer registered over 90° in the shade, so that it is hardly a pleasant place of residence for a white man. Also the old inhabitants were not very tender of each other, or very careful of human life, for as I sat there watching a most glorious sunset a woman, who had come there in the early days, and she was not then, I think, fifty, told me how she hated to walk along the shore—the Calabar River is really an arm of the sea—because of the living sacrifices, generally young girls offered to the envious gods and bound to stakes, waiting for the tide to come up and put an end to their misery. Still the blood-thirstiness of the natives does not excuse that of the slavers. I only mention it because I find that while the advocates for slavery painted the slave in the blackest colours, the opponents generally depicted the poor black man as a noble martyr. He wasn't. He was suffering humanity neither better nor worse than his station in life allowed, often rising to heights of heroism, but often out-heroding his tormentors in blackguardism.
It happened there was a quarrel at that time between Old and New Calabar, and the captains of the vessels, says Clarkson, “joined in sending several letters to the inhabitants of Old Town, but particularly to Ephraim Robin John who was at that time a grandee of the place. The tenor of these letters was that they were sorry that any jealousy or quarrel should subsist between the two parties; that if the inhabitants of Old Town would come on board, they would afford them security and protection; adding at the same time that their intention in inviting them was that they might become mediators and thus heal their disputes. The inhabitants of Old Town, happy to find their differences were likely to be accommodated, joyfully accepted the invitation. The three brothers of the grandee just mentioned, the eldest of whom was Amboe Eobin John, first entered their canoe, attended by twenty-seven others, and being followed by nine canoes, directed their course to the Indian Queen. They were dispatched from thence the next morning to the Edgar, and afterwards to the Duke of York, They went on board the last ship, leaving their canoe and attendants by the side of the vessel. These, of course, were important men. A chief on the Coast now carries a silver-headed stick as a badge of rank, is clad in the richest silken robe, and is as far above the rank and file as is the Duke of Devonshire above the labourer cleaning Piccadilly. And these men of rank being well received and fêted on board the slavers, the rest of the canoes went with confidence to the other ships of the fleet. And then the white brutes worked their wicked will. The men on deck fired on the canoe lying alongside, she filled and sank, and the wretched attendants were either killed or drowned or taken as slaves, while their masters, guests of honour in the white man's saloon, fared no better. The captain, mates, and some of the crew of the Duke of York, armed with pistols and cutlasses, rushed on the unfortunates, doubtless sitting drinking rum, and they made for the stern windows; but they were wounded and helpless and were promptly put in irons.