6745. What were those grounds?—The inhuman treatment of my boats. I can show the Committee letters from the officers reporting the treatment they had received. The circumstances detailed in those letters were reported to me by the commander of the ship as having occurred some time previously to the destruction of the factories. This is the report of the officer in the boat; he wrote me this letter subsequently to the affair, at my desire, the circumstances having been stated before. He was entrusted with one of the Rolla’s boats. He says, “I stood out for the purpose of reconnoitring, it blowing a strong breeze, with a head sea. I had not proceeded above three miles from the Alexander,” an American brig, “when the boat was unfortunately stove, and it was with great difficulty she was kept afloat by constant baling with three buckets, until we arrived alongside the Alexander, the captain of which vessel kindly allowed us to hoist her on board for the purpose of repairing. Subsequently the captain of the Alexander going on shore to wait on his consignees, they very strongly expressed their disapprobation at his having rendered any assistance to a British cruizer’s boat, and at the same time regretted that he had not left us to sink or swim. Had the captain complied with their wishes, which had been communicated to him previous to this accident, the only resource left us would have been to attempt beaching the boat, which, owing to the boisterous state of the weather, would have been almost impossible, and probably attended with loss of life to all or most of the crew, the bar at the time being perfectly impassable, and not the slightest probability of keeping the boat afloat for any length of time by means of baling.” That is signed by Mr. George Marriott, mate. In consequence of this prohibition, refuge was repeatedly refused to my boats by friendly vessels disposed to succour them, and had any boat subsequently been in the same condition, she would have been left to drown with all her hands. My whole knowledge of this was from the circumstances reported to me by different officers.
6746. Were there other cases of the same nature?—Other cases of the same nature, produced by threats of the persons on shore, which prevented American and French vessels in the roads, otherwise disposed to do so, having done so before, from affording refuge to our boats under almost similar circumstances. But no case was so strong as that of the boat sinking.
6747. Mr. Forster.] Were those things done by the authority of the native chiefs, or by the authority of the Spanish slave dealers?—Before I went into the river I had no means of knowing; but I considered that the chiefs of the country were responsible for the treatment of cruizers in their waters according to the law of nations.
6748. It appears by the correspondence that the detention of a woman named Try Norman and her child were the grounds you chiefly relied upon to justify that proceeding?—I might have gone upon either ground. I preferred choosing the ground of the detention of that woman and her child; first, because it was an outrage of a far graver nature even than those I have described, which had occurred in the anchorage; and secondly, because it would enable me at once to go to the barracoons to get out all the slaves, to endeavour to find out whether Try Norman and her child were among them.
6749. By which of the chiefs was this woman detained?—By a man of the name of Manna, the eldest son of King Siacca.
6750. Did he assign any reason for detaining this woman and her child; did he justify himself in anyway?—It was impossible that he could justify himself in any way. I considered that the woman Try Norman was as much a British subject as any person in this room. I can see no distinction between his making a slave of her and his making a slave of any white person.
6751. Did he attempt any justification?—He attempted a justification which was utterly unsatisfactory. His justification was, that the person to whom she had been an apprentice had owed him money and that was the ground of his excuse, as appears in the printed correspondence.
6752. Do you know the name of the woman who, he said, owed him money?—I know nothing of it but by his own statement; the woman’s name was Rosanna Gray.
6753. You have read the correspondence?—I have.
6754. Is there not a letter from this Prince Manna, complaining that one of his wives, whom he had sent to Sierra Leone for instruction, had been made a prostitute by this Mrs. Gray?—So it appears in his letter.