The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume IIClarkson, Thomas
History
The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume II
Clarkson, Thomas
Slave trade -- Africa
This being told on board, the captain, and a part of his crew, who were
compelled to blacken their naked bodies that they might appear like the
natives, went on shore at midnight, armed with muskets and cutlasses. They
fired on the trader's dwelling, and killed three of his children on the
spot. The trader, being badly wounded, died while they were dragging him to
the boat; and his wife, being wounded also, died in half an hour after she
was on board the ship. Resistance having been made to these violent
proceedings, some of the sailors were wounded, and one was killed. Some
weeks after this affray, a chieftain of the name of Quarmo went on board
the same vessel to borrow some cutlasses and muskets. He was going, he
said, into the country to make war; and the captain should have half of his
booty. So well understood were the practices of the trade, that his request
was granted. Quarmo, however, and his associates, finding things favourable
to their design, suddenly seized the captain, threw him overboard, hauled
him into their canoe, and dragged him to the shore; where another party of
the natives, lying in ambush, seized such of the crew as were absent from
the ship. But how did these savages behave, when they had these different
persons in their power? Did they not instantly retaliate by murdering them
all? No--they only obliged the captain to give an order on the vessel to
pay his debts. This fact came out only two months ago in a trial in the
court of common pleas--not in a trial for piracy and murder--but in the
trial of a civil suit, instituted by some of the poor sailors, to whom the
owners refused their wages, because the natives, on account of the
villanous conduct of their captain, had kept them from their vessel by
detaining them as prisoners on shore. This instance, he said, proved the
dreadful nature of the Slave-trade, its cruelty, its perfidy, and its
effect on the Africans as well as on the Europeans, who carried it on. The
cool manner, in which the transaction was conducted on both sides, showed
that these practices were not novel. It showed also the manner of doing
business in the trade. It must be remembered too, that these transactions
were carrying on at the very time when the inquiry concerning this trade
was going forward in Parliament, and whilst the witnesses of his opponents
were strenuously denying not only the actual, but the possible, existence
of any such depredations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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