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Updated: June 12, 2025
"Doubtless they wish to abolish slavery altogether," replied Berecroft. "They must be content with having abolished the horrors of it, sir," continued the planter. "At a time when the mart was open, and you could purchase another slave to replace the one that had died from ill-treatment, or disease, the life of a slave was not of such importance to his proprietor as it is now.
Such was Mr Berecroft; and we have little further to add, except that he was very superior to the generality of masters of merchant vessels. His family, it was reported, were strict quakers. Jackson, the first-mate, was a bull-headed, sandy-haired Northumbrian; as we before stated, a relation of the owner's, or he never would have been permitted to remain in the ship.
Jackson lost no opportunity of annoying or insulting him; but the support of his patron indemnified Newton for the conduct of the first mate, and he resolved to take no notice of that which could not well be prevented. On their arrival at Barbadoes, Mr Berecroft went on shore to the house of the consignee; and then it was that the malignity of Jackson broke out in all its violence.
"The public mind in England is certainly much inflamed against you," said Berecroft. "It is; or rather, I should say, the more numerous public composed of those persons unable to think for themselves, and in consequence, led by others styling themselves philanthropists, but appearing to have very jesuitical ideas with regard to truth.
The ensuing morning she was clear of the sands, and a pilot-vessel off Holyhead having received the pilot, she steered down the Irish Channel to join a convoy for the West Indies, collecting at Falmouth. Mr Berecroft, the master of the vessel, who has not hitherto been described, was a spare, light-built person, of about sixty years of age, still active, and a thorough seaman.
"And so do I, Mr Berecroft; for I am an Englishman, and love my country, and the loss of these colonies would be a blow from which England would never recover." "You forget her extensive colonies in the East." "I do not; but the West Indies add to her wealth and her commercial prosperity, to her nursery of seamen and her exhausted revenue.
The ladies had been about a quarter of an hour on deck, when the sun, which had not shown itself for two days, gleamed through the clouds. Newton, who was officer of the watch, and had been accustomed when with Mr Berecroft, to work a chronometer, interrupted the captain, who was leaning on the carronade, talking to Mrs Ferguson.
At the request of Mr Berecroft, Newton was invited to stay at the house of Mr Kingston, the gentleman to whom the vessel had been consigned an offer which was gladly accepted.
Mr Berecroft was not there to recommend or to assist him, and months passed away in anxious expectation of his patron's return, when the intelligence was brought home that he had been carried off by the yellow fever, which that year had been particularly malignant and fatal.
It so happened, that at the very same moment that they came on board, the first-mate was ascending the companion hatch, to order a boat to be lowered down, and manned. When he perceived Mr Berecroft, he fell back with astonishment, and turned pale. "I thought you were gone," said he: "why, what could have saved you? did you not drift out to sea?"
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